...I started to make a big post about vampires and Star Trek and whatnot... but then I deleted all that and decided to cut through to the point.
People don't need a survival imperative to work. If you give everyone unlimited food, resources, and luxuries, they'll veg out and pig out and live it up... for a little while. Then they're going to start looking for something to do anyway. Something meaningful. Something worth doing. How many of you go to work at a job you don't even like, in order to pay the bills necessary to keep yourself and your dependents alive... when what you really want to be doing is to work on your art, or your poetry, or practice your music? How many of you watch the clock waiting to go home and coordinate activities with your Guild on your favorite MMORPG? Your job... if you don't like it, it could be because you have an unpleasant boss, or because you're underpaid... but it could be because the work itself is meaningless, failing to give you a sense of job satisfaction.
It's been found that people will actually work for LESS MONEY, if it means having a sense of job satisfaction, that their work has meaning. Teachers get paid a pittance in order to do something vitally important. Doctors spend over a decade trying to get the certification and training necessary to risk horrific lawsuits and living with the guilt of horrible screwups, just so they can wake up in the morning and know they're probably going to be saving someone's life or performing an act that will radically change that life for the better ("plastic surgeon" sounds like a caterer to narcissism until you think of expression like "reconstructive surgery"). At the end of the day, what a person wants is to matter, to know they made a difference. You don't "win" the game of life by dying with the most money; you win by making the most difference to the most people.
The necessity of work.
Re: The necessity of work.
I don't think we would need "work" ... but only because I think art, elaborate RPGs, and volunteerism would make up the slack.
The psychological drive is real; it's just that some people aren't looking far enough outside the box for other things that might satisfy it, so they understandably assume we need "work" in the current 9-to-5 salaried sense.
The psychological drive is real; it's just that some people aren't looking far enough outside the box for other things that might satisfy it, so they understandably assume we need "work" in the current 9-to-5 salaried sense.