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I find this idea bizarre. It's like humans enjoyed their time for millennia and only now we have to work. For all human history, the conditions of people were

I find this idea bizarre. It's like humans enjoyed their time for millennia and only now we have to work. For all human history, the conditions of people were dire. Today people might be stuck in an office in their "best year", but people in the past had to toil all day to barely scrape by and didn't even have that many years to live. It's only now that we live these comfortable lives with houses, heating, electricity, technology and a sea of information at our fingertips. These things all exist and keep functioning because people work. And yet some think that "society has gone wrong", as if the past was paradise. Work has been a human universal through history. There is surely an argument to be made about the fact that now we are so productive that we might not need to work as much as we had to. At the same time I think we should be grateful that we live in the best life conditions ever seen by humanity.

osrec 9y ago
I'm not saying it hasn't been prevalent for a long time, but I just think it's daft. Even if it is how it has always been, things could probably change for the better. I'm certainly grateful for the times we live in, however I see a lot of capable people let their lives pass by doing mundane jobs with little enjoyment, and worse still, little social impact. Surely we can do better than this?!
eeZah7Ux 9y ago
> For all human history, the conditions of people were dire. No. There's been societies based on slavery or indentured servitude and industrial societies treating workers much like slaves and there's been also almost idyllic, often agrarian, societies far removed from war, exploitation and hunger. Furthermore, given the incredible amount of energy and natural resources that the average person in rich countries is consuming we should all be living happy and meaningful lives and work one our per week. We should instead ask the difficult question - why are even the richest societies so unhappy?
- jdtang13 9y ago
  In those idyllic societies that you mention, there are still teachers, senators, merchants, and diplomats who have to do work. The only people I can think of who don't do "work" in ancient history are religious monks and rich people living off of an inheritance.
  - osrec 9y ago
    It's not work itself that is the problem. Work actually should contribute to happiness, but the conditions must induce that. The negative atmosphere that exists in many work environments is terrible. Rather than leaving with a sense of achievement for your expended efforts, you leave feeling beaten down and unappreciated.
  - francisofascii 9y ago
    Monks were kept busy writing manuscripts preserving scientific and historical knowledge.
- DeusExMachina 9y ago
  These “idyllic” societies still had rough lives. Nature is not only a paradise. It’s ripe with disease, infections, predators killing you and your cattle, children’s and mothers dying during childbirth, droughts, and famines. And wars exist also, and especially, among tribes. Growing food without modern technologies, fertilizers and pesticides was also an extremely hard job. It’s not like growing tomatoes in your back garden.
  - rland 9y ago
    This is something I have given a lot of thought to. I saw footage of a gazelle being hunted by a cheetah. My reflexive thought is -- how unimaginably horrible. Here is an animal which is evolved specifically to hunt you down and kill you. And every moment you spend trying to live is a moment lived in fear of this awful creature. What a life! My horror does not even compare to the horror of this life. But, watching the gazelle slalom and jump with incredible precision and grace, there is another thought: that the gazelle was also born to run. It uses its God given abilities to the absolute maximum possible extent. During the chase, it is in a state of complete flow, more complete than any Olympic athlete could ever hope for. The sheer concentration required, the exertion, the split-second decision-making required to avoid getting caught. To master this state is to escape the predator, and it must feel incredible to outrun a cheetah. Incredible in a way that is impossible for a human living a modern lifestyle to fathom. To fail means to die, of course, and that cannot feel good to a gazelle. But it's just death. We all die anyway. Human beings, gazelle, cheetahs. It is a simple fact that you will die. So, then, whose life is better? The gazelle's, whose time is spent performing in the most integrated and pure way possible? Or the human's? The human's life, which is spent doing activities its body was not designed for, in social situations his brain is not built for, eating things his stomach was not designed for? And then, we die. Just like the gazelle. Interesting to think about for sure. I myself have no option — synthetic insulin keeps me alive.
    - thwarted 9y ago
      I saw footage of a gazelle being hunted by a cheetah. My reflexive thought is -- how unimaginably horrible. Here is an animal which is evolved specifically to avoid your attempts to eat it. And every moment you spend trying to live is a moment lived in fear of this awful creature. What a life! My horror does not even compare to the horror of this life. But, watching the cheetah cut off its prey and pounce with incredible precision and grace, there is another thought: that the cheetah was also born to eat. It uses its God given abilities to the absolute maximum possible extent. During the chase, it is in a state of complete flow, more complete than any Olympic athlete could ever hope for. The sheer concentration required, the exertion, the split-second decision-making required to avoid dying of hunger. To master this state is to capture the prey, and it must feel incredible to finally catch a gazelle. Incredible in a way that is impossible for a human living a modern lifestyle to fathom. To fail means to die, of course, and that cannot feel good to a cheetah. But it's just death. We all die anyway. Human beings, cheetah, gazelles. It is a simple fact that you will die.
