In the Hot Seat

It's amazing how easy it is to feel uncomfortable in a place. The place might not even be the cause of the discomfort: maybe it's the people, maybe it's one's job, wanderlust, or a sense of unfulfilled desire. Maybe some just have misplaced notions of how great another place is in comparison to where the dreamer is now; after all, it's easy to imagine a paradise based on snippets of hand-picked bits of knowledge.
At the same time, the discomfort might be warranted. I haven't known a person (well, maybe a few) who was comfortable remaining in the same place for their entire lives, though perhaps that's just American/'western' culture. After all, we're continually told that the bird must leave the nest sometime. We've all got to spread our wings and fly, become 'adults,' whatever that may be.
My generation is entering the 'quarter-life crisis' phase, typically characterized by an uncertainty about what it is we're supposed to do now that we're no longer in school or living at home. There's a certain sense of ennui that befalls those of us not lucky enough to be born into wealth; wake up, go to work, come home, lather, rinse, repeat every day except for the weekends and Friday nights. Some of us will go out, try to have fun with the even more limited time we have, while others will do whatever it is that they enjoy. That might be writing a book, or simply doing nothing; really, though, is this a devolution?
I can't help but think that the utter necessity to earn an income to support oneself (which isn't as easy as it sounds, sadly enough) is a stagnant bit of garbage that has remained as the last vestige of the Industrial Revolution.
But, DF, people need to work in order for the economy to run!
Yeah, that is true. Without earned incomes, there aren't any taxes, thus lesser government income (unless they've got gas money, bling bling), thus fewer police and public works projects and general anarchy because government can't afford to do, well, anything. But at the same time, how much do most companies actually contribute to the mythos of humanity?
(I'm starting to sound preachy and acerbic. This might be the point at which you stop reading, close your browser, make a cuppa tea, and read the evening news. What comes after this has no statistical basis in fact, there are no numbers, no citations, so...beware, I guess.)
What do we consider as human knowledge? The creation of financial assets? Market trading? Graphic design? Social media development? Soap?
I suppose we'd have to get down to the base of what can constitute 'human knowledge'- that which would be learned by a new generation in a post-apocalyptic cataclysm. So, one day, everyone on Earth is gone in a poof, and a few million years roll by, and the octopi sucker up onto land and become the dominant species. They start using tools, living in groups, developing agriculture, city-states, maybe even war with other city-states, kings, magnates, dictators, democracy, plagues, religion, etc. Maybe they'll have a god with a million tentacles.
The point is, what would they learn as the dominant species, supposing that all of human knowledge, all books, internet knowledge, disappeared forever?
The obvious answer is, first, science. No matter what, science will be true, whether it's biology, astronomy, etc. The laws are there for discovery, and no doubt, the great octopus philosopher Octomedes will be the first to discover that all heavenly bodies move in a rigid pattern.
But what else is there? Would they develop concepts of money? Or even of religion? Or how to code in CSS?
This comes back to my original point: how much of what we do in life actually impacts the gross sum of human experience? Will anyone in 1000 years care whether or not Goldman Sachs made a record profit last quarter? (I hope not, but this is assuming that Goldman Sachs doesn't engage in a monopolistic autocratic rule of the planet.)
So... I actually don't have a point. Never mind.