Learning as a meaning and value of human life – in the AI era and beyond the “money machine”
- Yora ATANASOVA
- Oct 3
- 4 min read
A futuristic attempt
(The Bulgarian original was published on 26th September 2025)
Learning beyond globalism in the AI era will be learning of “just-people” ceased to be “human resources”; it will be as different from today’s education as societies and communities will differ from today's ones. That learning will not probably be managed by specialised institutions, since there will be neither (concentrated) resources for that nor point to do it However, just-learning will employ some never technologies and tools, with AI among them. The latter may be obtained in the exchange between the two society types: just-people communities and the global hyper-society. However, just-people may themselves find ways to develop information technologies ecologically, non-industrially and without physical concentration of huge resources. As the futurist Alvin Toffler envisaged in his "The Third Wave"book, the technological development would reach a point where goods and services are personalised, tailor-made. At the moment his predictions may appear wrong, however we could well be experiencing a violent transition period towards what he described. The power of the atom also, before its peaceful application in nuclear power plants, was used for the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Here we come to the question of which of the society-technology pair is leading in evolution: whether the development of technology or of society, or perhaps they both lead, in shifts.
1 A Brief Look Back in Time
Industrial capitalism, the "industrial steam engine", is approaching 5 centuries and is now global - sometimes accepted voluntarily, somewhere imposed by force. In the 1940s, Erich Fromm wrote:
"Instead of being independent masters of our lives, we became “cogs in the bureaucratic machine,. Our thoughts, feelings, and tastes are manipulated by government and industry."
“Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines.".
Earlier, in 1893, Aleko Konstantinov quoted in his "To Chicago and Back" travelogue the Serbian emigrant Nedelkovich that "money is queen" and that money can buy everything and everyone.
At some point of the "money machine" development (1833 , the philanthropist Robert Owen) a humane trend appeared in industry to take better care of the cogs - people, either out of humanism or to increase productivity. In 1917, an entire huge country revolutionaryly turned this humane trend into a state credo, but it failed about 70 years later.
At the beginning of the 21st century, artificial intelligence (AI) and robots increasingly seem like a more efficient alternative to people for the cog job in the “money machine”; the trend is of people replacement and displacement, including latters' value for the industrial society.
After the primitive people and communities, society development has been taking over the individual needs satisfaction: first social hierarchy mediated it (with concentration and distribution), then technology joined it The social hierarchy has swelled and expanded tremendously, covering new territories and resources, up to nowadays' global scale, seemingly aiming to cosmosise and become universal. Technologies have faithfully served those purposes, redefining them at the same time. Actually, technology has been tied to social hierarchy since its inception, based on concentration and accumulation of financial resources as an effect of industrial development, production growth and the corresponding added value. Although, parenthetically speaking, history shows that decentralisation gives more than centralization and totalitarianism in every respect except for the vanity of the social pyramid/a tops as well as the narrow-minded interests of those who serve them.
2 The true meaning and value of man
Even as a cog in the machine and as “human resources”, men, their life and well-being had some value for the social engines of the industrial money machine, so they would care for each component to ensure it worked for them well enough. However, mechanical “cogs" and electronic ones seem to be increasingly erasing this human value thus making the common man's life seem meaningless. Ordinary people are seemingly becoming a burden in this new world with the potential of stirring up troubles and headaches for which solutions must be sought, proactively.
The human perspective is fundamentally different. Artificial intelligence (AI) and robo-alternatives are only displacing people from their role as cogs and production resources; the value and meaning of man’s existence as a living being and God’s creation, as any other one on this earth and the universe, not only remain intact but perhaps increase. Homo Sapiens is part of the great resource of life and universal intelligence, and a bearer of the Spark of God I in both aspects, individual and as members of community with collective consciousness.
3 Learning as the meaning OF and FOR human life
Learning for pleasure and self-development may be the new meaning OF life for many people who, in the age of AI and robotics, will likely find themselves marginalised in the global society and doomed to live on devolutionary handouts such as "guaranteed basic income".
On the other hand, just-learning (self-determined learning) will be of vital importance FOR eco-people - those who, by choice or by necessity, will have to experience and literally survive through direct interaction with nature, in eco-symbiosis with their specific ecosystems of the eco-commensal type (with benefit for man and with no harm to nature).
In this eco-case, just-learning will be learning in its primordial, primary form, as it was in prehistory and in pre-hierarchical communities at least ten thousand years back in time.
This learning will be situated, that is, in a specific context, situation and environment, as well as either active or social according to the situation; and it will always be practical.
There will be neither concentrated resources nor need for hierarchical educational systems and institutions anyway...
Let us conclude with the big HOWEVER. If and alternatives to the current both social development and survive, despite global totalitarian tendencies, the refocus on hierarchy and industrial growth and the neglect of the dependence of Homo Sapiens on the living natural environment.
In conclusion - the big BUT. This may happen if both mankind and social development and evolution alternatives survive, despite the global totalitarian tendencies, despite the excessive focus on hierarchy and industrial growth, and despite the neglect of Homo Sapiens dependence on the living natural environment.
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