Issues are being divided and conflate. You need to understand the actual function of the moving parts involved.

>Their need for symbolism will be their downfall

Make sure that doesn't describe you.

There are a huge number of truly intelligent people who are fully dedicated to solving all of the wrong problems, but regardless of how much damage they manage to do to the world in an attempt to automate it, they will still fail. The whole concept of automation assumes that you can set things in order and they will just continue in that form indefinitely. In reality, as the real world is infinite, once you overcome one layer of "chaos" (read: things you don't understand) to create something you do understand in it's place, you will simply be set upon immediately by new problems you don't understand.

You can not get around the need for individual people to be active participants in their own lives. It's a daunting challenge to actually help humanity learn and grow as a whole, but if you obsess over creating newer and more powerful machines to automate the world you will always end up here again.