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I don't think it's that deep: Obligatory manual labor destroys the body (and, often, the mind) and what time you have you spend exhausted. Being entirely sedent
by throwaway27448 7mo ago
I don't think it's that deep: Obligatory manual labor destroys the body (and, often, the mind) and what time you have you spend exhausted. Being entirely sedentary remains a choice for us office workers—this is why people exercise and spend time outside.
Of course, I would like more flexibility in choosing how much I and where I do my sedentary labor, so I might devote time to, say, gardening. But it's easy to forget that humans have spent most of human history trying to escape subsistence farming.
I have worked subsistence farming for a small portion of my life, and I cannot tell you how hard it is, physically and psychologically. That was by choice, as part of essentially joining my wife's culture and family. If I were to do that for the remainder of my life it would destroy me.
Anyway, I'm going to go happily work from my desk 30 ft from my bedroom while drinking coffee likely farmed for about ~$0.30/hour while I make a few hundred times that.
- stunseed 7mo ago> But it's easy to forget that humans have spent most of human history trying to escape subsistence farming. Do you define human history as the last ~10k years or last ~100k-500k years? But yes, certainly at least the last 3000 years for most humans have been spent farming to a large degree. But if we are even moderate in estimations of human origins, farming is very recent.
- throwaway27448 7mo agoHistory certainly does not predate sedentary farming. It seems reasonable to put at around ~8kya. Certainly, some people still live as hunter gatherers. I presume people can deduce I do not refer to them.
- Noumenon72 7mo agoI think specifying "recorded history" would remove the confusion. Human history could refer to the history of anatomically modern humans, including before farming.
- throwaway27448 7mo agoHistory is a bit of a confusing word that way; I suppose I can see it can be used in an informal sense to refer to any timeline outside of just historiography, which does tend to refer to a distinct study from archaeology and anthropology. Noted.
- satvikpendem 7mo agoYou used the word correctly don't worry. Seems like the initial replyer meant prehistory.
- satvikpendem 7mo agoHistory is recorded, that's the definition of the word. Prehistory is not recorded which is what the 500 kya to 10 kya refers to.
- Noumenon72 7mo agoThe wikipedia for "Recorded history"[1] draws the distinction this way: - Before writing: prehistory - After writing: recorded history - Both together: human history[2] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorded_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorded_history 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_history
- satvikpendem 7mo agoHistory means the time of recorded events, the 10 kya to present day, they used the word correctly. Anatomically modern humans are prehistory.
- aaarrm 7mo agoIt truly is not a choice, as I cannot sustain my family / lifestyle with manual labor. Opting into working out for the sake of my health is not nearly the same.
- evanjrowley 7mo ago>It truly is not a choice, as I cannot sustain my family / lifestyle Success and failure are choices. Accepting this allows us to take responsibility for the worlds we've created. Ignoring this is self-destructive act of cognitive dissonance and we pay for it years later.
- troupo 7mo ago> Success and failure are choices. Tell that to crop failures of sustinance farmers. "Oh you just chose the weather to be bad/a fast soreading disease/a severe drought. Live with your choices".