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If hunting/gathering is play and since that's basically what all animals do, then the blog's title, "play makes us human" is totally incorrect. Of course other
by numtel 3y ago
If hunting/gathering is play and since that's basically what all animals do, then the blog's title, "play makes us human" is totally incorrect. Of course other animals play, we've all seen it.
It seems the opposite: toil makes us human. Our inability to accept what can be foraged has pushed us into working.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago> Our inability to accept what can be foraged has pushed us into working. It's more that foraging limits population size, and when people have to compete for resources they end up killing or starving each other. Humans have a drive to grow and reproduce, and they have been more successful by working together, then by industrializing (e.g. agriculture). Because they got so good at it, one person could do the work to feed nine others, meaning the other nine didn't need to work in food production anymore and could do other things. (oversimplified, you know what I mean) Everything's been abstracted away to things-exchanged-for-money though, nobody needs to forage or build their own homes anymore, just fork over cash and it's there. Getting said cash, there's myriad ways to do so and we keep inventing new ones, like... recording oneself queueing up at Disney World, or dressing up in a maid outfit and doing NPC emotes for money.
- piuantiderp 3y agoCalm down Ted Kaczynski
- redblacktree 3y agoTo Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Genesis 3:17-3:19 I always took this to mean precisely what you said. "From the sweat of your brow," you eat because you chose to define for yourself "good and evil" with respect to nature's provisions.
- numtel 3y agoYes, Genesis is a great example of this. The Old Testament is a religious text embedded in an agricultural society and reflects the need to come to terms with that. I like to connect it with Douglas Adams' answer to the meaning of life from Hitchhiker's Guide: 42. The number itself is shaped like a human bent on their knees toiling in a field.
- mharig 3y agoWell, actually it was because the stupid Adam listened to his wife.