industrial man - time is not the best gauge of work. I work 6-8 hours a day on school but its leisurely and its a selfish pursuit. Think about what the hunter gatherer works for vs. what the industrial man works for.
the industrial man by heaps. i actually read that paper by sahlins for my cultural anthropology class. The lack of desire/need for material possessions makes the collection of food the sole priority in life, based on the data he collected, the average hours per week spent in this pursuit was 20ish if i remember correctly, the majority of days of the observed subjects were filled with naps and leisure time.
Although we may automatically perceive such a way of living as maintaining a low quality of life, in perspective, they have it made. The moment societies introduced agriculture of any nature, the work load of the people increased dramatically and actually creates a more volatile lifestyle, due to their increased dependence on said crops, and the immediate results of over taxing the resources available to a given area.
This is especially true when you think of the people currently being fucked by globalization in a pre unionized situation. India, Malaysia, parts of South America - without any sort of collective bargaining power against international corporations people work all day for the change I could collect on the street, where that amount of money to have enough value to even warrant picking it up. 10-16 hours a day to buy shitty cheap imported food when the land the factory or whatever infrastructure is set upon could have been a life-nourishing ecosystem that would have sustained those people for free? Dats what be fucked yall.
Wow. I just have to say I'm astounded that these arguments, explicit and implicit, seem to hold water to you guys.
Firstly, ignoring the flaws with the study itself, which are substantial by the way, I have a question for all of you: have you ever had the root of any of your teeth infected? if you haven't let me tell you that it is excruciating. In premodern society it was normal to lose all of your teeth by decay before you were twenty five. And this is merely a single anecdote, out of thousands, that describe how... unpleasant... life would be without modern technologies and degrees of productivity. my point here is to refute the implicit argument that the hunter had an even remotely similar quality of life as modern societies.
Another thought worth examining is the legitimacy of the study on which, you poeple, base your opinions. the study observed 1 society of 9-13 people(not even close to a statistically significant sample, N=30) over a 4 week period during the summer. also the people in the society sometimes worked for wages and practiced agriculture. This is enough for me to automatically discount the results of this lazy study. I will not belay this point longer as I do think that it is possible that hunter gatherers have more "empty time" than modern society. I just dont think that this study proves that. This leads me to my next point...
Just because you have time on your hands doesn't me 'free time'. If a person were locked in an empty room and had food brought to him we would hardly say that he has 'free time'. I would instead say he has alot of empty time. Likewise if you are a hunter on the Mongolian steppe you are hardly free to spend doing the things that you want even when your not hunting, unless your favorite activity is watching the clouds pass... In modern society we have never been so free to push our recreational inquiries and desires to there limits even if we have less hours per day to do it in.
My final point is in response to ben's post. I too share your frustration at the conditions that the majority of our planet lives in, Especially in light of the incomprehensible greed and opulence of the top 1%. However it is flawed to relate work and production habits to the aspect of our culture that condones this unfortunate disparity of wealth. In other words its not globalization's fault, a rising tide could raise all boats... if a greedy moral less man wasn't operating the flood gates.
I should have probably read that article before I began posting ...
The study is not quite legitimate .. so it goes. The recently late Howard Zinn made a point about this. Back when America was expanding into the native frontier, there was obviously intense interaction between the settlers and the indigenous people. Zinn says that almost no Indians who know their native way and life and were subjected to American society would chose to stay within American culture and not return to thier own. Contrast these to going native, where frequently settlers and soldiers would 'go native' and almost none of them would chose to return back to American society.
If empty time is being outside then how infinatly more empty would be watching tv. I would gladly change an active, dynamic state of being to the passive static life of the couch potato.
I find pleas by various groups for primitivism for the reason you listed - the reality of being hungry, cold, and in pain is to real to gloss over. But wage-slavery or primitivism are not the only ways that people and society can exist.
Globalization may not be the cause of the huge inequality we have, but capitalism, the system under which global transactions are conducted, sure is. In a system that insures the most brutal competitors are at the top, there will never be a situation where a greedy moral-less person is not operating the flood gates.
I think the primary distinction between "work" in paleolithic society and contemporary society is the sharp distinction that we draw between work and leisure. Nowhere is this point of view more obvious than in classical economics, which posited that every person moves along a utility curve choosing a certain amount of leisure vs. work; the models describe an equilibrium point that everybody theoretically should strive to reach that perfectly balances these opposing pursuits. But think back to Paleolithic man - did he partition his time so intentionally? Did he stress about how many hours he put in to feed his family and compare those hours to how many others spent, and stake part of his self-esteem and emotional balance on this comparison? Or did he just do it, and, when he had enough to eat for a little while, chill out until it was time again to gather and hunt? There are two completely different paradigms at work, as has been acknowledged by everyone.
And.......... screw anthropology. I also don't know if we're all qualified to have a conversation about paleolithic man, but if we can all agree to pretend like we have a conception of their actual lifestyle and the quality (Quality?!) of it, then I'm for it.
industrial man - time is not the best gauge of work. I work 6-8 hours a day on school but its leisurely and its a selfish pursuit. Think about what the hunter gatherer works for vs. what the industrial man works for.
