Has the world become too civilized?

Browsing the web this morning has given me that idea.  So, I will try to explain.

First of all, life in its simplest form means to satisfy the basics of survival- obtaining food and shelter.  In the earliest forms of human organization, people lived in small bands.  They lived off the land, but there was no farming.  Whatever was available is what sustained the population.  This mode of living characterized the way people lived for eons.  But that changed with the invention of agriculture.

Note that agriculture is an abstraction.  It describes the process of producing food by deliberate effort.  This is opposed to actually going out into an area and looking for whatever is there to eat.  So, the invention of agriculture was the first abstraction.  It enabled larger populations to organize themselves into societies, which is another abstraction.

Societies became more complex as they became more productive.  They tend to abstract out more and more functions.  Over time, people stopped doing their own farming and began working for other people for money.  Money itself is an abstraction.  You can't eat it, but you can use it to obtain the necessities of life.  Instead of hunting and gathering food, or growing your own, you now have to work for money in order to obtain these things.  Instead of food and shelter being a necessity of life, now money is.  It has been abstracted out this way, even though by itself, it has no real meaning.  After all, what is money?  It is merely a medium of exchange- an abstraction.

There are those who are known as Luddites, who oppose the trend towards labor saving devices.  These devices deprived them of their opportunity to earn money, which was now the way towards providing for themselves.   It is entirely understandable why this reaction occurred.  Having no other way to support oneself, what is one to do when some machine is now doing something that used to be what you needed to do in order to support yourself?

But the Luddites were largely unsuccessful in stopping the process of industrialization.  Societies were progressing to greater and greater abstraction.  Now we are to the point that one can visualize the possibility of human intelligent robots.  It may be cheaper to employ these robots than it is to hire human beings.  So what happens to the people who no longer have any means of supporting themselves?  That's the question that has occurred to me.  Where does all this end?  Where is all this abstraction taking us?  Is there a point where all the abstraction must come to an end?

Or perhaps another way of organizing people can be found.  Much of our modern politics seems to revolve around money.   What if money no longer means anything?  If the goods and services needed for life are so abundant, what is the need for money?

Perhaps you can't get around the need for money because there is always going to be a lack of something.  Therefore, the need to exchange between peoples for the things that are needed.  Naturally, there are going to be abundance in one area and scarcity in another.  Unless another way is found in order to deal with those types of situations, there's always going to be a need for money.

But it may not be as universal as it is now.

All of this assumes the course of humanity will continue on its present course.  The thing that may upset that is a revolution, which stops the current flow of events, and diverts it into another direction.  Or a war may happen, which could destroy the current order and replace it with another.

Has civilization reached a dead end?  Can there be a civilization which requires little or no money?  How would commerce exist?  How would people support themselves?  How would things get done?

These problems exist now, in my opinion, because of the problems with respect to money.  Many countries are now into printing money in order to pay for government.  But this can't solve any problems.  If it were that easy, we could all quit our jobs and have the government give us all the money we need for whatever we need.  Nobody would need to work anymore.  Everything in a sense, would be free.  But that contradicts Econ 101 which says, "there's no such thing as a free lunch".

New jobs, new industries need to be created.  In so doing, we may very well see another level of abstraction taking hold- and the process continues.  But whatever happens, something has got to give.