17/08/2022
Something I think about often is...
Where did our addiction to work = worth + value come from?
For the first 300,000 years or so — 95% of human history — people worked 8 to 15 hours per week. Gathering and preparing food, hunting, building tools and homes... The rest of the time our ancestors spent dreaming, making music, exploring, decorating their bodies, creating and socialising.
Originally we humans lived pretty leisurely lives.
So, what happened?
One of capitalism's most enduring myths is that it has reduced human toil. But it hasn’t. Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, leisurely; the pace of work relaxed.
Our ancestors may not have been rich in gold coins, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time and their pleasure.
Today’s standards constitute the most work effort in the entire history of humankind.
In the early days of agriculture, a single unlucky event, like a drought or a flood, could lead to mass starvation.
Hard work was essential to survival.
But that wasn't true for hundreds of thousands of years before and it's not true now.
Hunter-gatherers didn't face extreme scarcity.
Thanks to technology, neither do we.
Yet we work way more than we need to in order to provide a decent living for everyone.
Want to know why?
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