ReplyDeletethe industrial man by heaps. i actually read that paper by sahlins for my cultural anthropology class. The lack of desire/need for material possessions makes the collection of food the sole priority in life, based on the data he collected, the average hours per week spent in this pursuit was 20ish if i remember correctly, the majority of days of the observed subjects were filled with naps and leisure time.
ReplyDeleteAlthough we may automatically perceive such a way of living as maintaining a low quality of life, in perspective, they have it made. The moment societies introduced agriculture of any nature, the work load of the people increased dramatically and actually creates a more volatile lifestyle, due to their increased dependence on said crops, and the immediate results of over taxing the resources available to a given area.
This is especially true when you think of the people currently being fucked by globalization in a pre unionized situation. India, Malaysia, parts of South America - without any sort of collective bargaining power against international corporations people work all day for the change I could collect on the street, where that amount of money to have enough value to even warrant picking it up. 10-16 hours a day to buy shitty cheap imported food when the land the factory or whatever infrastructure is set upon could have been a life-nourishing ecosystem that would have sustained those people for free? Dats what be fucked yall.
ReplyDeleteWow. I just have to say I'm astounded that these arguments, explicit and implicit, seem to hold water to you guys.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, ignoring the flaws with the study itself, which are substantial by the way, I have a question for all of you: have you ever had the root of any of your teeth infected? if you haven't let me tell you that it is excruciating. In premodern society it was normal to lose all of your teeth by decay before you were twenty five. And this is merely a single anecdote, out of thousands, that describe how... unpleasant... life would be without modern technologies and degrees of productivity. my point here is to refute the implicit argument that the hunter had an even remotely similar quality of life as modern societies.
Another thought worth examining is the legitimacy of the study on which, you poeple, base your opinions. the study observed 1 society of 9-13 people(not even close to a statistically significant sample, N=30) over a 4 week period during the summer. also the people in the society sometimes worked for wages and practiced agriculture. This is enough for me to automatically discount the results of this lazy study. I will not belay this point longer as I do think that it is possible that hunter gatherers have more "empty time" than modern society. I just dont think that this study proves that. This leads me to my next point...
Just because you have time on your hands doesn't me 'free time'. If a person were locked in an empty room and had food brought to him we would hardly say that he has 'free time'. I would instead say he has alot of empty time. Likewise if you are a hunter on the Mongolian steppe you are hardly free to spend doing the things that you want even when your not hunting, unless your favorite activity is watching the clouds pass... In modern society we have never been so free to push our recreational inquiries and desires to there limits even if we have less hours per day to do it in.
My final point is in response to ben's post. I too share your frustration at the conditions that the majority of our planet lives in, Especially in light of the incomprehensible greed and opulence of the top 1%. However it is flawed to relate work and production habits to the aspect of our culture that condones this unfortunate disparity of wealth. In other words its not globalization's fault, a rising tide could raise all boats... if a greedy moral less man wasn't operating the flood gates.
I should have probably read that article before I began posting ...
ReplyDeleteThe study is not quite legitimate .. so it goes. The recently late Howard Zinn made a point about this. Back when America was expanding into the native frontier, there was obviously intense interaction between the settlers and the indigenous people. Zinn says that almost no Indians who know their native way and life and were subjected to American society would chose to stay within American culture and not return to thier own. Contrast these to going native, where frequently settlers and soldiers would 'go native' and almost none of them would chose to return back to American society.
If empty time is being outside then how infinatly more empty would be watching tv. I would gladly change an active, dynamic state of being to the passive static life of the couch potato.
I find pleas by various groups for primitivism for the reason you listed - the reality of being hungry, cold, and in pain is to real to gloss over. But wage-slavery or primitivism are not the only ways that people and society can exist.
Globalization may not be the cause of the huge inequality we have, but capitalism, the system under which global transactions are conducted, sure is. In a system that insures the most brutal competitors are at the top, there will never be a situation where a greedy moral-less person is not operating the flood gates.
I think the primary distinction between "work" in paleolithic society and contemporary society is the sharp distinction that we draw between work and leisure. Nowhere is this point of view more obvious than in classical economics, which posited that every person moves along a utility curve choosing a certain amount of leisure vs. work; the models describe an equilibrium point that everybody theoretically should strive to reach that perfectly balances these opposing pursuits. But think back to Paleolithic man - did he partition his time so intentionally? Did he stress about how many hours he put in to feed his family and compare those hours to how many others spent, and stake part of his self-esteem and emotional balance on this comparison? Or did he just do it, and, when he had enough to eat for a little while, chill out until it was time again to gather and hunt? There are two completely different paradigms at work, as has been acknowledged by everyone.
ReplyDeleteAnd.......... screw anthropology. I also don't know if we're all qualified to have a conversation about paleolithic man, but if we can all agree to pretend like we have a conception of their actual lifestyle and the quality (Quality?!) of it, then I'm for it.