Is man restless because he gave up the thrill of the hunt for the assurances of agriculture?
Is man restless because he gave up the thrill of the hunt for the assurances of agriculture?
Maybe he should return to berry picking and eating bugs.
I think humanity has grown restless due to the granularisation of work. It is no longer necessary to develop an overall understanding of an entire domain for most jobs, as they're based on the assembly line principle - learn to screw that bolt on tight enough, and your job is done. Nevermind the rest of the car, not your assignment.
I suspect this leaves a lot of cognitive bandwidth essentially unused, so the brain naturally seeks to fill it up with whatever else is at hand.
In addition, this has also somewhat stolen the satisfaction of understanding the context of our work, of seeing that it's not just wasted time, essentially. Work/production/creation/generation/transformation used to be far more significant parts of both our lives as well as our overall fulfilment, so we're now basically overclocked PCs left running Minesweeper at 100%, which yearn for meaning and something to fill up all of that available compute potential. And there's cognitive junk food a-plenty, but just like junk food, it rarely satisfies long-term.
This, I think, also spreads ripples across other aspects of our lives - I'm thinking here especially about the seeming death of nuance in general discourse as one of the main such repercussions, so it's yet another existential cascade failure.
I mostly say this and the above solely on an anecdotal basis, but it is a pretty large basis, considering it consists of roughly 80% of all previous coworkers and professional acquaintances in over a decade, both domestic and otherwise.
I appreciate your response. I think you are better at expressing some of the things that brought me down this avenue of thought, I’m working on getting better at putting my thoughts into words though. I believe there must be some sort of balance between nomadic tribe member and modern man, yet we may have gone past the tipping point somewhere in the past. Now menial work is the bigger part of life whereas before, essential work was the bigger part (hunting for meat or gathering berries).
Yep, we've most certainly shifted too far in the opposite direction. I mean, all that's required for most aspects of life nowadays is an internet connection. If one has that, there's no need to leave the house - I speak from experience, I spent 2020-through-2023 100% locked in my apartment, only needing to leave when seeking medical services. Even the jobs which still require in-person action are slowly being replaced with automation (see delivery bots and drones, self-driving cabs, even LLM-based medical diagnoses).
The only thing I think differs in our views is that I consider hunting and gathering to have been replaced with other activities, like farming, animal rearing, construction, general industry, generation of literature, centralisation of information, basically everything which makes our species persist and advance. It's still the same basic principle, as in having lost a lot of essential activities and their benefits.
Complexity is an inevitable result of development, and we've developed so much that our needs have both expanded and developed with us. I don't think either hunting or gathering, or both would be enough for us anymore. I most certainly also believe that we don't need mass production at the scales we're seeing today, but our complexity demands similar complexity in the palette of professions (not my favourite word to express the concept of "life work," but there it is...).
I think what we need is to walk back on automation and rethink the whole assembly line bit, give humans some space to specialise should their system need it. Contemporary Society seems better suited to serve people who tend to become Jacks of All Trades, but that's just one point on a huge spectrum.
I'm all for the spirit of 'return to monke' , but short of major disasters there's no turning back. Not for the vast majority.
All our advancements are not all negative. Life spans now are drastically higher on average. Simple things like soap, antibiotics etc.
Not to say that advancement is negative, just that I seem to come across more unhappy and unfulfilled people in each day, mostly due to the work/life balance, at least in the country I’m in.
I don’t really understand the downvotes, this is a perfectly valid shower thought as far as I’m concerned.
There’s something to be said for simplifying life to reach some kind of lost happiness. But practically speaking, living as an early human, hunter gatherer, or even as an agricultural pioneer, was incredibly hard work. It’s not like there was necessarily more time to relax. You ever tried going into the forest and gathering enough food to keep yourself fed for more than a few minutes? It’s really hard. On top of that, most of humanity’s technological and medical advancements far outweigh the stresses of modern life, in my opinion.
That being said, some point to the fact that since life was hard, less comfortable, more risky, and mostly occupied by essential tasks, that it might counterintuitively lead to a more fulfilling life. I’m not sure I agree with that characterization, but sometimes hard manual labor that yields results feels good, so I get it.
Regardless, solid shower thought, I often think about similar things.
It’s fine. Downvotes mean nothing really, it’s just a variable stored on a web server somewhere. I’m happy that at least someone engaged in good faith though. I think I romanticise a simpler living but not because it would make me happier, I just imagine it would. I have just read “earth abides” by George Stewart and the main character goes through the motions of trying to restart civilisation after a disease wipes out humanity. It just set me off down a path of similar thinking.
Mankind became restless when he became conscious sufficiently to be aware of his own mortality, this gave him a strong need to leave a mark on the world.
Man became aware at some point in history. Now I have to work 40 hours a week. I think I need a holiday…
Sadly that is the case, before we realised we were finite we were happy to sleep all day like a dog, we thought the days would just keep coming.
- Is man restless? If so, what do you mean by "restless"? Restless as compared to what?
Compared to our ancestors I guess. The hunter gatherer tribes probably had more satisfaction in life that didn’t rely on systems of finance such as amassing wealth and investing in cryptocurrencies. Granted they probably starved to death a lot more, but I imagine they led more fulfilling lives overall and had a greater sense of community.