The society I am building is highly automated, post-scarcity, with the ability to essentially "3-D print" anything.
Is there a reasonable way for me to explain why the people of this civilization would actually go out and do things instead of sitting around taking 3-D printed drugs all day, having orgies with sex bots, or other forms of hedonism?
This is an old question, usually asked by those who fear hedonism. Reality is always much stranger.
We've all heard that, if you put a rat in a cage and offer them food, water, and heroin, that they will prioritize the heroin until they die. Many people have extrapolated this into the idea that you need to keep heroin out of people's cages.
Rarely is it suggested that the problem might be the cages. As it turns out, if you give rats a choice between food, water, heroin, and social interaction, they will prioritize social interaction.
You can further generalize this to identify that scarcity creates popularity. For instance...
Let's face it, jobs are a cage. They restrict our time from the things we really want to be doing, and they actually increase the probability that we'll want to perform high-intensity behaviors in our free time.
But we have other cages we can put people in. Social retribution is a common one. When Portugal decriminalized drug use, the drug use didn't drop, but the bad side effects like death, addiction, disease, unemployment, and incarceration all dropped significantly. This had nothing to do with availability of free time.
So, let me ask, if you had unlimited free time and no artificial social restrictions, would you spend it all doing drugs and having sex? If not, why do you think that everyone else would?
Addendum: Yes, some people will go that way. Some people need board games in order to effectively socialize, some need sports, some need to be passing the peace pipe to be comfortable with those around them. The point is that post-scarcity won't increase this behavior, and there are factors that suggest it will decrease.
The most poignant detail is that, for those who do stay at home and do drugs or go to orgies, it will have zero impact on their ability to contribute to society. In today's society, such behaviors would take them out of the workforce. In a world where nobody needs to work, that isn't an issue.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs has a couple of layers above biological needs and security that are all about achieving social acceptance and significance. You can't do that by laying around at home. When people spend less of their time digging in the dirt, they have more time to do the things that are important to someone besides the shareholders.
Because it gets boring
Because it's unfulfilling
Because it's frowned upon by society
Because it's unlawful (an extreme version of "frowned upon by society")
A lot of people even in our current society have the means to do that today, and most don't. Some do, of course, and it's inevitable some will in your society as well.
Also, I would argue that your (and pretty much any other post-scarcity) society would still be hedonistic, almost by definition. It's just that most people would, eventually, seek longer term pleasure than what is offered by just having drugged out orgies all day every day.
No matter if the reason is cultural or genetic; those who embrace hedonism disappear by themselves.
The hedonists no longer need to have to take the others into account to satisfy their objectives.
With all the means at their disposal, their move into their palaces were their robots do everything for them: they take care of the needs of the place and the owner, they provide for their distraction and pleasure.
Effectively, that people no longer belongs to the society, they have shut themselves out of it.
The people who are interested in other things beyond pleasure, continue to interact with other peoples. Those are the society.
It even allows you to explain why they are few hedonists, if any, in your current society: as technology made it easier, hedonists tended to isolate themselves, making it more difficult for them to reproduce. This gradually led to a decline in the proportion of hedonists, because either if it is due to genetical or cultural issues, the following generations would mostly descend from non-hedonists.
Hedonism
First off, why is hedonism the automatic response to extreme wealth?
In a lot of cases, things like drug addiction, alcoholism and whatnot tend to be caused by outside stress that causes the person to seek out some kind of escapism.
Drug addiction for example is certainly not a problem that occurs in the world's lower classes less than in its upper-classes.
I've met wealthy people and kids before. Many of them could easily afford to be wastrels, but they're fairly productive people in the sense they still work out, make art and have hobbies.
Capitalism and Post-Scarcity
We live in a world where addiction is incentivized. Where companies deliberately try and make advertisements, applications and food that hooks you in because those companies, in order to survive, must compete for the limited resource which is people's time and attention.
In a post-scarcity world where anyone can manufacture anything. What then do these companies exist for?
Context is key
So your world is post-scarcity, correct?
But that doesn't tell us much about anything in it really? What is its culture? What are its people's beliefs?
Is it simply 21st century America, but one day people woke up and found Replicators in their living rooms?
Presumably your post-scarcity culture is one with a very different outlook on things like leisure, work, wealth and productivity.
People in this scenario can apparently afford to casually make 3d printed drugs.
But then doesn't this mean, with all this wealth and automation, this society must similarly have impressive medicine and psychology that can treat addiction easily?
If you ask why people go outside and do things? Then I'll ask, what happened in this society to make people alienated and anti-social? Why does no one have friends or family to hang out with? Is there no where interesting to travel to?
