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consider what humans did before society. they followed herds of ruminant animals and hunted them. they were working 90% of their waking hours. their work was th

consider what humans did before society. they followed herds of ruminant animals and hunted them. they were working 90% of their waking hours. their work was their lives. but at night they would spend a few hours looking at the stars. what we have now is pretty similar. except instead of stars we have screens. i would say life is ok if you can read something interesting every day and have a job that you enjoy. i would say you should prioritize having impact or having a job you love. everyone accumulates as much money as possible at the expense of everything else… there are people with millions saved up at the age of 60… who then die shortly after and did a bunch of work for nothing. keep enough saved to cover modest expenses for a year. beyond that, priotize other things

AngryData 1y ago
I take issue with the idea that pre-modern humans were working 90% of the time. We know medieval peasants didn't, we know bronze age societies didn't, and we have no real evidence to support hunting based societies doing it either, especially when we consider the lower nutritional health of past humans that made physical labor far more difficult to maintain consistently without just dieing from pushing the body beyond its limits. It is far more TV trope than reality going by historical sources. Medieval peasants spent most winters doing mostly random home tasks and small crafts while they sat around a fire. And farming based societies generally put in the vast majority over their work in a two months in spring and in the fall. You don't plant fields in July, you just complain about the weather not being ideal for plant growth and did basic living chores that you always do like washing and mending your single pair of clothes or patching up your roof or milking your cow. But there is only so much mending and washing and milking to do. Or look at ancient egyptions, they very clearly didn't need to work 90% of the time if they got time to build massive pyramids, and there is considerable evidence that pyramid workers were not forced to work, but simply offered extra booze and food for doing so. If you didn't work on those projects you weren't starved to death, you just didn't get to drink as much alcohol with your buddies or brag about how you helped build a wonder that will stand for hundreds or thousands of years.
- smeeger 1y ago
  ah, sir please read my comment. “before society.” ie the environment we evolved in. not post agriculture. so your whole comment is moot
jinjin2 1y ago
> they were working 90% of their waking hours. their work was their lives. This is not true at all. A quick google for “hunter gatherer work hours” would tell you that they worked far less than we do today. 2-5 hours of what we would define as work a day, with the rest being mainly leisure.
- smeeger 1y ago
  a quick google is apparently completely wrong
jodrellblank 1y ago
> "they followed herds of ruminant animals and hunted them. they were working 90% of their waking hours" Idk if you've ever seen sheep in person, but "standing near some sheep while they eat grass" is not work in the sense of effort, concentration, labour. There's a reason the Boy Who Cried Wolf was bored out of his skull, and why shepherding was a task given to a boy while the village adults were doing other things.
- smeeger 1y ago
  we didnt eat or hunt sheep. we followed herds of nomadic ruminant animals across entire continents. simply keeping up with them on foot would be a lot of work. let alone hunting them, moving them, dressing and processing them and then you have the task of making and maintaining all the tools and equipment that were necessary. fires had to be tended… can i respectfully suggest that you are completely wrong?
  - jodrellblank 1y ago
    OK you don't like sheep, so I Googled cows and found they graze 6 - 11 hours a day and spend much of the other time resting. They eat 60+Kg of grass per day and you aren't going to get 60Kg of blades of grass quickly. Nor are they going to cross continents anytime soon. The BBC fact file on Giraffes says "Giraffes spend most of their time eating, feeding between 16 to 20 hours a day." Can I suggest that if you want to support the claim, you offer some actual reasoning and evidence - there should be some diaries of native Americans and how they ran so many hours a day they coverd several marathons every day, and about how many mountains of knives they amassed working 15 hours a day knife making, and so on.

AngryData 1y ago

I take issue with the idea that pre-modern humans were working 90% of the time. We know medieval peasants didn't, we know bronze age societies didn't, and we have no real evidence to support hunting based societies doing it either, especially when we consider the lower nutritional health of past humans that made physical labor far more difficult to maintain consistently without just dieing from pushing the body beyond its limits. It is far more TV trope than reality going by historical sources. Medieval peasants spent most winters doing mostly random home tasks and small crafts while they sat around a fire. And farming based societies generally put in the vast majority over their work in a two months in spring and in the fall. You don't plant fields in July, you just complain about the weather not being ideal for plant growth and did basic living chores that you always do like washing and mending your single pair of clothes or patching up your roof or milking your cow. But there is only so much mending and washing and milking to do. Or look at ancient egyptions, they very clearly didn't need to work 90% of the time if they got time to build massive pyramids, and there is considerable evidence that pyramid workers were not forced to work, but simply offered extra booze and food for doing so. If you didn't work on those projects you weren't starved to death, you just didn't get to drink as much alcohol with your buddies or brag about how you helped build a wonder that will stand for hundreds or thousands of years.

smeeger 1y ago
ah, sir please read my comment. “before society.” ie the environment we evolved in. not post agriculture. so your whole comment is moot

jinjin2 1y ago

> they were working 90% of their waking hours. their work was their lives. This is not true at all. A quick google for “hunter gatherer work hours” would tell you that they worked far less than we do today. 2-5 hours of what we would define as work a day, with the rest being mainly leisure.

smeeger 1y ago
a quick google is apparently completely wrong

jodrellblank 1y ago

> "they followed herds of ruminant animals and hunted them. they were working 90% of their waking hours" Idk if you've ever seen sheep in person, but "standing near some sheep while they eat grass" is not work in the sense of effort, concentration, labour. There's a reason the Boy Who Cried Wolf was bored out of his skull, and why shepherding was a task given to a boy while the village adults were doing other things.

smeeger 1y ago
we didnt eat or hunt sheep. we followed herds of nomadic ruminant animals across entire continents. simply keeping up with them on foot would be a lot of work. let alone hunting them, moving them, dressing and processing them and then you have the task of making and maintaining all the tools and equipment that were necessary. fires had to be tended… can i respectfully suggest that you are completely wrong?
- jodrellblank 1y ago
  OK you don't like sheep, so I Googled cows and found they graze 6 - 11 hours a day and spend much of the other time resting. They eat 60+Kg of grass per day and you aren't going to get 60Kg of blades of grass quickly. Nor are they going to cross continents anytime soon. The BBC fact file on Giraffes says "Giraffes spend most of their time eating, feeding between 16 to 20 hours a day." Can I suggest that if you want to support the claim, you offer some actual reasoning and evidence - there should be some diaries of native Americans and how they ran so many hours a day they coverd several marathons every day, and about how many mountains of knives they amassed working 15 hours a day knife making, and so on.