Abundance and Meaning: The Crisis Automation Cannot Solve

Economic automation and AI may soon produce abundance sufficient to meet basic human needs without traditional labor. This essay argues that material abundance, while necessary, cannot by itself generate meaning—and that collapse of the scarcity-work-dignity loop will expose the meaning crisis that physicalism has always struggled to address. Part of the Return to Consciousness research program—18 philosophical essays exploring consciousness-first metaphysics. Full project: https://brunoton.github.io/return-to-consciousness/