There's no shortage of reasons to suppose a post-scarcity society would be hedonistic, that's why you're asking in the first place. Okay, fine, let's take that at face value and say that's exactly what happened when your society eliminated scarcity. Then what?
A few observations:
So, if your timeline can adapt to being a couple generations down the road from post-scarcity, you can write this process into your history.
The fun part of this approach is that you get to make up this whole history, and then enrich your setting by including references to it and its consequences. In real life, ideologies don't stay the same over long periods of time. History is full of changes in norms and attitudes, and the present is always filled with cruft from the path taken to get there.
What kinds of ideas are normal and taboo in a society that's gone through such a process? Was it a peaceful cultural change, or did the anti-hedonists have to fight and win a war to enforce their values? Can you make your setting feel realer and more lived-in by including fragments of writings from back when hedonism vs. anti-hedonism was a live issue?
For a very successful example of this approach to future history, check out how Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series approaches the development of opinions and norms around gender and religion between our present day and the setting's mid-25th century.
In the short term, it probably will catch a significant number of people. Hedonism as such is already a huge draw.
Suppose every intoxicating substance currently known becomes "push the button on your microwave" easy to produce in high purity and volume. Some people will crawl into a bottle and never emerge. Or into watching videos or playing computer games. Or going on hikes in the woods. Or eating fattening food. Or whatever-it-might-be that diverts them.
All the things that addicts already do.
Suppose the trend is towards libertarianism, even aloofness, with regard to those who become addicted to something. Those folks will steadily remove themselves from social interaction. They will "Darwinize" themselves. They would much rather do another line of drugs than go have friends. Even the few friends they do have will tend to be other addicts. They will tend to have fewer children and die much younger. And, in a few generations, the problem will self correct. People who can't handle freely-available-whatever will crash out of society.
People who can really leave it alone, or who can function through it, will presently dominate in the gene pool.
So it will be hedonism. But it will be the sort of hedonism that looks at the entire life's pleasure. Even multi-generational pleasure. Not just the range-of-the-moment. What will I be like when I'm 40? When I'm 50? When I'm 90? What kind of children will I have? Let's just leave some of those drugs in the package for next time.
So if you're that nameless guy face-down in his own sick, you wind up leaving nothing behind. Including leaving none of your genes behind.
But if you're Keith Richards, you can produce some remarkable music while doing your level best to test that "post scarcity" thing. And having five kids.
Because post-scarcity is always temporary.
Looking back at history, in the early 1700's, colonists to North America believed they were in a post-scarcity of trees. Wood was used liberally. Similarly, logging in the northwest states used to be done as if they were post-scarcity and there were struggles to try to make logging sustainable.
Similarly, when oil was struck in east Texas, the gushers convinced many that they were in a post-scarcity with oil. Again, it was a challenge to impose limits on pumping oil which was done to protect the oil fields from over pumping. Recently, people had the sticker on their cars, "God, give us another oil boom. I promise not to p**s it away like the last time."
Currently, we are in another boom based on technology. Our constantly improving smart phones can convince us of the existence of post-scarcity. However, the rare earth needs of technology have limits. The energy use of the Internet has limits.
Heinlein wrote, "Daughters can always spend 10% more than fathers can earn." The next generation growing up with energy, technology, and wealth can always spend it down. It is very common that great wealth gets spent by the next generation and grandchildren of wealthy people often have to have regular jobs. Humans are very good at creating enough children to use up any post-scarcity.
Reputation is the New Currency
This was the approach of the Union in the Orville that with everything available at the snap of your fingers, there will still be people needed to keep the machines running. The drones that do the dirty work still need to be programmed after all, and if you have a reputation as good programmer naturally they’ll look to you.
Hedonism can get Boring After a Century or Two
If there is anything we as a species have learned after COVID, it’s that looking at your phone gets boring after awhile. So given enough time a people with nothing left to do will want something, ANYTHING to do just to kill the boredom. Why do you think the paradise of the Federation has so many people seeking out new life and new civilizations?
Humans need a challenge to be psychologically healthy.
I've gone a few months between jobs before--I had enough money saved up that I wasn't too worried and was looking, but in the meanwhile I went a while without having a job. By the end of the third or fourth month, I was going out of my mind with boredom.
Everything that was once interesting to me had lost its sheen. Movies and TV shows were boring, video games lacked any holding power, I had a few books I was enjoying reading but would get antsy after a few hours. I couldn't practice instruments or music for too long since I didn't have the passion, and trying to make things like art was just a slog. Interacting with people was the one thing that kept its staying power, and even then I found myself sometimes just not wanting to put in the effort of seeking people out.
