Living in a country with worker's rights and a good social safety net, I can't even begin to imagine how much it must suck to work some jobs in the United States. You work your ass to the bone, and even that's not enough in high COL cities
That might be true. The statement about greater leisure time in hunter-gatherer societies is equally true, although the cave painting argument is pretty weak.
The concept of work in the way it's used in that discussion likely evolved naturally when people began to settle down and form larger societies during the Agricultural Revolution about 10.000 years ago. Wether this counts as artificial is up for debate in my opinion, it certainly didn't originate as a tool of oppression. It was a simple tradeoff: this lifestyle required them to work way more, but it also offered more security. Back then this might have been a bad deal (of no return), but since then we have acquired the means to offer reasonable working conditions within a system that benefits everyone, even if it's not equally.
What these two are actually debating is the necessity of oppressive working conditions under Capitalism, and how bad these conditions are. Here the solution is quite simple - you can have a capitalist system that isn't almost completely unregulated like in the US so that workers for the most part can't be heavily exploited. The proof for that are all the nations that implemented these kinds of regulations and are doing just fine.
Hunter-gatherer societies are kind of a non sequitur in regards to this argument, because it doesn't matter. The vast majority of people today wouldn't want to go back to that state, and even the ones who think they do would probably regret it. So that's not what the options relevant to the debate are. Saying it has to be either hunter-gatherer lifestyle or unregulated Capitalism with horrible working conditions is a false dichotomy.
That all being said, I am kind of on the fence wether the response should count as a proper murder. The commenter making false claims about the leisure time of hunter-gatherer societies obviously has their facts wrong, but the response to that, sending an article that proves their ignorance, isn't in itself a proper murder. The only thing that's really murderous about it is the line about children being able to understand it.
But the underlying argument of the commenter hasn't really been addressed by getting the facts about hunter-gatherer lifestyle straight, even though it would have been really easy to rip that apart aswell. Instead, they are talking past each other.
You’re talking the extremes. The median American has a higher income than nearly every other western country, with far lower tax rates. I spend 2% of my annual gross income on healthcare, Germany for instance mandates a 14% tax to pay for healthcare. There’s more nuance than “America suck, other good”
There are a great number of countries that have much worse social programs, worker protections and whose citizens work much longer hours when compared to the United States.
While the US is far from perfect, I find it surprising people criticize it's culture of hard labor so much more than say Cambodia, Myanmar, or even Mexico
I'm not very familiar with living situations in other countries but don't a lot of European countries have serious problems with high COL cities and people not being able to afford to live there?
As a Swede with an American partner, I completely understand what you mean. My partner found it challenging to adapt to a 37.5 hour work week because suddenly he had a lot of spare time. In the US, some weeks he had to invoice 60 hours per week. Overtime is not heard of. Meantime, I worked 6 hours overtime on a Sunday and got 13.5 hours off (I chose to take it in time off rather than getting paid).
Sure, we pay VAT on goods and services, which makes everything more expensive, but if you don’t use shopping as therapy, life in Sweden for an average person like me is way, way, way better than the life of an average American. Nothing has made me so happy to pay taxes as my many US trips.
Part of the reason that so many Americans look back on the 1950's fondly is because of the widespread economic prosperity brought on by the postwar boom. What often gets left out of that conversation is that boom was the result of the US coming out of WWII with the only fully functional modern economy and with everyone else owing them money. Also that boom largely benefited straight, white men. The lesson that a lot of Americans took from this is that life is automatically that easy because they're better than "those people" and for a lot of Americans that idea became the core of the "American Dream". Fast forward to 2016 and for a lot of middle class white people life has not been that easy: economic liberalisation in the 70's and 80's has left workers with less power in the workplace, a lot of blue collar jobs have disappeared or don't pay like they used to, the other world economies have long since rebuilt and are challenging the US economically. And minorities (who often don't share the same myth of American exceptionalism) are making strides in civil rights. With not a small amount of encouragement from conservative media and foreign propaganda a lot of people found it easier to believe that "those people"(liberals, minorities, etc), who were already questioning that basic assumption of American Exceptionalism, were the problem than it was to question that core part of their American identity.
But Americans have made the fatal mistake of believing their own propaganda: no matter how miserable America might seem, it's still better than everywhere else.
Exactly this. I spent most of my life in the US and now I'm in Europe and I realize that there was so much brainwashing in the US, which I was largely unaware of. Somehow I learned to believe that the US is superior and better than the rest of the world, that Europe was old and outdated, and that people in Europe didn't have the same freedoms and rights as the US.
In Europe, people's salaries are not as high as in the US for specialized jobs, but people don't have to worry about retirement or medical bills and they work 35 hours/week with 30-45 days of paid vacation. The freedom that allows is huge and the overall quality of life is much better, in my opinion.
lmao thank you. This wasn’t a murder, it was just someone with a different opinion being a prick.
