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It's interesting how all the tedious tasks listed are a product of modernity. Vacuuming, driving to work, flossing, doing dishes, etc. I wonder how repetitive

It's interesting how all the tedious tasks listed are a product of modernity. Vacuuming, driving to work, flossing, doing dishes, etc. I wonder how repetitive life feels for humans who still have to hunt for their food. Not to say that we should shift back to a hunter-gatherer society, but I wonder how much of the mundaneness of life is something we brought on ourselves and not actually an implicit part of existence.

maxwindiff 7y ago
They have their version of mundane tasks.
knzhou 7y ago
That's a totally backwards take. Most of these things are modern labor-saving devices that replaced even worse drudgery. Sweeping takes longer than vacuuming. Washing dishes by hand takes longer than a dishwasher -- especially if you don't have unlimited running water, or dish detergent, or if you need to start a fire to get hot water. Ancient Romans didn't have to deal with rush hour traffic, but research says their commutes were just as long as ours. To put it another way: we used to required half of all human beings to attend to household tasks. That setup wasn't put into place because of malice, it was there by necessity. Managing a household used to take as much effort and thought as running a small business does today. Modernity has saved us from that.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  The most stressful thing about modern commutes is that you can easily die if you take your eyes off the road for one second. Romans on horseback certainly didn't have that problem.
  - pshc 7y ago
    Driving to work doesn't fit with the others--it can be replaced with riding the subway to work. The automotive status quo is tragedy and farce.
    - jdnenej 7y ago
      I find taking the bus to work quite relaxing. I can put on my noise cancelling headphones and rest for the whole trip
  - knzhou 7y ago
    Back then you probably couldn’t afford even a horse, plus if your feet got a little scratch while walking you might have just died of infection a week later. Come on, any claim that antiquity had better living standards is absurd on its face.
    - Doxin 7y ago
      Clearly the living standards were better, but I imagine there definitely were less things considered to be chores. Gathering food hardly gets boring if you're hungry. That said I highly doubt if that's a preferable state of affairs.
- kiliantics 7y ago
  Ancient Romans were not hunter-gatherers so you are not making the right comparisons here. In fact, it's estimated that hunter-gatherers only do/did about 15 hours of productive labour a week, so doesn't seem they need our "labour-saving devices" since they already have much more free time than us.
  - knzhou 7y ago
    Well, OP was complaining about modernity, so I compared to what came right before modernity. Hunter-gatherers might have actually had it better, under some measures -- but the world can't support that many of them.
- ascorbic 7y ago
  If anything, you're underplaying it. Beating a rug takes far longer than vacuuming or sweeping. Before the washing machine, doing the laundry could easily take a whole day (which is why people wore clothes far longer between washes)
  - c3534l 7y ago
    Sure, but even before that we didn't have rugs or floors to clean, we just died in damp caves and made stone blades.
jotm 7y ago
I'd imagine, if it was really early hunter gatherers, it would go more like "hungry, caught prey, ate, happy!". Way more impulsive responses. Throw in some "starving, I wish food was more stable, even if tedious". Anything after agriculture would include tedious tasks like tending to the crops and cleaning.
chrisco255 7y ago
I think I've read several studies that indicate hunter gatherers worked less than agrarian societies. However, agrarian societies are better at producing predictable abundance of food, so they outpace hunters by far. I will admit that hunting is incredibly fun. I do think we lost something as a trade-off when we moved to agrarian/industrial societies.
- bobbiechen 7y ago
  I recently saw an interesting review of Against the Grain by James Scott, which makes the claim that: only the cereal grains can serve as a basis for taxation: visible, divisible, assessable, storable, transportable, and “rationable.” And so early states led the way in agriculture in order to collect more taxes. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/14/book-review-against-the-grain/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/14/book-review-against-th...
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    I dunno, I suspect this is a cause and effect sort of thing. The grains and abundance probably came first, civilization came second, and with that came taxes and government.
jonahss 7y ago
I’ve been doing woodworking with just hand tools and wow, some tasks just take waaaaaay longer

maxwindiff 7y ago

They have their version of mundane tasks.

knzhou 7y ago

That's a totally backwards take. Most of these things are modern labor-saving devices that replaced even worse drudgery. Sweeping takes longer than vacuuming. Washing dishes by hand takes longer than a dishwasher -- especially if you don't have unlimited running water, or dish detergent, or if you need to start a fire to get hot water. Ancient Romans didn't have to deal with rush hour traffic, but research says their commutes were just as long as ours. To put it another way: we used to required half of all human beings to attend to household tasks. That setup wasn't put into place because of malice, it was there by necessity. Managing a household used to take as much effort and thought as running a small business does today. Modernity has saved us from that.

chrisco255 7y ago
The most stressful thing about modern commutes is that you can easily die if you take your eyes off the road for one second. Romans on horseback certainly didn't have that problem.
- pshc 7y ago
  Driving to work doesn't fit with the others--it can be replaced with riding the subway to work. The automotive status quo is tragedy and farce.
  - jdnenej 7y ago
    I find taking the bus to work quite relaxing. I can put on my noise cancelling headphones and rest for the whole trip
- knzhou 7y ago
  Back then you probably couldn’t afford even a horse, plus if your feet got a little scratch while walking you might have just died of infection a week later. Come on, any claim that antiquity had better living standards is absurd on its face.
  - Doxin 7y ago
    Clearly the living standards were better, but I imagine there definitely were less things considered to be chores. Gathering food hardly gets boring if you're hungry. That said I highly doubt if that's a preferable state of affairs.
kiliantics 7y ago
Ancient Romans were not hunter-gatherers so you are not making the right comparisons here. In fact, it's estimated that hunter-gatherers only do/did about 15 hours of productive labour a week, so doesn't seem they need our "labour-saving devices" since they already have much more free time than us.
- knzhou 7y ago
  Well, OP was complaining about modernity, so I compared to what came right before modernity. Hunter-gatherers might have actually had it better, under some measures -- but the world can't support that many of them.
ascorbic 7y ago
If anything, you're underplaying it. Beating a rug takes far longer than vacuuming or sweeping. Before the washing machine, doing the laundry could easily take a whole day (which is why people wore clothes far longer between washes)
- c3534l 7y ago
  Sure, but even before that we didn't have rugs or floors to clean, we just died in damp caves and made stone blades.

jotm 7y ago

I'd imagine, if it was really early hunter gatherers, it would go more like "hungry, caught prey, ate, happy!". Way more impulsive responses. Throw in some "starving, I wish food was more stable, even if tedious". Anything after agriculture would include tedious tasks like tending to the crops and cleaning.

chrisco255 7y ago

I think I've read several studies that indicate hunter gatherers worked less than agrarian societies. However, agrarian societies are better at producing predictable abundance of food, so they outpace hunters by far. I will admit that hunting is incredibly fun. I do think we lost something as a trade-off when we moved to agrarian/industrial societies.

bobbiechen 7y ago
I recently saw an interesting review of Against the Grain by James Scott, which makes the claim that: only the cereal grains can serve as a basis for taxation: visible, divisible, assessable, storable, transportable, and “rationable.” And so early states led the way in agriculture in order to collect more taxes. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/14/book-review-against-the-grain/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/14/book-review-against-th...
- chrisco255 7y ago
  I dunno, I suspect this is a cause and effect sort of thing. The grains and abundance probably came first, civilization came second, and with that came taxes and government.

jonahss 7y ago

I’ve been doing woodworking with just hand tools and wow, some tasks just take waaaaaay longer