Without a challenge, we stagnate and then decay:
Humans need to have something that pushes them a bit and gives them something to focus their energy and efforts on--some structure to work within that gives life contrast and shape. And it doesn't have to be something they hate, as there are plenty of ways to get that structure:
This question has been answered a couple of times in Science fiction, one example would be the Vulcans of Star Trek. They were a passionate people who gave into hedonism and desires and almost destroyed themselves through war as their emotions over spilled and became distructive.
Your society could have some moral or legal code that discouraged hedonism as a way of preventing a re-run of a more destructive period of their history.
A different take would be that of the Science-fiction comedy The Orville. Characters live in a society that is both post-scarcity and post currency.
In that society a person's social position and wealth is measured in terms of reputation. People who act in the common interest, or who dedicate themselves to public service or the arts\sciences are rewarded by the people around them through reciprocal arrangements or positions of status. While those who act in their own self interest are shunned and pushed to the margins of society.
A third example is the Eldar race from the Warhammer 40K tabletop universe and its associate literature. The Eldar lived in a post scarcity society, and they grew bored of everyday pursuits and distractions, and they sought out ever greater extremes that lead them towards hedonism and debauchery.
This caused their society to collapse and become vulnerable to other alien races, and then finally the combined psychic energy generated by their hedonism manifested into an intelligent form that ripped a hole in the fabric of space-time.
The Eldar now devote themselves to religion and cultural practices in order to keep their emotions in check to avoid this.
In the Anime, Shinsekai yori (From the New World), the world government secretly genetically engineered the population not to be hedonistic, and encouraged people to dedicate themselves towards artistic pursuits in order suppress strong emotions, and if people didn't fit in with this they had them secretly killed.
Brainwashing
Part of what was needed to establish the post-scarcity society is extensive behavioral modification to remove the parts of the people's nature that would bar the formation of an effective post-scarcity society, including propensity towards hedonism. This was accomplished through some good ol' brainwashing, and not just in the sense of broadcasting copious amounts of propaganda, but straight-up mind control, not too far off from what the Fatherland from the film version of "Habitable Island" uses.
Alternatively, propaganda that so perfectly caters to the psychology of whatever species makes up your society that it is effectively the same as mind control technology. We know that propaganda can be used to get an entire nation onboard with exterminating millions of people, now add to that an AI that is capable of generating terabytes of propaganda broadcasts per second and learning what works and what doesn't several orders of magnitude better than any human could hope to, and you could have a society that is effectively brainwashed into not being hedonistic even in the face of effectively infinite resources.
A simpler premise: Because going out and doing things brings people joy.
If the society is post-scarcity, then by definition you should not have to work a job you dislike just to get the resources you need to live. As such, nothing then prevents the people from doing that they want to with their lives instead of doing what they have to.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means" -- Inigo Montoya
Pop culture references aside, there is the matter of hedonism itself. I'm not a philosophy student, so the best I can do is a dictionary on the matter and I see two definitions for the word:
Based on the question, the sense is it is asking about the more self-destructive forms of hedonism -- the self-indulgence parts of it. Honestly, nothing stops people in so many words and I would actually suspect that this more indulgent form is a phase that people go through in their development in some way or another.
For some, they will get trapped in that place for sure. They will self destruct in a glorious warning to others about excesses or else get unsubscribed from life in a spectacular example of natural selection.
But in all honesty, there are more ways to get pleasure than life then sex and drugs -- there is also rock and roll.
Without need to work a dead-end job to live, people can derive pleasure from taking up the arts, or in the pursuit of building things from garments to furniture and all the way up to full buildings. They'll have the time to learn and because they want to learn, information might be better retained. In our timeline, these are the hobbies that we try to squeeze into our lives -- in this timeline they are more like jobs that we have chosen.
Then we get to the people that would genuinely take up a service job because they like the work. Not only does it keep them busy, but there is a certain pleasure in the idea that they work you do is not only well done but appreciated by others. Teaching, medicine, childcare -- three professions that people could genuinely get into for the joy and pleasure of doing it.
A life pursuing those two things above could also be seen as hedonistic pursuits. They would be undertaking these activities for the pleasure of creating something or a joy of a job well done. But they aren't the self-destructive kinds of hedonism so it may not be thought of in the same manner.
So, nothing stops people's hedonistic pursuits -- it's just different kinds of hedonism the people seek
EARLY CHILDHOOD INCULCATION
There's an all pervasive religion in your society that makes it clear that hedonistic behavior is a terrible sin. Inculcate all children with that notion and they will grow up into adults who don't even question it.
As a matter of fact it doesn't even have to be from religion, though that works best in our real world, because it's reinforced with notions of sin and the reward of heaven or punishment of hell. But it could be state driven.
It just has to be something that so drilled in from an early age that people don't even know to question it.
Frame challenge. Because post-scarcity is artificially limited by outdated social order.