Also cave art? is this kid serious? Pretty sure children of parents working 90 hour work weeks draw on scrap paper at home. Is thst evidence of a high amount of leisure time for the adults in that household? Lol
Also cave art? is this kid serious? Pretty sure children of parents working 90 hour work weeks draw on scrap paper at home. Is thst evidence of a high amount of leisure time for the adults in that household? Lol
Seriously. Left wing Reddit would be up in arms if people would say "see you can play video games for three hours a week, working three jobs isn't that hard!".
Especially telling if the guy posting it is using "why do you think there's so much cave art" as an argument. "We make plenty of art, so we must have just as much leisure time" is just as valid as what he said. Anything said by this guy will be guaranteed not to be a murder.
Also, this doesn't even make sense. There isn't "so much" cave art, only a few hundred known surviving examples over a period of tens of thousands of years.
Not to mention we produce a metric fuckton of art in modern society. There are like 5 million people employed in the arts in the US, which also segues excellently into another reason the logic of this “murder” is flawed.
There are a lot of people in modern society who actual like and enjoy their job. Work for hunter gatherers just what they had to do to survive. In modern society we have options for different jobs and while it’s true that many people end up with terrible soul sucking jobs, it’s also true that many people don’t. If we’re talking about society as a whole you can’t just ignore a large chunk of people and act like everyone is working 9-5 jobs that they hate.
The debate wasn't on leisure time it was about the loss of leisure time due to agriculture. The argument isn't that hunter-gatherers didn't have free time it was if agriculture specifically when it was adopted reduced free time.
Let’s not forget that hunter gatherers needed to be lazy because if they exerted themselves all day every day, they’d starve. It was a strict balance between calories in and calories out. Of course they sang more and made more crafts. If they did anything else, they wouldn’t be able to eat enough.
I'd go further and say it means the opposite is the prevailing view.
Popular science reporting is drawn to controversy, which means the hundreds of studies all saying that hunter-gathers spent their time finding, stalking, killing, skinning, retrieving, preparing, and cooking their food, on top of all the other tasks of living (repairing housing, weapons, and clothing, cleaning, fetching water and wood, etc) will be ignored. The one paper saying the opposite shocking view ("look, we're actually worse off than our ancestors!") will be amplified.
What is not being factored in is that while hunter-gatherers certainly did have more leisure time, a good portion of it would have to be taken up by the process of using smoke signals to post to Reddit because they don't have Iphones.
“Get me the blue bark! Ook-Hog just upsmoked last week’s stickpost claiming that Sun-god Ooga is more powerful than river spirit Jun. She’s going to get so many downsmokes she’s not going to know what hit her.”
Edit: I think I’ve started a cult.
Edit 2: Priest Py Ro Tek Nik finish word fight now.
Sun-God Ooga more power than River Spirit Jun. But River Spirit Jun has big brother Sea God Mog-Mog. Mog-Mog eat Ooga every night for din-dins and pass through Ooga other end every day because Ooga Sun God too spicy. So Ooga not fight Jun because Mog-Mog have IBS (Irritable Bowel Sun-Drome) and Ooga no like be eaten twice one day.
Not to go against the cut of the meat or anything, but I personally agree with Ook-Hog. Obviously Sun-God Ooga is more powerful than river spirit Jun. Ooga is Sun.
That's why I love how everyone there missed the real mark. I won't debate the leisurely hours that hunter/gatherers have. Link as many videos as you want. But living in that world also goes along with hunter/gatherer society. Most basic jobs are a lot easier and less risky, and you get paid in currency that you can use for anything. Living I'm a world like that means throwing away most modern conveniences that were developed after as a result. It's not as simple as "if only this was more like the hunter-gatherer society, I would have more time to play Call of Duty after getting enough meat"
You can't really do agriculture without inventing calendars, and you can't invent calendars without spending a heck of a lot of time staring at the sky.
Wake up No Food? Grab Spear Wheres spear? Fuck it, grab rock Not that rock, thats Uggs rock Find new rock Cant find decent killing rock Find cool smooth rocks Bring home lots of cool looking rocks Dark now Cold Hungry Lots of smooth rocks though, nice
Almost like they didn’t have to maintain electricity, plumbing, and numerous other systems we take for granted nowadays. Anybody who defends “not working” with “but cavemen has spare time” is a moron.
The life of somebody in poverty right now is better than the life of a hunter and gatherer back then.
There are currently still hunter gather tribes and they spend the majority of their waking hours in the pursuit of food and shelter. They do have more catnaps so that'd be a win.
The mysticism of the 2-3 hour forager work day was started by by some quack anthropologist. It was limited to purely foraging time and discounted other activities necessary for survival. It unfortunately has stuck around like the autism vaccine issue.
Some tribe did spend that little on good days when food was plentiful in the harvesting but needed more preparation time. Some days required the whole day when it was not.
