7 ms·

Was there a period in humanity, or in the life of any living creature, where they just sort of stopped engaging in productive activity and it was a good thing?

• saghm 4y ago
  > Was there a period in humanity, or in the life of any living creature, where they just sort of stopped engaging in productive activity and it was a good thing? Humanity as a whole? I don't think anyone has advocated that here, just a certain segment of the population in their later years. As for any living creature, I didn't spend any time doing anything productive over the weekend, and I think it was a good thing. In fact, I've been doing that every weekend for a long time, and I plan to keep doing it!
  • throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
    So why not do it every day of the week instead? Doing enough work to survive is a fundamental part of life. Technology and society function to either make that work easier or lower the amount of work that needs to be done. Take either of those away and you're going to be spending much less weekends doing "nothing productive". meta point is that this is why nuanced conversations on the (texted based) internet are a waste of time. You and the person you're quoting are not really talking about the same thing. In a conversation you would go back and forth and figure that out; on the internet that's not required.
    • saghm 4y ago
      > You and the person you're quoting are not really talking about the same thing. The reason I responded to the parent comment was that it seemed to me like they were misinterpreting the person they were responding to; the original comment that started this thread was that people who only have wage-based income instead of asset-based income would not be able to effectively retire and would have to work for their entire life. The response to this was to argue that if people didn't work, then humanity wouldn't progress. I don't see why "humanity needs productivity to progress" implies "every human needs to be productive for every moment of their entire life", which is why I responded with both a direct answer (i.e. arguing that people should be able to retire is not arguing that people shouldn't be productive _ever_ in their life) and a tongue-in-cheek response (nobody actually is productive every single moment in their life).
• q845712 4y ago
  there's the story that pre-colonial Hawaiians lived in abundance and basically didn't work for 4 months of the year (see e.g. https://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/home/HawaiiLaborHistory.html https://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/home/HawaiiLaborHistory.ht... ). So that was a system where everyone could stop engaging in productive activity because as a society they agreed that they had "enough" for the year and it would be more fun to have a vacation than to have "more".
  • throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
    Presumably if their population grew too much this would no longer be the case?