Don't be bored

A series of self-contradictory non-sequiturs --- Self-sufficiency is the road to poverty --- games of production, games of consumption, in the end a game is a game why be picky? retirement is difficult, and so it is that meaningful play isn't all that much easier to get right than meaningful work. I feel like that's one of the central lessons of The Culture. In a utopia, Iain Banks shows us how in a limitless and needless world, the problems are very much the same. --- Okay, fine, maybe meaningful play is not all that much easier than meaningful work, but it IS easier. The question is whether that is due to others hacking your sense of aesthetics and undermining your free will and things like that. To be truly happy in consumption, you have to find a group of mutually serving people where everyone contributes some atom of meaning, but at that point it's probably possible to reorganize it into a commercial enterprise anyway. Point being, I sincerely believe the best things in life are free, or more than pay for themselves.