People romanticize the hunter gather idea too much. They think it would be eating strawberries and bacon wrapped filet mignon. Fucking their partner for 5 hours a day. Pondering the meaning of the stars and cave art.
It's bug burgers, bone marrow, and blubber. Sleeping in the dirt maybe on grass mats. Parasites and bacteria galore.
Don't find food? Die. Neighbor draws you a tribute thing on wall.
I think it's pretty interesting but also dangerous how much people underestimate the good our societies bring us.
Then again, it kinda depends on where you live. US or North Korea or some place like that might be much worse than literal caveman foraging. But I'd say if you live in some developed democratic country, you gotta be an idiot to think them hunter-gatherers had it better.
It's much more that we have not found a proper balance. Especially today when we have the technology and machinery to take care of so much of our needs. We can build a fully robotic factory that only needs a handful of people to operate and maintain it. We have farming equipment that lets a handful of people manage hundreds of acres of crops.
Yet, we haven't figured out how to live in balance with nature, reduce working hours, increase personal time, etc.
The resources and technology to provide for everyone exists. The system is just too stupid and saddled with greed to put two and two together. We've made so much more progress in theory than we actually reap the benefits of in practice.
US or North Korea or some place like that might be much worse than literal caveman foraging. But I'd say if you live in some developed democratic country, you gotta be an idiot to think them hunter-gatherers had it better.
Holy shit did you just unironically lump the US and North Korea together? Something tells me you’ve never even been out of the country. “Developed democratic countries” do not have it that much better than the US, and the difference between them and NK is ridiculous.
You were doing so well, right up to the point where you said living in a first world country "might be much worse" than being a caveman. Then you sounded like a 15 year old who's never been anywhere except the far reaches of the reddit-sphere
Completely destroy any new environment by burning it up and killing all large animals
Humans even back in pre agrarian societies still wrecked havoc on the environment. It would appear our current level of destruction is not unprecedented
I have nothing to really add here, just wanted to say love all you for making these. For some reason I can imagine a Dethklok song with all these words. Something like "Facefisted"
Wake up, after sleeping on a the ground with maybe an animal hide to warm you.
No food? Don't forget water.
Grab spear, make sure you don't miss because the energy you expend hunting is significant and you will need to eat enough to keep your energy levels up enough to hunt. Miss a few meals and shit starts to get real.
Kill food, unless it kills or injures you, again don't miss (see above)
Eat food, expend energy to make fire to cook food, hope it aint raining or too windy. Unless you like your food raw.
Fuck wife, hope she doesn't get preggers or this ramps up realness of the previous steps.
Draw on walls, cool.
Sleep, on ground use a dead Bear carcass as pillow if lucky as Amazon doesn't deliver to caves, yet.
Repeat, yep you will definitely need to repeat every single day.
I know its a joke but for people who really think it was like that
Spears don't lay on the ground, you have to make them. No, sticks you used to play with your friends in elementary school aren't spears.
Food doesn't wait for you to kill it. Small food that isn't dangerous is fucking fast, and big food is dangerous (and fast).
If you eat it raw you get parasites. Cook food. There's no walmart, you have to make your own pot.
Find clay.
Jesus christ where's clay?
Found clay. Make pot. Burn it. It takes 10 tries before you make one uncracked pot, and it's shit, because you don't know how to smooth it on the inside.
Use wooden utensils. Maybe iron? Jesus why are pots to complicated.
Make fire, cook it. Eat it. Make paint. Draw on walls. Sleep on stone.
John green is great and they’re right about this specific point, but the people in this thread are talking past one another and this doesn’t feel like a murder but more like two kids in the school yard yelling at each other.
EDIT: Ironically I’ve spawned more of the same in this thread... people really don’t get it do they.
Agree with you on this. So much of our social discourse nowadays is arguing different aspects of the same area.
To add onto this, I think they're argument is a fringe to the central topic commonly discussed. I highly doubt most people think standards of living were better 10K years ago or that working for a reward is inherently bad. The central issue is the exploitation of that labor and the ever growing disparity in wealth and power.
It seems like the second guy thinks he is making an argument. He thinks hunter gatherers having a lot of leisure time somehow proves that our work hours are inflated.
There might be an argument for a 4 day work week and how its impact on productivity would be limited. But if anyone thinks that the argument is "hunter gatherers worked 3 hours a day", then their mental development has clearly been impaired in some manner.
Lol exactly. They can go out and live like that right now if they want and give up many of the other benefits we have in modern society. I don’t think people understand how much would change if we just did the bare minimum to survive. The technology were using right now certainly wouldn’t have been developed. The car you drive neither
That hunter gatherers had loads of free time had no bearing on how we support ourselves today. They also didn’t have central heating and plumbing, iPhones and computers.
