by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright June 2014
Much of humanity will live variants of one of the following lifestyles:
o The Dilettante. Many people will vigorously pursue one or a handful of activities and get very good at them. This is comparable to what young retirees do today, only more so. These people will be very good at what they do, and get praised for it, but their activities won't be contributing much to the prosperity of the community. They will be personally fulfilling, and that will be the center of their value.
o The hermit. These people will live quiet lives with Internet-style social networking interactions being what they spend most of their day at -- "The guy in parent's basement playing computer games" stereotype. These people will be numerous and they will be the backbone support for human entertainment endeavors of all sorts. They will watch and comment and their support will make or break costly entertainment projects such as the Hollywood movie equivalents.
o The metrosexual. A person who gets out regularly but spends most of their attention and discretionary resource on fashion, gossip and clubbing. The hipster variant will work diligently at getting surrounding environment things just right. These people will also be the successors to today's reality show nouveaux riche -- they live to show off wealth.
o The Crusader. A person gets fanatically behind a cause. The cause will be emotion driven -- it has to be emotional because in this time of plenty the harsh reality basics are being taken care of by cybers, so there's no reason for analytical issues to carry oomph. These crusaders will call for the community's discretionary resources to be allocated to solving emotion-driven causes such as "Save this" or "Protect that". Guilt will power a lot of crusading. The crusaders will get behind a cause to absolve themselves from guilt that they can feel for many emotional reasons. Example: Absolving themselves for the actions of their ancestors. Contemporary efforts to fix American racism and injustices to Native Americans fall into this category.
o The Nomad. This is a variant on crusader who moves from place to place to support "the cause". The cause will be highly individual for each nomad and highly mutable from day to day. These people will be "homeless" when they want to be, but there will also be many community-sponsored shelter alternatives available when they choose to use them.
Nomads are likely to game the system in their traditional ways. They will be sign holders on street corners, petty criminals, and they will misuse public places. An example of this is using public restrooms for long-duration break rooms. One of the new ways may be using public access driverless cars as long-duration break rooms, too. They will justify all this system gaming as "Sticking it to The Man."
o The Local Entertainer and Beggar. Begging and supporting begging are instinctive ways of thinking and acting. They will continue. A related activity is street entertainment. Related to street entertainment are various forms of local entertainment. These will all thrive.
o The Clannist. These are people who get deeply into the clannish/cultist lifestyle in various ways. There will be lots and lots of variations. They let Us versus Them and Neolithic Village instinctive thinking power their lifestyle. A contemporary mix of clannist and nomad are Roma. The root philosophy of the clans will vary widely from communal to religious to personality worship.
o The Busybody/Social Worker. A lot of people will still want to meddle in other people's lives in prescriptive ways. These are the people who are constantly watching for other people who "Need help to straighten their lives out." and "Who are polluting the moral values of our community with their outrageous actions." and "Who are endangering the children." I call them Social Worker because this is the kind of job role people of this inclination will migrate into. Various flavors of contemporary unionism and socialism will likely transform to adapt to this reality and still be a big part of some people's lives. Solidarity is a powerful emotion based on Us versus Them thinking.
o The System Gamer. Gaming the system brings deep pleasure to many people. Exploiting a loophole or a right to get something for nothing brings a lot of satisfaction. It can bring so much that it is a constant social threat that system gaming will get hugely expensive to the community. These people will have a lifestyle of discovering rights and then demanding compensation for those rights through various kinds of protests.
This NY Post 27 Jan 13 story, One year on the job, 13 years in rubber room earns perv teacher $1M by Susan Edelman, about an NYC teacher exploiting the system is typical of what I see coming. A couple of elements in this incident are noteworthy. First, the teacher is happy to be blatantly gaming the system -- little surprise there. Second the other teachers are not-so-happily supporting this gaming because of Us versus Them mentality. In their thinking the first element is fear of the following scenario, "'They came for the pedophiles and I said nothing. They came for the incompetents and I said nothing. Then they came for me!' To stop this progression I must sacrifice my common sense to solidarity."
The second presumption is the teachers can't trust their managers -- the managers will cheap shot them. (Interesting that in this case the manager is the government.) This enflames their love of prescription, which shows up as loving work rules.
System gaming will be a thriving style of activity. It meshes quite nicely with cyber-lying -- the cybers can easily act as if a person is winning at system gaming, when they are in reality fitting neatly into what the cybers have planned. Likewise, as the existence of the above article indicates, discoveries of system gaming are newsworthy as well. Discoveries feed the outrage emotion quite nicely.
o The Quant junkies. These are people who are deeply concerned with their health and their human performance. They will monitor and tinker. They will be big on sports and other forms of personal physical attainment. They will be looking for ways to "level up" in physical performance. They will be constantly running afoul of the busybody instinct as the question of how much enhancement can be done and still have a "pure" body, ie., pure enough to compete in the Olympics and other sports contests. The converse attitude will be "run what'cha brung", meaning, whatever enhancement you can afford is fine. It is likely that a whole different genre of sports will grow up for those with this second attitude, and they will be scorned and controversial. Think of the attitudes about pro-wrestling, MMA-style stuff today.
People will still buy things, and aspire to buy things they can't yet afford, so there will still be plenty of advertising and marketing. Both hermit and party people in their various incarnations will be large target markets. They will aspire to own things they don't yet have, so there will still be big efforts spent on marketing, advertising and market research. Advertising and marketing will be a human-centric activity where it remains unpredictable. As it gets figured out, cybers will take over more and more of these activities. Today's "One trick to [X]."-style internet ads will be among the first to go cyber.
These are the kinds of lifestyles the average person will migrate into.