The End of Need

There’s a strange comfort in being needed.

It anchors you. Even the smallest act… feeding a dog, answering a message, helping someone find their way… ties you to the fabric of life. It says, you matter.

But lately, I’ve wondered if we’re heading towards a quiet apocalypse… not one of fire or famine, but of irrelevance. A world that no longer needs us.

AI will get the blame, of course.

And fair enough… It’s already writing, drawing, composing, analysing, predicting, even pretending to care. But I don’t think the real story is about machines replacing us. It’s about us replacing ourselves… with convenience, with automation, with anything that dulls the rough edges of being human.

We’ve spent centuries building technology to make life easier. And now, life has become so easy it’s started to feel optional.

We no longer need to hunt, to fix, to remember, to wait.

We no longer need to argue to understand one another… we just scroll until we find someone who already agrees.

We no longer need to make art from our own pain… we can just ask a prompt to simulate the feeling.

And yet… something’s missing.

That raw friction that gave our existence texture… the blisters, the misunderstandings, the long silences that turned into laughter… It’s slipping away.

AI might one day stop needing us to survive.

But long before that, I think humans will stop needing each other.

The irony is, the more “connected” we become, the lonelier the world feels. We’ve built a civilisation so efficient it’s starting to erase its own purpose.

Maybe the future won’t be decided by who controls the technology… but by who refuses to give up their humanity. Who still insists on writing messy sentences with trembling hands. Who still cries at something unquantifiable?

Who still looks at another person and sees something worth protecting, not replacing.

Because “need” is not a weakness.

It’s the last proof that we’re still alive.

Until Next Time