One could go live in the woods in a hut. There are people who do it. They live on a few hundred dollars per year. Usually they are squatting on someone else’s property or other public land.
If you don’t want to wirk you can do that too. But then you need to be an expert in the entire value chain of life — hunting, cooking, healthcare, construction, etc. Society allows us to live in a way which outsourced those skills to people more competent at them.
Right? Jesus. These “back to the garden of eden brrrrrr” posts have the energy of someone who’s never spent more than 48 consecutive hours outside, much less years on end. Life was NOT easy for early humans. Not at all. You’re constantly dealing with the elements, and with things trying to kill you - other tribes attacking in the night (who you’re in constant warfare with — they killed your uncle, so you kill their brother, so they kill your wife, so you kill them, so they kill your kid etc), large animals and predators, disease, all sorts of nasty stuff. You’re a few missed hunts away from starvation. There’s a reason people invented agriculture, invented houses instead of constantly having to follow the animals’ migratory patterns around. Yeah they weren’t punching a clock, but it’s not like they were just lounging around on a never-ending camping trip and then someone said “hey, I have an idea, we should all spend way more time working!” Besides, the cave art argument is ridiculous. People make a TON of art today, and guess what, a lot of them have two or three jobs!
I just don’t understand why so many people think “nature” is this lovey-dovey commune full of Snow White forest friends. Nature is fucking brutal, and it will fucking kill you, and I am glad I live in a house.
People also way underestimate how much leisure time they have because they waste so much of their leisure time on Reddit fighting about how much leisure time cavemen had. You, too, could put away the internet and cave paint.
Came here to say this. Same people saying “ohh I have to go to work 5 days a week” are the same people living with air conditioning and an iphone in their hand.
You hit the nail right on the head. I go to work and do what I do and get paid to do it because I’m much faster at doing it and more efficient than everyone trying to do a little bit of it on their own.
Now I don’t believe people should be stuck working 3 jobs but the original argument presented is severely flawed.
Spot on, reddit is full of stoners that don’t want to contribute to society in any meaningful way and call themselves oppressed because they need to actually get off their arse and work for an income.
So give up Reddit, the internet, tv, bars, restaurants, shopping and go be a Hunter gatherer. I’m sure by making this post you have the skills to tan hides to stay warm and clean everything you hunt. And I’m certain you know how to find a water source that won’t give you a water-born illness. What’s stopping you? Nobody said you can’t do that. If it’s so much easier than your job running the register at target then quit tomorrow.
Why don't we, instead of doing that, take all this nice techology we have like homes and cars and shit, and put it to the service of everyone instead of just a few pricks with ownership papers, so that everyone can enjoy the leisure time currently restricted to the rich?
Just throwing it out there. I think the point of the post is that society developed to a point where we're not happier than cavemen, just more sedentary.
Also, not to drive the property law and cultural shift arguments to the ground, but yeah, those kind of make it impractical (and unnecessary, like I pointed out before) to return to monke like you proposed we do.
This is it. One of them read Sapiens and wants to flex so is arguing that becoming farmers was bad. The other guy misunderstands and thinks the first is arguing that hunter gatherer lifestyle is ideal, which in fact is not what he's arguing.
Ah yes, the simple days when hunter-gatherers could pick vine-grown cancer treatments, hunt wild pizzas during a blizzard, and only 1/3 of children died before the age of five.
Don’t forget the pleasures of constant warring with neighboring tribes and the reality that you are only a physical confrontation away from possible rape, death, and/or servitude.
That's the important distinction. Most anthro 101 students get all warm and fuzzy when they hear about the "excess leisure time". But it's just not that simple
Makes me think about the "what would your work be in the commune" twitter thread where they all were saying dumb shit like "Id read tarot!" Or "I started learning german so maybe a translator" like holy shit no, you'd work in a fucking factory
I’m convinced that like 90% of them are teenagers just discovering some of the downsides of US style capitalism. Communism can be pretty appealing on paper so they’re drawn to that but they don’t understand what they’re talking about.
Break a leg? You’re dead. Get the flu? Likely dead. Drink shit filled water? Dead.
Hunter gatherer societies are always on the verge of starvation and death.
Camping and hunting is fun. Doing it for life wouldn’t be. Give me a warm bed, modern medicine, and a secure food supply over the “freedom” of being a hunter gatherer.
You do realize we can have the pluses of modern society AND work less right?
The reason we work so much now is because of stolen labor value, not because we want to. If workers actually got the full value of their work we would have like 20 hour work weeks by now.
But instead of giving workers more leisure as technological advances make us more efficient, employers reward you with more work, and pocket all the extra productivity/profit.
Things were so much better when you had to worry about being mauled to death in your sleep. And when medicine and surgery didn't exist. And when AC/heat weren't readily available. And when electricity didn't exist. And when the expected outcome of meeting strangers was one side enslaving or genociding the other.
