Your Grandkids Will Live in a Charismocracy

What, then, might the “standard of life” look like in the most advanced countries a century from now?

I am not convinced that our grandchildren will work less than we do—or at least, as Keynes imagined of 2026, that they will work hardly at all. If the past century has taught us anything, it is that human beings, by nature, are hustlers. Leisure does not sit lightly with us. We are far more inclined to the habitués of Davos than an assembly of beach bums. Even in a world of plenty, we need things to do, not because of some romantic commitment to creation (sorry, Marx) or because work gives our lives meaning, but because, much like a peacock fanning its feathers, we long to make ourselves known, to stand out.

Distinction can come in many forms, of course. Throughout most of human history, men distinguished themselves by having a strong back. Digging trenches, hauling wheat, swinging an ax (whether in the forest or on a battlefield)—all of these tasks, done repeatedly and well, helped to allocate whatever modest distinction might be available.

One of the hallmarks of the modern world, however, has been the complete and total triumph of brains over brawn. We live in the age of the intellect. For nearly two centuries now, brainpower has supported commercial and technological development as well as the rise of those complex organizations—global companies, grand universities, sprawling agencies—that represent the pinnacle of human achievement. Skills of engineering, complex accounting, and critical analysis have been essential to building our civilized world, and society has rewarded feats of mental dexterity, imagination, and stamina accordingly. These athletes of the mind have won places of honor as well as pecuniary recompense, and for more than a century now, those who long to distinguish themselves have been best advised to keep busy not with tests of sinew but skull.

But what about a century hence? My own hunch is that the age of the intellect will fall into eclipse. Brains will still matter somewhat in organizing the hierarchy of human distinction, but not nearly as much as they once did.

Why might this be the case? In a world where machine learning and AI will be able to do almost every feat the human brain can do, merely 10 times better and a hundred times faster, having a great brain will look very much like having a strong back in a world where machines do all the heavy lifting. The need to constantly exert oneself intellectually will become totally unnecessary. Like the man who does dumbbell curls until his muscles bulge with veiny distension, such incessant exertion of the mind will seem less like a prudentially minded commitment than a strange pathology or narcissistic kink.

I mean, think about it: Why spend so much time trying to develop critical reading skills or write code or communicate complex ideas when technology can do all of these things at lightning speed? Yes, there may still be something to be said for developing these abilities in an elementary fashion, much in the same way we learn our multiplication tables before forgetting that skill in favor of a calculator, but allocating inordinate time to any of these tasks will make you seem like the man who swears off using a washing machine in favor of scrubbing his own drawers, a stubborn and somewhat obtuse commitment that, rather than appearing quaint, will seem simply nutty.

Does that mean intellectual accomplishment will no longer have any place of honor in society? I wouldn’t go that far, but I suspect that, if society disproportionately honors brain power in 2126, it will be in much the same way that we prize feats of brawn today.

That is, in the realms of competition and gamesmanship.

In our modern world, elite professional athletes are showered with money and fame not because what they do on the court or the track cannot be outmatched by machines—Boston Robotics could field a defensive line that would steamroll the Green Bay Packers—but because athletic competition is, by its very nature, a human activity. This distinguishes it from other things we consume and enjoy. When it comes to corn on the cob, for instance, it matters not to us whether it is picked by a harvester or human hands, but watching a bunch of machines mindlessly orbit a track simply isn’t the same thing as cheering on an elite pack of runners.

The same may be said for contests of the mind. There are already some competitions we enjoy watching, such as quiz shows or chess tournaments, where the fact that computers can outclass humans doesn’t take anything away from our enjoyment, and I can’t imagine that circumstances will be any different a hundred years hence. There will still be public spectacles that elevate a group of intellectual athletes who will enjoy a considerable amount of money and esteem by virtue of their accomplishments. And yet, insofar as a chess champion like Magnus Carlsen doesn’t enjoy a tenth of the riches or name recognition of a Tom Brady or a Serena Williams, it seems hard to imagine that athletes of the mind will ever occupy a place in society like that of a Super Bowl–winning quarterback or a Grand Slam tennis champion. Yes, battles of the brain can certainly pique our interest, but they have nothing of the vivid stakes and high drama of physical competitions. We thrill at the sight of people putting their bodies on the line to do something with a degree of strength and finesse that we can barely imagine, but a middle-aged man hunched over a chessboard agonizing over knight to b7 will never send a tingle down our spine.