- btilly 9y ago
  Citation needed. My understanding of primitive agrarian societies are that they have hard work, hard lives, poor diet, and a population that is generally at the edge of starvation. (In good times, population grows. In bad times...) You might want to read Guns, Germs and Steel as an example of a reference backing this view up. Or read through random snippets of history like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315%E2%80%9317 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315%E2%80%931... and get a sense for the very real struggles that people faced.
  - kolpa 9y ago
    http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w... "Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's"
    - ghettoimp 9y ago
      Nine inch nails. “We think we’ve climbed so far, on all the backs we’ve come down...”
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    I don't have a specific text offhand that addresses this directly, but Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms addresses this general point. It's part of a series of related works, edited by Joel Mokyr, including last year's The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert Gordon. https://www.worldcat.org/title/farewell-to-alms-a-brief-economic-history-of-the-world-the-princeton-economic-history-of-the-western-world/oclc/939234998 https://www.worldcat.org/title/farewell-to-alms-a-brief-econ... https://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/series/title/the-princeton-economic-history-of-the-western-world.html https://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/series/title/the-prince... Whilst preindustrial societies did see variable subsistence, the floor tended to be higher than today (Clark's introduction, available online, notes that the poorest people who've ever lived, live now, and in great numbers), and cycles tended to be long-term -- decades or centuries, not years. Whilst life expectancy at birth was low, from age of majority it was generally far less abbreviated. Disease was far more prevalent in cities (London was a net population sink well into the 19h century), and major instances of famine and plague something experienced perhaps only by occasional generations within an area, though wth mortality rates from 10-90% (far more typically in the 10-30% range). You're familiar with Laurie Garrett's wwork on healthxare, and the fact that 85% of mortality decline since 1850 materially predates modern medical practice, including antibiotics, vaccines, and organ transsplants. The Conquest of Pestilence in New York City chart highlights this: https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/wp-content/uploads/200910_blog_goklany1.jpg https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/wp-content/uplo...
- tomc1985 9y ago
  If you get too idyllic you get conquered by jealous neighbors
jdtang13 9y ago
Yes, that's a very good point. Work has always been part of the human condition, and middle class people in the first world are enjoying much, much more comfortable working conditions than their ancestors did. I think we should all be very grateful for that. But it's also a very modern thing for people to suffer from alienating, despair-inducing work. I think this alienation, which Marx speaks of in much detail, is the root of many modern complaints. When you do manual work outdoors, there is a sort of physical element that allows you to get "in the zone" and it really feels like true work. But for white collar tasks like accounting, programming, and filing papers, there's not as often a moment for meditation or getting "in the zone". And there's something much more alienating about doing comfortable work that is held up, not because of the winter frost, but because of some corporate inefficiency. Likewise, blue collar assembly-line labor, in which your entire day is spent building a single part for a huge machine, is much the same. The carpenter can feel delighted from finishing an entire chair, and a weaver might enjoy seeing many completed baskets, but the factory worker never knows rest, never knows any satisfaction, because the modern species of work never ends. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (Genesis 3:18-19)
- mathgladiator 9y ago
  You captured a core reason that I picked up wood working: projects finish. An annoying aspect of software is that it takes a life of its own. It is never done, but there are feature requests, bugs, and updates. You make a table, and that is it. It's done. Sure, you have to clean it, but mostly it will last a while until it breaks down.
  - smattiso 9y ago
    This is why I wish I had gotten into video game development rather than app development. Once the game is finished it is (for the most part) complete.
    - 9y ago
ljw1001 9y ago
This is a largely valid point, but it has traditionally been much easier to see the fruits of your labor (often literally, as most people produced food, but if not, then in a small shop, a small manufacture of some kind, a small legal office...). Today we toil for owners we never meet, executives we would barely recognize if we pass them in the hall, customers we never see. We get the stressors, and never see the point.
ThrustVectoring 9y ago
Yes, we're better off in material terms, but today's work is the most meaningless it has ever been.
- osrec 9y ago
  Could not agree with you more. Satisfaction is lacking in so many aspects of the modern work environment.
Trundle 9y ago
Equivalent animals certainly don't spend all day toiling. We aren't ants. I don't see any reason to believe that was the case for us.
- mathgladiator 9y ago
  For many animals, every day is a fight to live. Constantly looking for food.
  - watwut 9y ago