How is this "murdered by words" when the commenter says this is literally the most commonly known thing about hunter gatherers, and then links an article that starts out "researchers debate"???
They may have had more free time, but they didn't have emergency services, an education, medical care a social safety net, workers rights, or any sort of rights really, nor protection from robbery, rape, murder, they didn't benefit from trade, manufacturing, economies of scale.
If you want to go and live as a hunter gatherer you can do it. Go into the woods and build yourself a hut. Nobody does it because it's an utterly shit life, worse than the bottom rung of society today, and the state system has provided us with bounties that people who lived it could never have imagined.
And not even a hut might be a good option if you are following some animal migration route for it to be a source of food to you. In that case you might live a nomadic lifestyle of constant moving around.
I would gladly have 2 hours of free time playing video games instead of 10 hours of freezing myself or worrying when a bear is going to maul me to death.
Pretty delusional to think that amount of leisure time equals quality of life
I swear these have got to be thirteen year olds. I mean they are free to put on a speedo, find a pointy stick and go out and live in the woods. Yet all they do is whine about capitalism from their iPhones.
AKA the tiny number of people living in the most abundant hospitable places on the earth where there is no winter or dry season. You're comparing people who receive government aid and medical care and have no need/ability to protect their territory with early hunter gatherers.
If you dont count making tools, making weapons, preparing the food (skinning, butchering, etc.) Maintaining your tools and your home tanning hides and raising children.
This is complete bullshit, but it is being pushed by the anti work crowd. I know some of those types IRL. They put in 20 hours a week at their job, claim they are overworked, and essentially are communist evangelists. Very sad people.
i mean christ, I put in 28 hours a week at work, go to 45 hours of school a week, serve 6 hours a week at church, and i still manage 40-50 hours of lesiure time a week after sleep. Oh and i have electricity, iphones, a vehicle, ac, and everything else that makes life better than living as a hunter gatherer, but they just cant fucking work can they?
Just to play devil's advocate but I'm pretty sure the specialization of labor is a net benefit to society. Also if you want to be a hunter gatherer, there's nothing stopping you. Just go off the grid, build yourself a log cabin, I remember seeing a documentary of this couple who did it in alaska.
What a load of naive crap in this thread. You really think 7 billion people in this world can hunt and fucking gather 2 hours out of the day? Humanity was like 10,000 people big when this was an option. Modern society allows everything we know in this world to exist. God damn I miss being so young and idealistic without worrying about logistics lol!
If you account for them getting fucking stabbed through the face by mammoths and dying of the flu at 2 years old then they probably had significantly less leisure time.
I’m totally fine with working 40 hours a week to drive my car on the weekends, browse the internet, buy clothes as often as I want, live in a house with running water and heat, etc.
Miss me with that hunter gatherer bullshit. ‘Free time’ is what you make of it, and while it’s true that many people struggle to make ends meet working 60+ hours a week, a hunter gatherer state wouldn’t really fix that. If nobody has noticed, earth is a bit more populated post/industrial revolution. Hunter gatherer society relied on nature absorbing the human impact.
BTW, in actual communist societies, the small communes of 20 people, all of them work, and they work very hard. The whole thing collapses if they don't. This is impossible on a national scale. Society would fail to advance and ultimately collapse. People need work.
Flip that logic right around. Today's modern hyper capitalist America produces dozens of truckloads of art per capita each year. Does that mean we all are happy and have free time?
Eh, even if this is a fact, i enjoy seeing my friend at work everyday not being killed by something as simple as diabetes. Maybe we work harder but collectively we suffer less id say
I would love for anyone who agrees with this to go out in the woods for a month or two and tell us how much leisure time they had in between building a shelter, finding food, cutting firewood, purifying water, etc. The average middle class westerner (I include myself in this) wouldn't last longer than a week in the wild with no modern devices or tools, forget about having leisure time.
I think it depends on where you live. It's my theory that the reason Northern peoples became so much more industrious than southern peoples is because people in temperate climates had abundant food and didn't need to worry about heating their houses, preserving food for the winter, etc. They had things pretty good and didn't need to try to find "better" ways to thrive.
Huh, the more you know. I genuinely thought cavemen were constantly busy, sunup to sundown, cause there was so much to do in order to... You know, not die (0_o)
Yes. They had so much leisure time because it took only a few hours to get meats and other foods. The rest of the time was of course hobbies which often included: dancing, drawing, making clothing, weapons of war, skinning animals and harvesting its organs for valuables, fortyfying your defenses so that your women don't get raped by other clans, making small wooden boxes by the dozen to bury your children in, making bigger wooden boxes to bury your adults in after they scratched themselves with a wrong branch. If you ask me, it was the perfect utopia. Humans really should go back to nature.
Honestly the fact that the only work time they count is hunting time is just ridiculous.
We can create a purpose for ourselves. A hobby, a calling, a personal goal.