Sure, your 3d replicator can create practically anything. Your 3d replicator is immune to wear and tear, as it can self-heal. And it is also powered by energy of vacuum and can transform part of said energy into matter, thus neither energy nor matter are any problem, they are are free. But you see, in order to replicate say, a pen, you need to access a file that contains information about how to replicate said pen. And in order to access said file you need to buy a subscription for this particular file. After expiration of subscription to "pen" file you lose access to said file, meaning that your replicator can't replicate pens anymore. And even with active subscription you are limited by how many pens you can replicate per month, PRO-subscription is needed to replicate pens without restrictions. And even then, only you would be able and allowed to use pens replicated by your replicator (and maybe members of your household), as pens won't work if your friend Jerry will try to use them, and omniscient mass surveillance system will report this incident to authorities.
This general question has been addressed extensively in James P. Hogan's 1982 novel 'Voyage from Yesteryear', which happens to be a pretty good read as well as being just interesting.
Several people have already mentioned the 'reputation is currency' concept from The Orville, and linked it to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. But Voyage from Yesteryear did this decades earlier. Basically if everyone has all their basic needs fulfilled (food, shelter, etc.) they still feel the urge to be respected. In our society, wealth is a proxy for respect - someone who has a lot of money, several flashy cars, and all the gold they can eat looks like a success. And often throughout history that wealth was gained by theft - either through actually plundering some village somewhere, forcing people into slavery to work for you, or the pseudo-theft of having someone work for you and then getting the acclaim for their hard work. But when anyone can have whatever they want the appearance of success becomes meaningless. Possessions no longer indicate that you're high up in the social order, and you can't steal someone else's expertise. The only way to appear good at something is to actually be good at something. And if you want to become good at something you actually have to earn that aptitude by studying and practicing.
In the post-scarcity society Hogan posits - in a human colony in the Alpha Centauri system - everyone grows up aware of status derived from ability, rather than status signaled through fancy clothes, uniforms, titles, and the like. So they're extremely good at spotting frauds, don't defer to authority figures like politicians and priests, and are constantly striving to be experts at whatever they happen to do for a living (whether it's pure mathematics, painting houses, designing spaceships, or anything else). Of course there are some people who don't work, stay at home, and take drugs or indulge in mindless entertainment all day. To humans from Earth, this sounds like a dream come true. But the colonists view these people with pity - rather than being a hedonistic life of luxury it's a self-imposed prison, wasting the gift of existence and isolating oneself from the respect of the rest of society.
What is Hedonism and is it really problematic?
Wikipedia says that ... a family of theories, all of which have in common that pleasure plays a central role in them.
Well, as long as my activities to seek out pleasure do not interfere with other people, society really couldn't care less.
As stated in other answers and comments, most people prefer social interaction, and only a minority will be "lost" to the society. We can think of those theoretically lost as some form of Hermits, who are motivated by their own urge to seek out pleasure. Such pleasure may take any form: a secluded free-love retreat for some, a quasi-monastic life in search of reason and wisdom for others.
However, the original question highlights another pertinent point: by assuming post-scarcity, the premise hand-waves away the need for factory-workers, farmers and all other producing jobs.
But what about the service industries: Who is there to cut your hair, when no one needs to work to make a living?
Because life is not one-dimensional, we not only derive pleasure from hedonistic activities, but we also derive pleasure from not-so-hedonistic activities, such as learning a new language, learning how to code, learning science, etc.
Over-indulgence gets boring after a while and might lead to stagnation. We have other emotions to take care of such as feeling accomplished, fulfilled, etc. I think this goes back to our animal nature. We used to be the prey of other animals so a state of hedonism is not a state of alertness, and alertness is what's needed for survival.
It's also mentioned above that we also strive to build a good name for ourselves and how can you do that if you sit around and do drugs all day?
First of all, the brain has a mechanism to prevent over saturation with anything that is joyfull. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill Meaning, without breaks, anything looses its joys pretty fast. Yes, even heroin, which is why dosage must increase, till it starts to suppress breathing.
Finally, the reward function the brain can be retrained to reward for almost anything. Create art, reward yourself. Feel in control of your body, not eating a thing? Reward yourself. The truth is, that the hedonistic crash, imagined by puritans, does not exist that much in the wild. Instead existing, is a shapeable organ, that can be set on any task. The "hedonistic" crash, as in the opioid crisis, is mostly a attempt to combat depression, when those dreams and tasks can be not fulfilled, and life must kept bearable.
There are regions in Europe, were puritanical christianity overdid it so much, they died out and the regions returned to nature. So much work, so little hedonism, all work and not play, made the fields return to forest. The hedonism feared above, would mostly turn out to be a great art avalanche.