    Cats sleep 16 hours a day for example. Animals in nature are not constantly looking for food, except grass eaters who ear whole day.
    - awat 9y ago
      This reminds me of a paper on primate stress level increases due to the amount of time they spend foraging (study was focused on deforestation but seems applicable here). It seems to suggest a biological ceiling for well being and reproductive success. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130122102110.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130122102110.h...
    - mathgladiator 9y ago
      True. That is also because digestion for them is wonky (IIRC). However, they are a predator. Look at mice or other small creatures, and you realize their entire existence is the search for food.
- CalRobert 9y ago
  Of course, most of them die. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37775622 http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37775622 Though if we weren't so damn focused on having so much crap maybe a few of those animals would still be around.
JDiculous 9y ago
This is actually false. The average American worker today works more hours per year than a 14th century peasant (http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medieval-peasant-got-more-vacation-time-than-you/ http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medie...). Hunter-gatherers only worked 2-3 hours per day. Despite technology allowing us to work less, we work more. Yes we should be grateful of technological advancement, but too many people are unnecessarily depressed and suicidal, and it doesn't have to be this way.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- TomMckenny 9y ago
  Indeed, the typical American now spends more hours just to pay for land to sleep on than hunter-gatherers did to live.
  - slphil 9y ago
    This isn't true. Hunter gatherer life is nearly universally harsh and violent. I posted an article on this in the same comment thread. Modern humans are miserable, for sure, but older forms of life were not better.
- drewcon 9y ago
  So more “vacation”, but dead at 40. Sounds like a great trade.
- slphil 9y ago
  To some degree, yes, peasants worked less than modern humans, but also had to extend large amounts of effort to prepare food, attain wood for fires and light, build their own structures, etc. I slightly romanticize medieval life so I won't convince you that their lives were hellish and awful, but we take for granted the amount of work our society does for us. Also, the idea of the high-leisure hunter gatherer is false. This is ideology masquerading as archaeology/history, and it confirms the biases of people who have genuine criticisms of modern life. http://quillette.com/2017/12/16/romanticizing-hunter-gatherer/ http://quillette.com/2017/12/16/romanticizing-hunter-gathere...
xigency 9y ago
In the book Sapiens the author argues that life was perhaps better before the invention of agriculture, with relative comfort and less time spent on subsistence.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  It's interesting that the skeletons found from the period after agriculture was introduced are significantly shorter than those from before.
- vilmosi 9y ago
  The book also says how that world was incredibly violent and unsympathetic to the elderly/sick.
rublev 9y ago
Yeah I love coming home from my hard as fuck underpaid job to turn on the TV and see idiots kicking a ball for $100 million dollars. Something is definitely wrong.
trophycase 9y ago
Work seems to be largely disconnected from actual results or goals, and appears to be straying further into the abstract. In the past work and exercise were nearly identical, now work looks something like sitting in a desk all day under fluorescent light. Nutrition was once a result of simply eating what was available, but now has changed to a daily fight, something that requires constant effort and discipline in order to maintain as we are completely bombarded by those that seek to exploit our instinctive responses. We've traded these and other things for safety, comfort, and reproductive success.
some_account 9y ago
The article criticizes American work culture for very good reasons. Of course we should work and have jobs, but that doesn't mean work needs to be like it is in America. Do you guys in America even know how it is in Sweden for example? We don't have this competitive culture, and companies are trying hard to make their employees feel good at work. Nobody really works full 8 hours at big companies and nobody is stressed very much. Bosses never blame anyone directly for anything since it's not allowed, culture wise. People are very relaxed. When I read about American culture, it seems insane.
- tuukkah 9y ago
  Plus the month-long paid summer vacations! EDIT: To be more precise: typically ~20 days in the summer and additional ~5-15 days in the winter. Averages by country, Sweden 26 days: https://www.europeandataportal.eu/en/highlights/which-country-eu-has-most-annual-holidays https://www.europeandataportal.eu/en/highlights/which-countr... 34 days (minimum?) when you include the 16 paid public holidays such as Christmas, New Year, Easter, Midsummer: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-vacation-days.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-...
  - gambiting 9y ago
    Everyone in EU gets at least 21 paid days off a year + unlimited paid sick leave, no matter if you're a surgeon or a cleaner. But yes, for bigger companies it's usually closer to 30 paid days off than 20.
  - antonkm 9y ago
    It's more often 5-6 weeks. As a Swede I always feel alien to the hours Americans seem to put in. I'm a consultant and work roughly 35h/w in Sweden. I often find this a bit too much, given that the work I do is disconnected from anything "real". Sure, my clients are always happy and I do fun things, but my family and friends is what's real. I truly believe we should automate everything and let humans decide by themselves if they feel like working. If not, something like UBI should exist.