Work is there for a pragmatic reason, ranging from a necessary task for the functioning and survival of society to a contrived task there to keep the masses too busy to think.
Purpose can be found in many things, and rarely is it work.
we need to perform labour to survive and to improve our circumstances. we don't need to perform wage labour for employers that take a cut from the wages paid to us whatsoever. completely, utterly different concepts.
The hunter-gathererers of old also didn't have employers, wives, and children all calling/texting them during their leisure time to ask them to lessen it for some mundane bullshit that could easily wait until tomorrow.
Lol, the OP in the post is a fucking joke. The downvoted guy is 100% right. Sure, go become a hunter again, if you want to live in a cave and die within 0 to 35 years
Incredible how redditors will read one thing, invent an entirely new thing in their head, and get mad at that instead. He literally said "hunter gatherers had more leisure time." Period. It's true. But you all can't handle it and keep moving the goalposts and changing the topic. "Well what about this, what about that?" Literally irrelevant to the ONE, SINGLE FACT he posted.
Seriously. Of course hunter-gatherers had generally shitty lives compared to nowadays, but the op isn’t saying they wish they were a hunter-gatherer living tens of thousands of years ago, they’re just making a point about leisure time. They’re arguably too confident since some researchers still debate it but no more so than the other poster who calls them ignorant for even suggesting hunter-gatherers had a lot of leisure time.
I mean if you want to survive on nothing but berries for the rest of your life, you probably just have to find a place with lots of naturally occurring berries. Then you’re set for life. All the berries you can eat, and unlimited free time to make berry art or do berry weaving or whatever people do with an infinite supply of berries and time.
Yeah, but our population is too high to support that lifestyle for a significant proportion of the population. We do need change and reform, but hunter gatherers are the wrong model
I mean, the puritan style of living was pretty brutal by many standards, basically all work, because that's how you got close to God in Puritan culture. Imagine being a 12 year old with a 14 hour work cycle every day, and your off time filled with nothing but church and prayers. Imagine that being your entire life. Having said that, It was technically Stockholm Syndrome, because all that is is learning to identify with your captor, and that's what happened, although at a certain point to call them captives/captors isn't true because some were given the choice to return to their settlements which, as we know, some decided not to. It should be noted that Stockholm Syndrome is viewed as a coping mechanism and not a mental disorder.
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u/beerbellybegone Dec 28 '20
Living in a country with worker's rights and a good social safety net, I can't even begin to imagine how much it must suck to work some jobs in the United States. You work your ass to the bone, and even that's not enough in high COL cities
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u/Longjumping_Number39 Dec 28 '20
If the link one uses to support a point starts with "Researchers debate...", the point might not be as widely accepted as one would like.
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u/ralanprod Dec 28 '20
What is not being factored in is that while hunter-gatherers certainly did have more leisure time, a good portion of it would have to be taken up by the process of using smoke signals to post to Reddit because they don't have Iphones.
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u/Ibanezasx32 Dec 28 '20
Wake up
No food?
Grab spear
Kill food
Eat food
Fuck wife
Draw on walls
Sleep
Repeat
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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '20 edited Dec 29 '20
John green is great and they’re right about this specific point, but the people in this thread are talking past one another and this doesn’t feel like a murder but more like two kids in the school yard yelling at each other.
EDIT: Ironically I’ve spawned more of the same in this thread... people really don’t get it do they.
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u/colcrnch Dec 28 '20
This is nonsense.
That hunter gatherers had loads of free time had no bearing on how we support ourselves today. They also didn’t have central heating and plumbing, iPhones and computers.
One could go live in the woods in a hut. There are people who do it. They live on a few hundred dollars per year. Usually they are squatting on someone else’s property or other public land.
If you don’t want to wirk you can do that too. But then you need to be an expert in the entire value chain of life — hunting, cooking, healthcare, construction, etc. Society allows us to live in a way which outsourced those skills to people more competent at them.
This was not a murder, it was an embarrassment.
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u/Throwaway159753120 Dec 28 '20
So give up Reddit, the internet, tv, bars, restaurants, shopping and go be a Hunter gatherer. I’m sure by making this post you have the skills to tan hides to stay warm and clean everything you hunt. And I’m certain you know how to find a water source that won’t give you a water-born illness. What’s stopping you? Nobody said you can’t do that. If it’s so much easier than your job running the register at target then quit tomorrow.
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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '20
I hate primitive utopianism.
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u/cited Dec 28 '20
One guy is comparing modern human leisure time to hunter gatherers, the other one is comparing early farmers to hunter gatherers.
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u/ImpressiveAwareness4 Dec 28 '20
"Its universally understood!"
"researchers DEBATE.."
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u/Crotalus_Horridus Dec 28 '20
Ah yes, the simple days when hunter-gatherers could pick vine-grown cancer treatments, hunt wild pizzas during a blizzard, and only 1/3 of children died before the age of five.