The rise of a charismocracy

The special claim of the visual in athletic competitions is worth lingering over, for I actually think it points to how our grandchildren will spend much of their time a century from now: engaged in a struggle for charismatic excellence.

Few people can ever hope to win the Stanley Cup or set the home-run record, but we can all invest time, money, and energy into the kinds of activities and displays that make us more likable and compelling. Moreover, success in such endeavors makes for another type of competitive activity that one cannot imagine technology ever entirely displacing: the struggle to be liked, admired, and influential.

We already see the augury of charismatic aspiration in the rise of influencer culture, especially among young Americans. In 2023, a Morning Consult poll found that 57 percent of Gen Z, or those born between 1997 and 2012, said they would become an influencer if they had the opportunity. If we look ahead to a world where everyone will have fewer material cares and where routes of meritocratic distinction familiar to the age of the intellect will have drastically narrowed or even collapsed, we can imagine that the grandchildren of Gen Z will even more widely embrace ways of influencing others by investing in wit, beauty, charm, and a kind of pop cultural savoir faire.

That won’t be all. The leisure economy—which already affords us an assortment of food, entertainment, and services that would make a medieval warlord blush—will explode, not only to cater to every eccentricity and whim but also to give everyone an opportunity to distinguish themselves. Rather than remain as a pastime of the wealthy elite, conspicuous consumption will be democratized. Everyone will be able to spend their days curating choices not principally for material comfort but to communicate their style, their values, and, of course, their assumed superiority.

Still, carefully choosing the proper feathers to flutter and shake will not be enough for those who succeed us. Charisma cannot exist in a closet. It burns most brightly when it’s busy blinding others. With social media, everyone already owns a pocket megaphone, and in the years to come, one can expect that information technology will only continue to provide new and better ways to communicate with the world around us. Our grandchildren will inevitably spend their days pondering new and clever ways of broadcasting themselves to others—their feelings, their experiences, their rituals of consumption. They will adopt all the talents of a movie crew (cameraman, makeup artist, costumer) as they make themselves the stars of their own never-ending productions.

Already, this competition for charismatic excellence is evident in a world teeming with “content,” and not merely among those who style themselves as influencers. If you consider three of the wealthiest people in the world today—Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg—it is clear that reaching the very top of the traditional meritocratic heap is not enough for them. They have all taken great pains to transform the impression that they might be nerdy, awkward, and dull by changing their dress and adopting popular customs. And in the case of Musk and Zuckerberg, in particular, both men spend breathtaking amounts of time communicating their views on all manner of things—video games, politics, Brazilian jiujitsu—to a far wider audience than a tiny circle of Palo Alto intimates.

If their behavior makes anything clear, it is not that all the money in the world isn’t enough for them, but that money itself isn’t what they truly care about. They care about being the center of attention. They have turned their sights to scaling the heights of the charismocracy.

The beautiful and the dumb

For those who despair that this vision of the future is somewhat like a neon light—garish, bright, and empty—it may be useful to reread Keynes’s dictum with the sentence that precedes it, wherein he wags his finger at those economists who elevate the possibilities of a distant tomorrow over the pressing needs of today: “This long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.”

Keynes seems to be making two points here, both cautionary. On the one hand, all prophecies live somewhere on a continuum between chutzpah and hokum. It is impossible to know exactly what the future holds, especially the distant future. At the same time, the future is hardly static. It doesn’t determine us. We determine it.

Peering into a distant future nearly a century ago, Keynes wondered whether we would meet the central challenge of an impossibly affluent world: how “to live wisely and agreeably and well.” Insofar as we seem to have fallen short in each of these respects, I suspect the present state of affairs would disappoint him. He would conclude that we had squandered the collective opportunity for comity and cultural enrichment in favor of overconsumption, sharp-elbowed status striving, and a religion of overwork. What a loss, he would feel. What a waste.

But the future remains unwritten, and we, as ever, remain its authors. The emollients of abundance will continue to make our lives longer and more pleasant, and the choices for how we spend our time will only multiply. We will have every opportunity to make an art of living, so it will be our fault if, in a collective scramble for charismatic excellence, we settle for a world that is supremely beautiful and exceedingly dumb.

John Paul Rollert is adjunct associate professor of behavioral science at Chicago Booth.