bambax 9y ago
Past societies had classes, so conditions were very different depending on the class you belonged to. If you were a Roman patriarch you were expected not to work at all. Same if you were a 17th century French aristocrat. The promise of the modern society was that everyone being "equal", we would all become aristocrats. In fact we all became slaves. (And of course, hunters gatherers lived, to the best of our knowledge, in classless groups where each individual worked very little each day).
dolzenko 9y ago
Work surely was universal, but 2 things are very different now 1. Working outside (as mentioned) just doesn't compare with office job, i.e. it provides physical exercise, fresh air, being close to nature/animals. Now we're simulating all these things with gyms/vacations/zoos (I think the quality of such simulation is out of question?) 2. Work had to be done with your family, now there is no simulation for this in our society at all. And I would guess it was much better option than running as fast as we can (as most corporate people do) at 6:00PM, away from these annoying faces :)
andrepd 9y ago
And I find this sort of posts bizarre. The argument that "we are better of today than we were in prehistory or the middle ages, so quit your complaining". Yes, things are better, but no, that doesn't mean we should stop wanting to improve. We have accomplished a lot, but we have not reached the end-all stage of human development. Societies are better than they were 500 years ago, but they're still pretty damn flawed. We can do much, much better.
wu-ikkyu 9y ago
>At the same time I think we should be grateful that we live in the best life conditions ever seen by humanity. What metrics did you use to determine this, other than life expectancy? A zoo animal may have a longer life expectancy, but a free animal arguably leads a more satisfying life according to their nature.
aklemm 9y ago
It was more dire often, but it was also more leisurely during the times it wasn't dire. So now we're eliminated the dire situations, but we've given up the leisurely situations in return for more stuff (and also more safetly, organization, far greater adventures, and other things).
grasshopperpurp 9y ago
>It's like humans enjoyed their time for millennia and only now we have to work. Has nothing to do with the OP's comment, and it attempts to shift the conversation to justification. >For all human history, the conditions of people were dire. Today people might be stuck in an office in their "best year", but people in the past had to toil all day to barely scrape by and didn't even have that many years to live. Again, why are you doing this? >It's only now that we live these comfortable lives with houses, heating, electricity, technology and a sea of information at our fingertips. These things all exist and keep functioning because people work. Who is arguing against work in general? The article and the OP are discussing working conditions. Work doesn't have to be torture. America has a very unhealthy relationship with the idea of work and what it means. No pain no gain, right? >And yet some think that "society has gone wrong", as if the past was paradise. In the last 40-50 years, American society has taken some significant steps backwards, and the workers have felt it. If you're comparing conditions to hundreds or thousands of years ago, why? What is your goal? >Work has been a human universal through history. There is surely an argument to be made about the fact that now we are so productive that we might not need to work as much as we had to. At the same time I think we should be grateful that we live in the best life conditions ever seen by humanity. You finally brushed against the point in your penultimate paragraph.
otakucode 9y ago
Your notions of history are incorrect. There were certainly periods of deprivation, particularly after the Industrial Revolution and before the New Deal in the US, but other than that, no, people were not owned so totally by their employers. They did not need to work as much to earn as little. Between 1950 and 1980, the average wage of the lower 90% of the economy rose by 75%. Between 1980 and 2010, it rose by 1%. And during 1980 to 2010 we experienced the introduction of computers into the workplace. Average worker productivity skyrocketed at an absurd rate. Yet, every penny of that advancement and more was scalped by employers and shareholders. People are not being greedy in expecting more. They are intuitively sensing that they are being exploited more and more heavily every single year. No increase in productivity is ever reflected in increased earnings or free time or anything like that. The notion of the New Deal was that 1 person working only 40 hours a week should be paid enough that they could raise an entire family on it comfortably. Do you think that could be done today? No, it couldn't. If you've got a couple kids, and you only have 1 40 hour job providing the income you are completely boned. You're poor. We have been racing backwards, and we have gained literally nothing for it.
tylerjwilk00 9y ago
I don't think work in and of itself is the problem. The problem with modern day work is that it's become so homogenous regardless of desired outcome. For example: - If I want meat, I perform task X - If I want heat, I perform task X - If I want cothes, I perform task X In previous generations (more recent than you might assume) many of these desired outcomes had totally different tasks. Its also a false dichotomy that things are work _OR_ play. Many things are a blend of Work/Play/Hobby or more simply just "living". It would have been an evolutionary advantage to be interested in and inclined to perform various types of tasks for early humans. Modern work suppresses this human need. This is why we have hobbies and people are depressed. More "free" time to watch Netflix may not be the pinnacle happiness and fulfillment. This is not to suggest that life was "easy" in the past.