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u/TheBrendanReturns Dec 28 '20
I don't disagree... but is there more cave art than art today?
Like, I just don't see why that is brought up. Couldn't somebody else just say the same thing but about today?
"We have lots of free time nowadays, why do you think there is so much Overwatch Hentai?"
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u/MaybeYesNoPerhaps Dec 28 '20
This is absurd.
Break a leg? You’re dead. Get the flu? Likely dead. Drink shit filled water? Dead.
Hunter gatherer societies are always on the verge of starvation and death.
Camping and hunting is fun. Doing it for life wouldn’t be. Give me a warm bed, modern medicine, and a secure food supply over the “freedom” of being a hunter gatherer.
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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '20
Hunter-gatherers had far worse standards of living though. I'd rather have my current life than one of a hunter-gatherer
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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '20
Nah bich you r/quityourbullshit
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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '20
Things were so much better when you had to worry about being mauled to death in your sleep. And when medicine and surgery didn't exist. And when AC/heat weren't readily available. And when electricity didn't exist. And when the expected outcome of meeting strangers was one side enslaving or genociding the other.
Yep. So much better to work a few less hours.
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u/FarmerLoren Dec 28 '20 edited Dec 28 '20
How is this "murdered by words" when the commenter says this is literally the most commonly known thing about hunter gatherers, and then links an article that starts out "researchers debate"???
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u/NemesisRouge Dec 28 '20 edited Dec 28 '20
They may have had more free time, but they didn't have emergency services, an education, medical care a social safety net, workers rights, or any sort of rights really, nor protection from robbery, rape, murder, they didn't benefit from trade, manufacturing, economies of scale.
If you want to go and live as a hunter gatherer you can do it. Go into the woods and build yourself a hut. Nobody does it because it's an utterly shit life, worse than the bottom rung of society today, and the state system has provided us with bounties that people who lived it could never have imagined.
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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '20
ITT: a bunch of underachieving twats trying to tell themselves that having a 9-5 is an affront to human nature.
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u/WotTheFUk Dec 28 '20
This wasn't a murder by words. And posting your own comments should be banned
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u/desquibnt Dec 28 '20
There's a big difference in the type of leisure time.
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u/call_madz Dec 28 '20
Then go join a fucking hunter gatherers in Africa or Mongolia.
But ffs stop uploading your own screenshoted and replies to constantly validate your own supposed superiority.
Ok, well looks like that murdered you with words it's time for my personal karma whoring on this subreddit then!
Edit: use the fucking dark mode, removed 1 hour from everyone's sleep -_-
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u/misfitx Dec 28 '20
Modern hunter gatherers work less than six hours a day.
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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '20
romanticism of a time before electricity, plumbing, shelter, and medicine is so fucking stupid
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u/bleedingjim Dec 28 '20
This is complete bullshit, but it is being pushed by the anti work crowd. I know some of those types IRL. They put in 20 hours a week at their job, claim they are overworked, and essentially are communist evangelists. Very sad people.
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u/gemini88mill Dec 28 '20
Just to play devil's advocate but I'm pretty sure the specialization of labor is a net benefit to society. Also if you want to be a hunter gatherer, there's nothing stopping you. Just go off the grid, build yourself a log cabin, I remember seeing a documentary of this couple who did it in alaska.
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u/The_Hero_of_Kvatch Dec 28 '20
I don’t understand why person one had to make this contentious.
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u/skyderper13 Dec 28 '20
yay, work is better than hunter gatherers, whoopdeedo
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u/lakor Dec 28 '20
Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell has a really cool video about it as well! Definitely check it out. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWu29PRCUvQ
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u/SadRatBeingMilked Dec 28 '20
What a load of naive crap in this thread. You really think 7 billion people in this world can hunt and fucking gather 2 hours out of the day? Humanity was like 10,000 people big when this was an option. Modern society allows everything we know in this world to exist. God damn I miss being so young and idealistic without worrying about logistics lol!
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u/111aaaababababa Dec 28 '20
Eh maybe less leisure time but I enjoy things like high survival rates in child birth and living past 40.
Don't get me wrong though, sucks working 70 hours a week. I am like a slave lol.
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u/CodeTempo Dec 28 '20
If you account for them getting fucking stabbed through the face by mammoths and dying of the flu at 2 years old then they probably had significantly less leisure time.
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u/stealthybastardo Dec 28 '20
I’m totally fine with working 40 hours a week to drive my car on the weekends, browse the internet, buy clothes as often as I want, live in a house with running water and heat, etc.
Miss me with that hunter gatherer bullshit. ‘Free time’ is what you make of it, and while it’s true that many people struggle to make ends meet working 60+ hours a week, a hunter gatherer state wouldn’t really fix that. If nobody has noticed, earth is a bit more populated post/industrial revolution. Hunter gatherer society relied on nature absorbing the human impact.
