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"For most of human history, work was a drudgery to be borne by those people who had to do it, and avoided by those who could afford to. From ancient Greece to m
by perfunctory 8y ago
"For most of human history, work was a drudgery to be borne by those people who had to do it, and avoided by those who could afford to. From ancient Greece to medieval Europe, toil was seen as a necessary evil, and mainly as a misfortune of the poor. "
Human history starts waaay before ancient Greece.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Hunter-gatherer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Hunter-gatherer
- pjc50 8y agoHuman life, yes. History? Not so much. Possibly the only hunter-gatherer civilization we have more than fragments of history from are the Australian Aborigines. This makes it very hard to ask anthropological questions of the past about how people felt about their work.
- cimmanom 8y agoAncient India, ancient China, ancient Egypt, and ancient Mesopotamia are all civilizations with far older histories (with meaningful archaeological remains and in many cases written records) than ancient Greece. Greece is just where many Euro-centric historical perspectives begin.
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago"work was a drudgery ... toil was seen as a necessary evil, and mainly as a misfortune of the poor. " And this is also largely false. Yet another example of the usual tecno-optimism of HN.