osrec 9y ago

I'm not saying it hasn't been prevalent for a long time, but I just think it's daft. Even if it is how it has always been, things could probably change for the better. I'm certainly grateful for the times we live in, however I see a lot of capable people let their lives pass by doing mundane jobs with little enjoyment, and worse still, little social impact. Surely we can do better than this?!

eeZah7Ux 9y ago

> For all human history, the conditions of people were dire. No. There's been societies based on slavery or indentured servitude and industrial societies treating workers much like slaves and there's been also almost idyllic, often agrarian, societies far removed from war, exploitation and hunger. Furthermore, given the incredible amount of energy and natural resources that the average person in rich countries is consuming we should all be living happy and meaningful lives and work one our per week. We should instead ask the difficult question - why are even the richest societies so unhappy?

jdtang13 9y ago
In those idyllic societies that you mention, there are still teachers, senators, merchants, and diplomats who have to do work. The only people I can think of who don't do "work" in ancient history are religious monks and rich people living off of an inheritance.
- osrec 9y ago
  It's not work itself that is the problem. Work actually should contribute to happiness, but the conditions must induce that. The negative atmosphere that exists in many work environments is terrible. Rather than leaving with a sense of achievement for your expended efforts, you leave feeling beaten down and unappreciated.
- francisofascii 9y ago
  Monks were kept busy writing manuscripts preserving scientific and historical knowledge.
DeusExMachina 9y ago
These “idyllic” societies still had rough lives. Nature is not only a paradise. It’s ripe with disease, infections, predators killing you and your cattle, children’s and mothers dying during childbirth, droughts, and famines. And wars exist also, and especially, among tribes. Growing food without modern technologies, fertilizers and pesticides was also an extremely hard job. It’s not like growing tomatoes in your back garden.
- rland 9y ago
  This is something I have given a lot of thought to. I saw footage of a gazelle being hunted by a cheetah. My reflexive thought is -- how unimaginably horrible. Here is an animal which is evolved specifically to hunt you down and kill you. And every moment you spend trying to live is a moment lived in fear of this awful creature. What a life! My horror does not even compare to the horror of this life. But, watching the gazelle slalom and jump with incredible precision and grace, there is another thought: that the gazelle was also born to run. It uses its God given abilities to the absolute maximum possible extent. During the chase, it is in a state of complete flow, more complete than any Olympic athlete could ever hope for. The sheer concentration required, the exertion, the split-second decision-making required to avoid getting caught. To master this state is to escape the predator, and it must feel incredible to outrun a cheetah. Incredible in a way that is impossible for a human living a modern lifestyle to fathom. To fail means to die, of course, and that cannot feel good to a gazelle. But it's just death. We all die anyway. Human beings, gazelle, cheetahs. It is a simple fact that you will die. So, then, whose life is better? The gazelle's, whose time is spent performing in the most integrated and pure way possible? Or the human's? The human's life, which is spent doing activities its body was not designed for, in social situations his brain is not built for, eating things his stomach was not designed for? And then, we die. Just like the gazelle. Interesting to think about for sure. I myself have no option — synthetic insulin keeps me alive.
  - thwarted 9y ago
    I saw footage of a gazelle being hunted by a cheetah. My reflexive thought is -- how unimaginably horrible. Here is an animal which is evolved specifically to avoid your attempts to eat it. And every moment you spend trying to live is a moment lived in fear of this awful creature. What a life! My horror does not even compare to the horror of this life. But, watching the cheetah cut off its prey and pounce with incredible precision and grace, there is another thought: that the cheetah was also born to eat. It uses its God given abilities to the absolute maximum possible extent. During the chase, it is in a state of complete flow, more complete than any Olympic athlete could ever hope for. The sheer concentration required, the exertion, the split-second decision-making required to avoid dying of hunger. To master this state is to capture the prey, and it must feel incredible to finally catch a gazelle. Incredible in a way that is impossible for a human living a modern lifestyle to fathom. To fail means to die, of course, and that cannot feel good to a cheetah. But it's just death. We all die anyway. Human beings, cheetah, gazelles. It is a simple fact that you will die.
btilly 9y ago
Citation needed. My understanding of primitive agrarian societies are that they have hard work, hard lives, poor diet, and a population that is generally at the edge of starvation. (In good times, population grows. In bad times...) You might want to read Guns, Germs and Steel as an example of a reference backing this view up. Or read through random snippets of history like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315%E2%80%9317 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315%E2%80%931... and get a sense for the very real struggles that people faced.
- kolpa 9y ago
  http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w... "Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's"
  - ghettoimp 9y ago
    Nine inch nails. “We think we’ve climbed so far, on all the backs we’ve come down...”
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  I don't have a specific text offhand that addresses this directly, but Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms addresses this general point. It's part of a series of related works, edited by Joel Mokyr, including last year's The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert Gordon. https://www.worldcat.org/title/farewell-to-alms-a-brief-economic-history-of-the-world-the-princeton-economic-history-of-the-western-world/oclc/939234998 https://www.worldcat.org/title/farewell-to-alms-a-brief-econ... https://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/series/title/the-princeton-economic-history-of-the-western-world.html https://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/series/title/the-prince... Whilst preindustrial societies did see variable subsistence, the floor tended to be higher than today (Clark's introduction, available online, notes that the poorest people who've ever lived, live now, and in great numbers), and cycles tended to be long-term -- decades or centuries, not years. Whilst life expectancy at birth was low, from age of majority it was generally far less abbreviated. Disease was far more prevalent in cities (London was a net population sink well into the 19h century), and major instances of famine and plague something experienced perhaps only by occasional generations within an area, though wth mortality rates from 10-90% (far more typically in the 10-30% range). You're familiar with Laurie Garrett's wwork on healthxare, and the fact that 85% of mortality decline since 1850 materially predates modern medical practice, including antibiotics, vaccines, and organ transsplants. The Conquest of Pestilence in New York City chart highlights this: https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/wp-content/uploads/200910_blog_goklany1.jpg https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/wp-content/uplo...
tomc1985 9y ago
If you get too idyllic you get conquered by jealous neighbors

