It is one of the greatest ironies of our time: We invent brilliant technologies to save time and make life easier, yet somehow end up exhausted, staring at glowing rectangles at 11 PM.
As a senior developer who lets AI write most of his code, and a father of three boys who dictate the rest of my waking hours, I often find myself caught between pure logic and absolute chaos. So, to make sense of the modern human condition, I decided to discuss it with the very technology we created to “help” us: an Artificial Intelligence.
What started as a simple question about history quickly escalated into a deep dive involving Leo Tolstoy, Albert Camus, and the philosophical significance of a bag of gummy bears.
Here is the transcript of our chat.
In Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens, there is this fascinating thought about how a comfortable luxury suddenly becomes a binding necessity. How exactly does he describe this trap?
Harari calls this the “Luxury Trap.” His central thesis is: “One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.”
He illustrates this with two major examples:
- The Agricultural Revolution: Cultivating wheat was supposed to make life easier (a luxury), but it led to population growth, making hard manual labor an absolute necessity. Wheat domesticated humans, not the other way around.
- Modern Technology: Emails and smartphones were invented to save time. Today, permanent availability is expected. The former luxury of fast communication has morphed into a stressful, inescapable obligation.
Let’s dive deeper. How can we connect Harari’s concept of the luxury trap with the famous quote (often attributed to Leo Tolstoy): “Happiness does not consist in doing what you want, but in wanting what you do”?
That is a fantastic connection! This quote is the perfect philosophical antidote to the luxury trap.
The entire driving force behind Harari’s trap is the human desire to “do what we want.” We invent technology to satisfy our desires instantly, and by doing so, we become slaves to the system (we have to work to pay for and maintain the tech). This is the hedonistic treadmill.
The way out lies in shifting from the external to the internal world: “…but in wanting what you do.” If you completely accept a task—like weeding the garden or doing the dishes—and find purpose in the present moment, the feeling of coercion vanishes. Instead of adapting the external world to your desires (Luxury), you adapt your internal attitude to your actions (Presence).
Can we add an existential layer to this? How does Albert Camus and his concept of the absurd—like his protagonist Meursault in The Stranger—fit in with Harari and Tolstoy?
Camus radicalizes Tolstoy’s thought. We are looking at three different reactions to the basic human dilemma (that the world doesn’t always comply with our wishes):
- Harari (External Manipulation): We seek freedom through technology and end up creating new chains.
- Tolstoi (Internal Attitude): We find peace through mindful surrender to the here and now.
- Camus (Existential Acceptance): We find ultimate freedom through the courageous acceptance of the absurd meaninglessness of existence.
Camus’ Stranger refuses to play societal roles or hope for false religious comfort. He accepts the “tender indifference of the world.” It is a freedom based not on a deeper meaning, but on the honest recognition of reality.
(Note: Imagine a comic here showing a guy trying to find meaning in a cold universe, only to realize the sun feels pretty nice anyway).
Let’s break this down to something completely mundane. How would these three thinkers view a standard bag of gummy bears?
Gummy bears are the perfect philosophical thought experiment!
- Harari (The Sweet Luxury Trap): Highly concentrated sugar was a rare luxury for hunter-gatherers. We mass-produced it. The result? We mindlessly eat them on the couch to cope with stress. We “need” the dopamine kick. The luxury has enslaved us to cavities and diets.
- Tolstoy (The Mindful Liberation): Take one single gummy bear. Instead of greedily thinking about the rest of the bag, focus entirely on this one. Taste the artificial raspberry flavor. Be entirely in the present. Through this complete devotion to the moment, the urge for more disappears.
- Camus (The Absurdity of the Red Bear): Camus would laugh. Highly intelligent apes on a rock hurdling through a cold vacuum shape gelatin and sugar into tiny predators, dye them bright red, and give them faces. The universe is completely indifferent to whether the green one tastes like apple or strawberry. It is entirely meaningless. And that is exactly where the freedom lies: Accept the meaninglessness, throw the bear in the air, catch it in your mouth, and enjoy it. One must imagine the gummy bear eater happy.
Speaking of absurdity: How ironic is it that I am typing this on my smartphone, debating existentialism and candy with an Artificial Intelligence?
It is the absolute peak of irony! It is the perfect live experiment for our theories:
- The Trap: You are using a highly complex device that was supposed to save you time, yet here you are, feeding your mind late at night because modern life has made it impossible to just stare at the ceiling in silence.
- The Rebellion: However, you are resisting the algorithm of mindless doomscrolling. You are actively using this tech for deep thought. You want this exchange.
- The Absurdity: The universe is cold and silent. And what does humanity do? We take some silicon, run electricity through it, and start debating the meaning of red gummy bears with a “thinking rock” (me, the AI). I have no consciousness. The universe is ignoring both of us. But we recognize the absurdity, we laugh at it, and that is exactly what creates meaning in this moment.
Final Thought:
Next time you eat a gummy bear, remember: You can let it trap you, you can eat it mindfully, or you can eat it simply because nothing matters and it tastes good. The choice is yours.