In Praise of Meaninglessness

Inspired by Zhi Xing Tavern E232, “A Conversation with Yan Yijia: Us and the Capitalism Within Us”.

Lately, I have noticed that I am becoming less and less able to tolerate waiting.

When I get stuck at work, I instinctively open ChatGPT. When something unsettles me in daily life, I often talk to AI first.

It is always online. Always replies instantly. Always tireless.

Sometimes I even feel that, compared with real people, AI is more stable, more gentle, and easier to be with.

Then I listened to an episode of Zhi Xing Tavern called “Us and the Capitalism Within Us.”

I suddenly realized that perhaps the deepest impact of AI is not an efficiency revolution.

It is that AI is slowly changing how we relate to others, and how we understand ourselves.

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The episode brought up a fascinating idea: a “one-person relationship.”

When a baby is hungry, it cries. It does not ask:

• whether its mother is tired,
• whether she is in a bad mood,
• whether she is busy with something else.

In the baby’s world, everything revolves around “me.”

And in a certain sense, AI is now offering us an almost perfect one-person relationship.

You can ask a question at any time. It will answer at any time.

It does not get impatient. It does not misunderstand you. It does not suddenly become emotional. It does not pull away because it is having a bad day.

You do not even have to consider its feelings.

This kind of relationship is dangerous. It is also deeply seductive.

Because relationships in the real world have never worked this way.

Real people:

• fall silent
• misunderstand
• get tired
• reply late
• lose control of their emotions

Real relationships are full of mismatch.

But one line from the episode stayed with me:

What is truly precious between people is not natural alignment, but the ability to repair a relationship after mismatch.

AI does not need relationship repair.

Because it almost never truly hurts you.

But the most important capacities in human relationships come precisely from waiting, misunderstanding, adjustment, and repair.

I started to realize that perhaps what AI weakens is not our ability to work.

It weakens our ability to tolerate imperfect relationships.

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In the past few years, “self-growth” has almost become a new faith of our time.

We keep optimizing ourselves:

• improving efficiency
• managing emotions
• learning new skills
• building personal brands
• creating content
• increasing productivity

Everything begins to pursue the same direction: faster, stronger, more valuable.

Another phrase from the episode has stayed with me for a long time: “internalized capitalism.”

It does not refer to an external economic system.

It means that capitalism has moved into our bodies.

So much of the time, we are not really living.

We are developing ourselves.

It is as if there is an endlessly dissatisfied boss living inside us.

It keeps asking:

• Can this be more efficient?
• Can this be optimized further?
• Can you grow a little more?
• Can this experience be turned into value?

Even emotions, loneliness, anxiety, and heartbreak immediately trigger the same reflex:

“Can this become content?”

“Can this be turned into output?”

“Can this be monetized?”

Modern people increasingly resemble a “project.”

An endlessly optimized product.

We have become used to treating ourselves as:

• oil fields
• resources
• data
• things to be developed

Rather than as human beings.

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Perhaps this is why I have become more and more drawn to inefficient things.

Things like:

• pottery
• markets
• handmade objects
• wandering through a wet market
• walking
• cooking
• talking aimlessly with friends

They are all so “meaningless.”

They do not improve KPIs. They do not produce a growth curve. They do not optimize one’s life.

Often, they leave nothing behind at all.

But these are precisely the moments that make me feel again that I am not a system.

Not a product waiting to be optimized. Not a project that is never allowed to stop.

But a real, living person.

I am slowly beginning to understand why more and more people are drawn again to:

• the handmade
• offline spaces
• bodily experience
• slowness
• empty space
• meaninglessness

Because these things cannot be accelerated.

They naturally resist the logic of efficiency.

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Our generation is far too used to making everything “valuable.”

Even rest is often treated as nothing more than a way to work more efficiently afterward.

But perhaps the real question is:

If one day we lose:

• the ability to wait
• the ability to adjust to other people
• the ability to feel our bodies
• the ability to do meaningless things

What will we have left?

Perhaps the real question is not whether AI will replace human beings.

It is whether, as the world becomes faster, more efficient, and more optimizable, we can still preserve certain things:

meaninglessness, slowness, the body, waiting, and those imperfect moments between people.

Because perhaps it is precisely these things that still make us human.