> Modern-day Westerners live like the gentry. I couldn't disagree more. Having "Miss Washing Machine" does not make you nobility. I'm talking about the privile

> Modern-day Westerners live like the gentry. I couldn't disagree more. Having "Miss Washing Machine" does not make you nobility. I'm talking about the privilege of no stress, not the privilege of not having to do some menial work. It's not hard to visualize a hypothetical modern human who has all the modern luxuries but still lives a miserable existence paycheck to paycheck with massive amounts of stress. > As a result we have enough leisure time to spend 3 hrs on our pocket tricorder and 4.5 hrs watching moving pictures (TV), on average, every day! Sure, but if you, or someone else, had 12 months to spend any way you want, do you think people would spend 12 months watching TV? People do it to wind down, from stress, from work. We are caught in a wheelhouse that never allows us any extended period of rest or contemplation, so we grab the most "energy efficient"/instantly rewarding relaxation during the time we are allotted. > Instead of spending 7.5 hours producing amazing works of art and science, we entertain ourselves. Surely you agree that there's a difference between 7.5 hours of spent "free time" in the context of working 8+ hours a day, compared to the context of not working at all? Don't you think you would use your free time differently if it wasn't regulated in the shadow of your "normal" job? Everyone has their own theory of human nature but mine is this: given enough time, and boredom, a non-trivial percentage of human beings will sooner or later do something useful. And I'm not saying all work today is useless, obviously it's not, but some of it definitely is and probably, in my opinion, hinders other, truly useful work. And yes, of course "useful" is subjective, but my personal definition of it is emotional or physical labor that furthers humanity through any kind of altruism or sustainable technological advancement (or, obviously, supports these initiatives in any necessary way). > (I suspect the original nobility acted a lot like this, too, given how productive the nobility in books like Jane Austen's or The Great Gatsby were--they sat around all day having a party) Sure, there are lazy people in every group of humans in the world if you look for them. I don't think there's a way to "solve" that problem, if it even is a problem in the first place. Diversity is probably more good than bad, and boredom can be a catalyst. > On the other hand, we have created the nobility you were looking for: government grants fund much of the basic science, and a fair amount of arts (via universities) Sure, but that's exactly what I'm talking about. Not that it doesn't exist, but that it needs to exist more, and should maybe even be our primary goal.