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After Work: The Human Question When Survival Ends
Paperback
Series: Cognitive Advantage
PhilosophyGeneral SociologySocial Movements
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Publisher: Axial Press
Published: Feb 8 2026
Pages: 158
Weight: 0.42
Height: 0.34 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
For most of human history, survival imposed structure. Work aligned effort with outcome and gave human life a sense of direction.
That structure is dissolving.
As abundance and automation reduce the necessity of continuous labor, a new condition is emerging-one in which effort no longer explains outcome, motivation no longer arises automatically, and freedom from survival pressure produces anxiety and drift rather than fulfillment.
In After Work: The Human Question When Survival Ends, Caspian Lux offers a rigorous diagnostic examination of life after work. Drawing on philosophy, psychology, sociology, and economics, the book investigates what happens to meaning, identity, and motivation when survival no longer organizes daily life.
This is not a guide to productivity or a manifesto for automation. It offers no solutions and no utopia. It names a condition many already inhabit but struggle to understand-and asks a simple, unsettling question:
What comes after work?
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