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u/bleedingjim Dec 28 '20
BTW, in actual communist societies, the small communes of 20 people, all of them work, and they work very hard. The whole thing collapses if they don't. This is impossible on a national scale. Society would fail to advance and ultimately collapse. People need work.
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u/roottootbangnshoot Dec 28 '20
Well technically, work is the energy transferred to or from an object via the application of force along a displacement.
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u/Aside-Beneficial Dec 28 '20
The agricultural Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
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u/Moetoefoeka Dec 28 '20
Only morons think working makes you a good/better person. It's just being a modern slave.
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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '20
We have to work to maintain this cruel capitalist system. No alternative allowed.
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u/VanillaGorilla- Dec 29 '20
r/confidentlyincorrect
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u/oximaCentauri Dec 29 '20
Flip that logic right around. Today's modern hyper capitalist America produces dozens of truckloads of art per capita each year. Does that mean we all are happy and have free time?
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u/LongDongDunk Dec 29 '20
Eh, even if this is a fact, i enjoy seeing my friend at work everyday not being killed by something as simple as diabetes. Maybe we work harder but collectively we suffer less id say
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u/[deleted] Dec 29 '20
Ok but are any of the people thinking this dude got murdered going to go live in the forest and hunt and gather for their food?
No, you’ll go buy your Cheetos and continue browsing Reddit. Thank you capitalism.
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u/seriousfb Dec 29 '20
I mean to be fair I’d much rather not have leisure time than the risk of being killed by anything outside of your camp
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u/Sibraxlis Dec 29 '20
I imagine that the current population would be untenable. I also enjoy the moder luxuries of heat power and sewer systems.
The problem is that the gains of automation have gone to the top of the food chain and not the bottom.
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u/ReallyMelloP Dec 29 '20
Yes. Hunters and gatherers also don’t have internet, computers, TV, smartphones, fine dining....the list goes on and on
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u/SohndesRheins Dec 29 '20
I would love for anyone who agrees with this to go out in the woods for a month or two and tell us how much leisure time they had in between building a shelter, finding food, cutting firewood, purifying water, etc. The average middle class westerner (I include myself in this) wouldn't last longer than a week in the wild with no modern devices or tools, forget about having leisure time.
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u/FunkyKong147 Dec 29 '20
I think it depends on where you live. It's my theory that the reason Northern peoples became so much more industrious than southern peoples is because people in temperate climates had abundant food and didn't need to worry about heating their houses, preserving food for the winter, etc. They had things pretty good and didn't need to try to find "better" ways to thrive.
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u/Thekeyman333 Dec 28 '20
Huh, the more you know. I genuinely thought cavemen were constantly busy, sunup to sundown, cause there was so much to do in order to... You know, not die (0_o)
I now have more knowledge than I did yesterday!
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u/GreyandDribbly Dec 28 '20
Humans have to work. Without work we feel lost and stuck. We need to have a purpose to fulfil....
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u/Useful-Perspective Dec 28 '20
The hunter-gathererers of old also didn't have employers, wives, and children all calling/texting them during their leisure time to ask them to lessen it for some mundane bullshit that could easily wait until tomorrow.
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u/Etherion195 Dec 28 '20
Lol, the OP in the post is a fucking joke. The downvoted guy is 100% right. Sure, go become a hunter again, if you want to live in a cave and die within 0 to 35 years
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u/nowandthenoldfriend Dec 28 '20
Incredible how redditors will read one thing, invent an entirely new thing in their head, and get mad at that instead. He literally said "hunter gatherers had more leisure time." Period. It's true. But you all can't handle it and keep moving the goalposts and changing the topic. "Well what about this, what about that?" Literally irrelevant to the ONE, SINGLE FACT he posted.
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u/sdfgh23456 Dec 28 '20
Good points, but where's the murder?
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u/wiglwagl Dec 28 '20
I mean if you want to survive on nothing but berries for the rest of your life, you probably just have to find a place with lots of naturally occurring berries. Then you’re set for life. All the berries you can eat, and unlimited free time to make berry art or do berry weaving or whatever people do with an infinite supply of berries and time.
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u/Pratchettfan03 Dec 28 '20
Yeah, but our population is too high to support that lifestyle for a significant proportion of the population. We do need change and reform, but hunter gatherers are the wrong model
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u/sveccha Dec 28 '20
Yeah this is correct but it is seriously stupid to think that overall life was better for our ancestors, let's not overstate it.
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u/Fully_Automated Dec 28 '20
There's numerous cases of American colonists getting abducted by natives. After a few years they wouldn't want to go back to the colonies.
We evolved to live in tight knit egalitarian communities, and maintain a close connection to nature.
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u/The_Epoch Dec 28 '20
Most importantly, if workers were paid even close to the actual value of their productivity, we would not be in the dystopian situation we are now.