Work, Order, Alienation, and Artificial Intelligence. On the Foundation of Order in Human Existence and Its Loss in Modern Work.

Suppose everyone is guaranteed full material well-being, with no need to work for a livelihood or depend on wages. Would people stop working? If work is defined as salaried employment, much of it might disappear. However, if work is seen as a purposeful action that changes the world, it is unlikely we would abandon it. Before seeking meaning, people create order.

Creating order is fundamental to human consciousness. Meaning is not the starting point but the result. Interpretation becomes possible only when particulars connect to a whole, when multiplicity gains form, and when components are arranged by organising principles. Order is the relationship between the particular and the general. Human thought is grounded in perceiving the whole and organising multiplicity. We identify patterns, group particulars, formulate laws, and construct structures. This forms the basis of perception and cognition.

A child learning to recognise a tree connects specific features to a general category, not just a random collection of colours and shapes. A scientist seeks laws that unify phenomena, and an architect organises space according to principles. In each case, particulars are connected to a whole.

Work, broadly defined, is a primary way people actualise this capacity in the material and social world. Through work, we organise matter, time, knowledge, and relationships. A carpenter shapes wood into a table, a farmer organises the agricultural cycle, a programmer builds systems from code, and a manager structures people and tasks. Each action connects particulars to a general structure.

Work is not only an external transformation; it also creates position. By ordering the world, a person defines their place within it. Builders, teachers, and caregivers each find their roles through their actions. Creating order in the world also shapes the relationship between self and environment. People do not merely exist; they are situated.

Here, another dimension of work becomes clear. Purposeful action strives toward its end. It is directed toward a product. The process is a means. Often it involves effort, repetition, and resistance from matter and reality. “By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread” expresses the recognition that the process itself may be a necessary suffering. Fulfilment lies at the end, in attainment. When the carpenter looks at the finished table, when the farmer sees his harvest, when the architect stands before the building she designed, the process receives form retrospectively. The suffering is unified with the structure that has emerged.

However, the modern world has fundamentally altered these conditions. The division of labour and extreme specialisation in the modern world have fundamentally changed these conditions. Division of labour and extreme specialisation have fragmented work into small units, distancing the product from the producer. Individuals often handle tasks that do not reflect the whole, such as writing code without seeing the full system, inputting data without context, or performing industrial tasks without seeing the final product. Structures have become overly complex, global, and fragmented. becomes foreign to it. When work, which was meant to be a sphere of creating order and position, no longer allows the individual to see the connection between the particulars of his activity and the whole, it becomes foreign. The person acts but does not recognise himself in the product. He is part of a mechanism whose form he does not see. Thus, alienation from work emerges.

But alienation does not stop there. If work is one of the central spheres in which a person situates himself in the world, then when this connection disintegrates, alienation from the self expands as well. The self is built through participation in coherent structures. When a person does not recognise himself within the structure he sustains, his identity becomes functional. He fills a role but does not experience ownership of it. He acts but does not experience himself as a creator.

In such a condition, the process remains suffering without attainment. Work becomes a necessary evil whose sole purpose is wages. In this situation, the process remains suffering without fulfilment. Work becomes a necessary evil, focused only on earning wages. Money replaces the product as the goal, but money is abstract and does not provide a structure for self-recognition. Work becomes a means to obtain another means, and the connection between action and a meaningful whole disappears, leaving labour empty. Not of alienation, because the product is not visible to its creator, and the structures within which he operates are too complex for him to perceive the whole. Work processes, as they are currently built, turn suffering into a structural component rather than an incidental one. Not because work is inherently negative, but because the connection between the particular and the general has been severed.

Within this situation, artificial intelligence appears. At first glance, it seems to be the culmination of this very process. Vast computational models operate in the background, algorithms make decisions, and automated systems replace human judgment. It seems that the whole recedes even further from human perception, and the human being becomes a data point within a system he does not understand. In this sense, artificial intelligence may deepen alienation.

Yet another possibility exists.

If the structural problem of modern work is that systems have become too complex for direct human comprehension, artificial intelligence may serve as a mediating mechanism. Not as a replacement for the human being, but as a tool that can map complexity, reveal relationships, and make hidden structures visible. It can show how local action integrates into a broader process, how a specific decision affects an overall structure, and how parts combine into a whole.

If artificial intelligence takes over repetitive and computational tasks, people may shift from executing fragments to organising and understanding structures. Instead of performing isolated tasks, individuals can focus on shaping systems and making value-based decisions. In this way, artificial intelligence could either deepen or reduce alienation.

The outcome depends on how we design work systems. If technology only accelerates economic optimisation and increases fragmentation, it will reinforce the divide between particular and general. However, if it is developed to reveal structures and restore the perception of the whole, it can return work to its role as a source of order and position.

The human being is a creature who exists through the creation of order. The foundation of human thought lies in perceiving the whole and organising particulars in light of it. When work no longer allows the individual to see the whole, it acts against this foundation and generates alienation. The question is not whether we will continue to work, but how we will reconstruct the conditions of work so that human beings may once again see the order they create and recognise their place within it.