jdtang13 9y ago

Yes, that's a very good point. Work has always been part of the human condition, and middle class people in the first world are enjoying much, much more comfortable working conditions than their ancestors did. I think we should all be very grateful for that. But it's also a very modern thing for people to suffer from alienating, despair-inducing work. I think this alienation, which Marx speaks of in much detail, is the root of many modern complaints. When you do manual work outdoors, there is a sort of physical element that allows you to get "in the zone" and it really feels like true work. But for white collar tasks like accounting, programming, and filing papers, there's not as often a moment for meditation or getting "in the zone". And there's something much more alienating about doing comfortable work that is held up, not because of the winter frost, but because of some corporate inefficiency. Likewise, blue collar assembly-line labor, in which your entire day is spent building a single part for a huge machine, is much the same. The carpenter can feel delighted from finishing an entire chair, and a weaver might enjoy seeing many completed baskets, but the factory worker never knows rest, never knows any satisfaction, because the modern species of work never ends. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (Genesis 3:18-19)

mathgladiator 9y ago
You captured a core reason that I picked up wood working: projects finish. An annoying aspect of software is that it takes a life of its own. It is never done, but there are feature requests, bugs, and updates. You make a table, and that is it. It's done. Sure, you have to clean it, but mostly it will last a while until it breaks down.
- smattiso 9y ago
  This is why I wish I had gotten into video game development rather than app development. Once the game is finished it is (for the most part) complete.
  - 9y ago

ljw1001 9y ago

This is a largely valid point, but it has traditionally been much easier to see the fruits of your labor (often literally, as most people produced food, but if not, then in a small shop, a small manufacture of some kind, a small legal office...). Today we toil for owners we never meet, executives we would barely recognize if we pass them in the hall, customers we never see. We get the stressors, and never see the point.

ThrustVectoring 9y ago

Yes, we're better off in material terms, but today's work is the most meaningless it has ever been.

osrec 9y ago
Could not agree with you more. Satisfaction is lacking in so many aspects of the modern work environment.

Trundle 9y ago

Equivalent animals certainly don't spend all day toiling. We aren't ants. I don't see any reason to believe that was the case for us.

mathgladiator 9y ago
For many animals, every day is a fight to live. Constantly looking for food.
- watwut 9y ago
  Cats sleep 16 hours a day for example. Animals in nature are not constantly looking for food, except grass eaters who ear whole day.
  - awat 9y ago
    This reminds me of a paper on primate stress level increases due to the amount of time they spend foraging (study was focused on deforestation but seems applicable here). It seems to suggest a biological ceiling for well being and reproductive success. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130122102110.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130122102110.h...
  - mathgladiator 9y ago
    True. That is also because digestion for them is wonky (IIRC). However, they are a predator. Look at mice or other small creatures, and you realize their entire existence is the search for food.
CalRobert 9y ago
Of course, most of them die. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37775622 http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37775622 Though if we weren't so damn focused on having so much crap maybe a few of those animals would still be around.

