I don't know what's more crushing, not having a job, or knowing deep-down that there is a machine that can trivially do your job.

If I was made to lamp street lamps 5 years after incandescent street lights were invented, while not working on any way forward, I'd probably fall into a deep existential crisis.

Indeed. My first job was in a factory doing things that we had machines to do, but not enough of them or efficient enough. I spent the whole time dreaming of automating the factory properly.

I think that nihilistic sentiment arises only when you are materially satisfied, maybe in the 90s and 00s (like office workers in Fight Club or Office Space). Many of us are in survival mode now. We just need money to keep up with inflation. We don't have time to think about the deep meaning of life.

I agree with aspects of what you mean. But there are exceptions on both sides.

Ofc people dont want to become human fax machines (Morse decoders) nowadays, it would feel absurd.

But also if a role allows someone to feel satisfaction in accomplishment and in being an active member of a society it can be meaningful. For example tidying up streets/yards in low income neighborhoods can make the place look much better and you can feel like you're serving folks who are in need.

Huge amounts of effort go to feeding our desires, and to feeding our fears, but it actually doesn't take much to meet our needs.

Only 2% of our efforts as a society go to getting food out of the ground.

The reason to have a job, to own property, to earn and spend money, to reproduce and fight in wars, it seems, is to maintain a valid stake in the whole game lest your masters designate you an undesireable.

For said master the more viable the alternatives to humans become, the more all those excess humans start to look like a liability.