Every time a story is like “this enlightened civilization solved war, scarcity, and disease but doing so only made life boring and meaningless because you need Suffering for anything to be worthwhile” I just wonder how they even made it that far with seemingly not even a concept of games or simulated conflict in general.
Especially bad when this is a civilization so advanced and utopian that they could conceivably rewire their own brain chemistry to just not have those sorts of needs in the first place.
It’s so weird when you think about it, isn’t it? “A world without struggle has no satisfaction” is probably fair enough, but why does the struggle need to have such high stakes? Why would anyone need to suffer and die for real for it to mean something?
Empirically people are perfectly content to challenge themselves through things that will have no major negative consequences for failure, and it seems reasonable to believe this would continue to be the case if all the problems in their personal life were solved.
It kind of reminds me of the trope of the rich character who is bored and dissatisfied with life and tries to make it into a thing about how money doesn’t buy happiness but really they just clearly have no hobbies or interests and don’t know how to entertain themselves beyond just buying even more positional goods.
“this society has it too easy and is culturally degenerated as a result” is also a fascist/reactionary trope