JDiculous 9y ago

This is actually false. The average American worker today works more hours per year than a 14th century peasant (http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medieval-peasant-got-more-vacation-time-than-you/ http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medie...). Hunter-gatherers only worked 2-3 hours per day. Despite technology allowing us to work less, we work more. Yes we should be grateful of technological advancement, but too many people are unnecessarily depressed and suicidal, and it doesn't have to be this way.

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TomMckenny 9y ago
Indeed, the typical American now spends more hours just to pay for land to sleep on than hunter-gatherers did to live.
- slphil 9y ago
  This isn't true. Hunter gatherer life is nearly universally harsh and violent. I posted an article on this in the same comment thread. Modern humans are miserable, for sure, but older forms of life were not better.
drewcon 9y ago
So more “vacation”, but dead at 40. Sounds like a great trade.
slphil 9y ago
To some degree, yes, peasants worked less than modern humans, but also had to extend large amounts of effort to prepare food, attain wood for fires and light, build their own structures, etc. I slightly romanticize medieval life so I won't convince you that their lives were hellish and awful, but we take for granted the amount of work our society does for us. Also, the idea of the high-leisure hunter gatherer is false. This is ideology masquerading as archaeology/history, and it confirms the biases of people who have genuine criticisms of modern life. http://quillette.com/2017/12/16/romanticizing-hunter-gatherer/ http://quillette.com/2017/12/16/romanticizing-hunter-gathere...

xigency 9y ago

In the book Sapiens the author argues that life was perhaps better before the invention of agriculture, with relative comfort and less time spent on subsistence.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
It's interesting that the skeletons found from the period after agriculture was introduced are significantly shorter than those from before.
vilmosi 9y ago
The book also says how that world was incredibly violent and unsympathetic to the elderly/sick.

rublev 9y ago

Yeah I love coming home from my hard as fuck underpaid job to turn on the TV and see idiots kicking a ball for $100 million dollars. Something is definitely wrong.

trophycase 9y ago

Work seems to be largely disconnected from actual results or goals, and appears to be straying further into the abstract. In the past work and exercise were nearly identical, now work looks something like sitting in a desk all day under fluorescent light. Nutrition was once a result of simply eating what was available, but now has changed to a daily fight, something that requires constant effort and discipline in order to maintain as we are completely bombarded by those that seek to exploit our instinctive responses. We've traded these and other things for safety, comfort, and reproductive success.

some_account 9y ago

The article criticizes American work culture for very good reasons. Of course we should work and have jobs, but that doesn't mean work needs to be like it is in America. Do you guys in America even know how it is in Sweden for example? We don't have this competitive culture, and companies are trying hard to make their employees feel good at work. Nobody really works full 8 hours at big companies and nobody is stressed very much. Bosses never blame anyone directly for anything since it's not allowed, culture wise. People are very relaxed. When I read about American culture, it seems insane.

tuukkah 9y ago
Plus the month-long paid summer vacations! EDIT: To be more precise: typically ~20 days in the summer and additional ~5-15 days in the winter. Averages by country, Sweden 26 days: https://www.europeandataportal.eu/en/highlights/which-country-eu-has-most-annual-holidays https://www.europeandataportal.eu/en/highlights/which-countr... 34 days (minimum?) when you include the 16 paid public holidays such as Christmas, New Year, Easter, Midsummer: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-vacation-days.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-...
- gambiting 9y ago
  Everyone in EU gets at least 21 paid days off a year + unlimited paid sick leave, no matter if you're a surgeon or a cleaner. But yes, for bigger companies it's usually closer to 30 paid days off than 20.
- antonkm 9y ago
  It's more often 5-6 weeks. As a Swede I always feel alien to the hours Americans seem to put in. I'm a consultant and work roughly 35h/w in Sweden. I often find this a bit too much, given that the work I do is disconnected from anything "real". Sure, my clients are always happy and I do fun things, but my family and friends is what's real. I truly believe we should automate everything and let humans decide by themselves if they feel like working. If not, something like UBI should exist.

