A Philosophical Inquiry Into Whether Utopia Becomes a Trap of Boredom
Mythology is rife with lores of suffering that were rarely as simple as physical pain but rather existential. From, Prometheus the god of fire and forethought, enduring not just the eagle’s claws but the eternity of repetition , to King Tantalus , who thirsted not just for water but for a meaning; eternally denied and then Sisyphus , who strained endlessly against futility. The ancients understood that mankind’s torment was not merely physical; it was the confrontation with purposelessness. This insight, carried from myth into contextual philosophy, deserves a renewed reckoning in the age of longtermism. Where visions of humanity’s future rest on assumptions about pleasure, ease and meaning.
Jeremy Bentham once wrote in ,An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain, and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.”(Bentham, J. (1789/1907). If Bentham is right, then boredom is not a trivial inconvenience but a metaphysical danger. As Heidegger called it the stillness of existence (Heidegger, 1929/1995), a moment when meaning thins out, and the world ceases to grip us. The absence of suffering, after all, is not equivalent to the presence of value. Indeed, suffering often shields us from the abyss of boredom by lending urgency to life. Thus making boredom, in this sense, suffering’s quieter twin ; less visible, but equally corrosive. Subject matters of history , mythology and contextual philosophy in this regard , teaches us to be suspicious of the promise that progress will end suffering. As each wave of humanity’s advancement , from industrialization to electrification , to the rise of the internet ; was heralded as liberation. Yet suffering did not vanish; it morphed into new burdens of the likes of ,alienation, anxiety, and ennui. So to claim that the far future will end suffering is, at best, a hopeful myth. Therefore, if longtermism contends that the moral weight of humanity lies in the future, we must measure carefully what kind of lives we are multiplying.
Consider a crude guesstimation, suppose humanity endures for just another 100,000 more years, assuming a blink in evolutionary time. With a steady population of 10 billion, this amounts to one quadrillion future lives. If digital minds or post-human entities join the ledger, the number grows to astronomical scales. The stakes, then, are not rhetorical ; they are quantifiable. The following simple model helps illustrate the dilemma.
Let each life be assessed by a composite value metric:
U=wH⋅H+wM⋅M
Where;
- H is the hedonic score (pleasure),
- M the meaningfulness score, and
- Weights (w_H, w_M) reflect moral prioritization.
In a “present-like” world, assume
- H₀ = 0.70 (pleasures mixed with pain),
- M₀ = 0.50 (moderate meaning), and
- Weights tilted slightly toward meaning (w_H = 0.4, w_M = 0.6).
The per-life value then is U₀ = 0.58
Now imagine a hedonic-stasis future where pain nearly eliminated (Hs = 0.95), but meaning collapses (Ms = 0.05). The result is Us = 0.41. A loss of 0.17 per life.
If , scaled across 10¹⁵ lives (one quadrillion lives), this implies an aggregate shortfall of 1.7 × 10¹⁴ utility-units(ΔU).
Putting it differently, such a future would deliver only ~70.7% of the baseline moral value. And 0.58 to 0.41 , a 29.3% decline, not from extinction, but from comfort without meaning. Worse still, if moral weights tilts more heavily toward meaning (w_M = 0.8), the per-life value could collapse by ~57%- 60%. Meaning, the collapse of meaning in a hedonic stasis scenario drags down total value dramatically and even near-perfect pleasure cannot compensate when meaning is almost absent, leading to an overall decline of ~60% per life.
Hence, a world without struggle, then, risks becoming not a paradise, but a permanent drag on value. A welfare deficit on a cosmic scale.
Although this arithmetic does not prove that hedonic stasis will occur, but it demonstrates the moral value of the future is extremely sensitive. Where even a small change in assumptions about pleasure or meaning can scale up to astronomical consequences when projected over vast populations. Nick Bostrom, the renowned futurist and philosopher , argues a similar thought, that digital substrates could host far more beings than have ever lived (Bostrom, 2003; 2014). Even a modest per-life decline, when multiplied by populations rivalling the stars, then becomes morally catastrophic. This is not to suggest that suffering should be preserved for its own sake but what longtermism envisions as utopia may in practice be a mass production of meaninglessness. Or a structural planned obsolescence of human purpose.
I for one, agree that worry for ease of suffering and embrace of utilitarian impulse should be supported to eliminate suffering for all future beings . That is why mankind has made strides in neuro-engineering, AI-mediated life, and algorithmic pleasure ; and may one day erase every instance of pain for a quadrillion future lives. Nevertheless, technology, for all its promises, accelerates the paradox . Whereby, each leap forward removes the very frictions that once gave life shape. A relief from one form of suffering birthed newer burdens, creating the paradox of abundance ; translating more eliminated sufferings into more long-term boredom of life. In this sense, hedonic optimization risks becoming a condition of abundance that mutates into existential stagnation.
Thus, to believe that eliminating suffering alone will guarantee value for the future is to misunderstand suffering’s dialectical role in human flourishing. Suffering will not simply vanish, but will either transmute or leave behind a vacuum in which boredom festers. Altogether, the true moral duty of institutional or technological longtermism should not merely be to alleviate pain, but to preserve conditions for purpose, striving, and meaning. Otherwise, we may indeed grant our descendants an eternity; but one in which they have nothing worth living for.
@OlleHäggström #chapter15 #EssaysOnLongtermism @EssaysOnLongtermism #TheHingeofHistoryandtheChoicebetweenPatientandUrgentLongtermism
