Originally published on LinkedIn on June 15, 2026
My parents must have purchased every Time Life book and series ever produced. As a child, I’d thumb through them and later used them when having to write a report for school.
One tome, The Epic of Man, depicted ancient civilizations, such as the Minoan and Mycenaean on the island of Crete. Between 2000 and 1400 B.C., they built palaces, produced exquisite works of art, devised plumbing, and sailed ships from Asia Minor and Africa to Sicily, and were depicted in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.
The eruption of the Thera volcano around 1600 BC, followed by other natural disasters, internal upheaval and conquerors resulted in the demise of the Minoans. But what happened to the Mayans, Anasazi, Incas, Phoenicians, and many other civilizations?
Even today, many tribes are becoming extinct, such as the Akuntzu in Brazil, Liv in Latvia, Nukak in Columbia, S’aoch in Cambodia, and Batak in the Philippines.
I was reminded of extinction when reading an article in TIME titled, The Most Disruptive Company in the World. The article is about Anthropic. The co-founder and CEO, Dario Amodei “warned that AI could displace half of entry-level white collar jobs in one to five years.” Theoretically, AI could make entire job categories obsolete.
People wouldn’t become extinct, but who they are and how they are classified could radically change, creating slews of the un- and marginally-employed in new Hoovervilles. The poverty rate in the U.S. is already 10.6% compressed off nearly 36 million people. To understand the size of that number, the population of California is 39.36 million.
Technology isn’t going to slow down. The question then becomes how to create meaningful work or occupation for millions of people? There are only so many service jobs and most don’t provide a living wage.
Do we create commune where no one gets paid, but everyone contributes to the common good, whether growing produce, cooking, or providing a professional service like teaching and healthcare?
As humans, do we have the ability to take a page from ancient civilizations, scale back our personal ambitions, and exist to better our communities through sharing, bartering, and volunteerism, ditching traditional paychecks in favor of collective ownership, egalitarianism, and communal work?
Note: All incomplete sentences, grammatical mishaps, and bizarre thought patterns were made by a human. The image was created by AI and turned out surprisingly idyllic, yet modern with solar panels on the barn.
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