What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Brinne]

Indeed. The game tries to treat a post-scarcity as its the worst thing ever. Like, if humankind isn't struggling for subsistence, then we're decadent. I think one of humankind's worst self-inflicted tragedies was convincing itself that leisure was not a basic human right.

We live in an age where work is glorified and sanctified above all else. I remember being in a conference recently where they demonstrated that most people who work in office shifts spend about 20% of their time pretending pretending to work or finding some other form of what the speakers called "meaningless work". Just work for work's sake, because otherwise they would be fired or their pay/jobs would be cut. They must "work" even if that work ultimately means nothing.

Leisure is a basic human need that gets a bum rap.

Personally, I'm pretty sure navigating human relationships and getting immersed in/arguing over one's hobbies (well, hello there, everyone! <_<), along with encouraging interest in things like debate and the arts, would be enough to keep someone's brain occupied and stimulated on a near-perpetual basis - without necessitating the extreme suffering like war, disease, poverty, inequality, what have you. If not, I'm one of those who honestly didn't see anything wrong with the Ancients' death ritual and actually found it really attractive.