Kafka's letters in a world where robots have replaced humans in workplaces.
Kafka in a Kafkaesque World
Dear reader,
This week has been relatively peaceful for me. I have had enough time to think and write—and to watch a movie/or a series occasionally. As you have read from the title, I wrote two essays this week.
One is related to a recently read book, Kafka’s Letters to Milena. And another is regarding an intuition about a society where no jobs are left for humans. The first one, by the virtue of it coming from Kafka, was sad yet heart-warming. The second, due to the topic at hand, is a bleak depiction of the world we would be in if we didn’t think hard.
About the first:
Reading Franz Kafka is always exciting—a term that does not suffice enough how dull a world the writer tends to create around. In his famous work Metamorphosis, Kafka thought of how Gregor Samsa had turned into a giant creature which could barely reconcile with its new avatar.
A Kafkaesque world is no joke.
But reading Kafka is easy. He writes well. Like excellent writers, he does not expect his readers to pick up a dictionary—and look up every other odd word in a sentence. Some writers write difficult. They use way too complex words. The word “speak” does not suffice for them; they would use “converse”.
But Kafka, no, he is not one such. His writing has a certain elegance that only the poets carry. The book Kafka’s Letters to Milena captures Kafka in his best of times and worst of times—all in his letters to his love interest, Milena.
Here is my essay about Kafka’s love letters to Milena.
Of all his letters, one which has been circulated often across social media is this:
Dear Frau Milena,
I wish the world were ending tomorrow. Then I could take the next train, arrive at your doorstep in Vienna, and say: ‘Come with me, Milena. We are going to love each other without scruples or fear or restraint. Because the world is ending tomorrow.’ Perhaps we don’t love unreasonably because we think we have time, or have to reckon with time. But what if we don’t have time? Or what if time, as we know it, is irrelevant? Ah, if only the world were ending tomorrow. We could help each other very much.
(Letters to Milena, Schocken Books, 1952)
Here is another one:
In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence, and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.
A final one, for now:
Sleep is the most innocent creature there is, and a sleepless man
the most guilty.
Apart from this essay, I hope you will quite enjoy these essays as well :)
Here is an essay on what it is like to Immanuel Kant?
There is another one about reading a book Virginia Woolf-style.

Now, about the second:
For a while now, I have thought of the importance of work. Why should humans work in a society? I have come up with answers regarding our social conditioning, which is such that we cannot survive without it—and, of course, for other obvious reasons such as money and livelihood. None of these have often quite satisfied me as sufficient explanations for why we should work.
Most of what we end up doing is not something we like. Most of us would choose to do different things passionately if given an opportunity. We are often made to do things because there is a demand for them in society. But we still work—and as a result, sometimes, even spend very little time with our family and friends. This cannot be healthy at times. Perhaps it is a capitalist tendency to think of work as a paramount condition of human life. I don't know.
The issue is whether or not AI will replace all of our work tomorrow; it is much more perverse. It entails fundamental questions of who controls these machines. Who does it tend to benefit? And if an ordinary individual does not work tomorrow because a machine elsewhere has taken over their job, how do they make their livelihood?
Now, if we substitute work—and each of us gets paid a certain sum of money to consume and spend time with our family and friends, travel, and do things as we like- do we take it? My sense is we would.
What if the world, after AI/robots take over all jobs, could lead to such a utopian future? This, again, is doubtful. It is still impossible to tell if robots could replace humans in all jobs.
Despite that, read my latest essay on what it is like to live in a world where robots have taken all our jobs.
How does it feel?
Do share your thoughts on these two — and tell me what you think about a world without work/jobs :)