bambax 9y ago

Past societies had classes, so conditions were very different depending on the class you belonged to. If you were a Roman patriarch you were expected not to work at all. Same if you were a 17th century French aristocrat. The promise of the modern society was that everyone being "equal", we would all become aristocrats. In fact we all became slaves. (And of course, hunters gatherers lived, to the best of our knowledge, in classless groups where each individual worked very little each day).

dolzenko 9y ago

Work surely was universal, but 2 things are very different now 1. Working outside (as mentioned) just doesn't compare with office job, i.e. it provides physical exercise, fresh air, being close to nature/animals. Now we're simulating all these things with gyms/vacations/zoos (I think the quality of such simulation is out of question?) 2. Work had to be done with your family, now there is no simulation for this in our society at all. And I would guess it was much better option than running as fast as we can (as most corporate people do) at 6:00PM, away from these annoying faces :)

andrepd 9y ago

And I find this sort of posts bizarre. The argument that "we are better of today than we were in prehistory or the middle ages, so quit your complaining". Yes, things are better, but no, that doesn't mean we should stop wanting to improve. We have accomplished a lot, but we have not reached the end-all stage of human development. Societies are better than they were 500 years ago, but they're still pretty damn flawed. We can do much, much better.

wu-ikkyu 9y ago

>At the same time I think we should be grateful that we live in the best life conditions ever seen by humanity. What metrics did you use to determine this, other than life expectancy? A zoo animal may have a longer life expectancy, but a free animal arguably leads a more satisfying life according to their nature.

aklemm 9y ago

It was more dire often, but it was also more leisurely during the times it wasn't dire. So now we're eliminated the dire situations, but we've given up the leisurely situations in return for more stuff (and also more safetly, organization, far greater adventures, and other things).

grasshopperpurp 9y ago

>It's like humans enjoyed their time for millennia and only now we have to work. Has nothing to do with the OP's comment, and it attempts to shift the conversation to justification. >For all human history, the conditions of people were dire. Today people might be stuck in an office in their "best year", but people in the past had to toil all day to barely scrape by and didn't even have that many years to live. Again, why are you doing this? >It's only now that we live these comfortable lives with houses, heating, electricity, technology and a sea of information at our fingertips. These things all exist and keep functioning because people work. Who is arguing against work in general? The article and the OP are discussing working conditions. Work doesn't have to be torture. America has a very unhealthy relationship with the idea of work and what it means. No pain no gain, right? >And yet some think that "society has gone wrong", as if the past was paradise. In the last 40-50 years, American society has taken some significant steps backwards, and the workers have felt it. If you're comparing conditions to hundreds or thousands of years ago, why? What is your goal? >Work has been a human universal through history. There is surely an argument to be made about the fact that now we are so productive that we might not need to work as much as we had to. At the same time I think we should be grateful that we live in the best life conditions ever seen by humanity. You finally brushed against the point in your penultimate paragraph.

otakucode 9y ago

Your notions of history are incorrect. There were certainly periods of deprivation, particularly after the Industrial Revolution and before the New Deal in the US, but other than that, no, people were not owned so totally by their employers. They did not need to work as much to earn as little. Between 1950 and 1980, the average wage of the lower 90% of the economy rose by 75%. Between 1980 and 2010, it rose by 1%. And during 1980 to 2010 we experienced the introduction of computers into the workplace. Average worker productivity skyrocketed at an absurd rate. Yet, every penny of that advancement and more was scalped by employers and shareholders. People are not being greedy in expecting more. They are intuitively sensing that they are being exploited more and more heavily every single year. No increase in productivity is ever reflected in increased earnings or free time or anything like that. The notion of the New Deal was that 1 person working only 40 hours a week should be paid enough that they could raise an entire family on it comfortably. Do you think that could be done today? No, it couldn't. If you've got a couple kids, and you only have 1 40 hour job providing the income you are completely boned. You're poor. We have been racing backwards, and we have gained literally nothing for it.

tylerjwilk00 9y ago

I don't think work in and of itself is the problem. The problem with modern day work is that it's become so homogenous regardless of desired outcome. For example: - If I want meat, I perform task X - If I want heat, I perform task X - If I want cothes, I perform task X In previous generations (more recent than you might assume) many of these desired outcomes had totally different tasks. Its also a false dichotomy that things are work _OR_ play. Many things are a blend of Work/Play/Hobby or more simply just "living". It would have been an evolutionary advantage to be interested in and inclined to perform various types of tasks for early humans. Modern work suppresses this human need. This is why we have hobbies and people are depressed. More "free" time to watch Netflix may not be the pinnacle happiness and fulfillment. This is not to suggest that life was "easy" in the past.