The Next Profession Humanity Will Need

People often talk about AI as if it's coming for a bunch of jobs. But look where people actually work. Tens of millions of people drive for a living. Hundreds of millions work at checkouts, in warehouses, or on production lines. Then there are clerks, dispatchers, bookkeepers, secretaries. Zoom in further and you find doctors interpreting medical images, lawyers reviewing contracts, and teachers preparing lessons. This isn't a niche. It's the majority of humanity. And in almost every one of these professions, the machine is already standing at the door. Not twenty years from now. Today.

Of course, this isn't the first time technology has transformed work. A century ago, most people worked the land from sunrise to sunset. Today, only a small fraction do. Horse-drawn carts gave way to cars. Farmers' children worked in factories, and their grandchildren worked in offices.

What happened to all the time that technology freed up? We created entirely new industries. Tourism. Sports. Music. Entertainment. Things that once seemed like luxuries became normal parts of our life just because people now had the time to pursue them.

But this time feels completely different. Until now, machines replaced our hands. But now they're beginning to replace our minds.

So maybe the real question isn't whether there will be enough work. Maybe the real question is what we choose to do when machines can do a lot of what we've always considered uniquely human. I think the answer lies somewhere almost no one is looking.

Take a step back and look at history from a wider perspective. We moved from families to tribes, from tribes to villages, from villages to cities, then to nations, global markets, and finally the internet.

With every generation, humanity becomes more interconnected. Nature seems to be tying us more and more together whether we like it or not. And at exactly the same time, something else is happening.

Our egos continue to grow. We become more individualistic, more independent, more convinced of our own perspective. We are becoming increasingly connected while simultaneously finding it harder to connect. Ultimately, these two trends are going to collide.

We see the results everywhere - in our relationships, at work, in society, and especially between nations. What surprises me most is that we hardly prepare people at all for this challenge.

We teach mathematics. We teach programming. We teach finance, law, medicine, and engineering. Yet almost nowhere do we systematically learn how to build genuine human connection.

We teach mathematics. We teach programming. We teach finance, law, medicine, and engineering. Yet almost nowhere do we systematically learn how to build genuine human connection. I'm not talking about psychology, manners, or simply encouraging people to be kinder.

Humanity has spent thousands of years developing moral systems, and we're supposed to be so sophisticated by now. But conflict continues to grow. Maybe that's because we've been trying to solve the problem from the outside, without first understanding the force that drives it: the human ego.

This is where I believe the wisdom of Kabbalah offers something unique. It doesn't ask us to suppress the ego or pretend it doesn't exist. It asks a different question: How can people with naturally growing egos learn to connect above them?

That seems like a far more practical question for the era we're entering.

So maybe humanity's next profession won't be a profession at all. Maybe the most important work of the future won't happen in an office or a factory. Maybe it will happen in circles of people learning how to communicate, cooperate, and build genuine connection - just as our ancestors once gathered to learn how to cultivate the land.

Because if machines become capable of doing almost everything else, maybe the most valuable human skill left will be learning how to truly connect with one another.