To understand the human in the present, we must see how we came to be how we are.
Rewind about 40,000 years. The Earth was fairly similar to how it is now. The human however was much different. We existed in small migrating packs. We were concerned with hunting and gathering our food and possibly creating fire to stay warm. It was not until the dawn of agriculture that the human started living in the same location year round. Before farming, the human would wake, and if there was bounty, would feast on berries or meat. The human was not concerned with much accept the basics, similar to other mammals of today. This was the human's day job. Worrying about staying warm and keeping fed. Should all of these conditions be met, the human would reproduce.
This older way of life is more similar to ours now than we would like to believe. Society has progressed and we live in a different world, but essentially our lives are a more efficient version of this one. I wake, eat and try to stay warm. My methods for doing this are much more efficient and developed compared to the humans 40,000 years ago, but my goals are similar. The name of the game is creature comforts. We have all heard this word thrown around. We use it as a term to describe things that make our lives more comfortable and easy. A car, for example, is a creature comfort because it allows me to travel without me having to walk. There is obviously more to the human life than creature comforts, and the expression itself has undertones to it. "Creature comforts" has connotations that view the human as an animal. The humans solely concerned with creature comforts are seen by the rest of us as not really getting the bigger picture. Nevertheless, we work every day for money, which in turn buys these things.
We wake, eat, go to work, come home, eat, watch TV, sleep and have sex. This is just a more developed version of the human existence compared to the one described earlier about the primitive human. There obviously is more to us that this, but let us acknowledge that these are the most basic of our needs and goals.
Somewhere along the line we decided that it was better to work everyday for 8 hours that wonder around looking for food freely. Why?
I think that we do this for security. We know that we will have food tomorrow. There is no chance of the berry bushes being berryless. This is the driving force for man's love of the day job. Is it worth the cost? It is a hefty price to pay in order to have a day job. You are essentially giving your time on Earth for the ability to eat.
The primitive human would have loved the idea of having a constant supply of food every day. An employee that loves their job seems to be likely candidate to be hired. Why then would non of us never hire a primitive human besides the fact that he is uneducated and probably smelly? It is the notion that the primitive human would be an unreliable employee because he isn't conditioned as a youth to go somewhere every day and focus on what a superior says he should focus on. I think that the primitive human would love the idea of food security, but hate the idea of a day job. If you got to wander around and do as you pleased all day for your whole life, how could you submit to the horrors of a day job?
Was man's existence before agriculture better or worst? This question has been explored in the past. Could it be that all this progress has been regress? But what about all the wonderful things that we have introduced because of our advancements? What about candy, and movies? What about flushing toilets, and showers? What about drugs and alcohol? What about laptops and high definition TVs?
These were all of my arguments before I realized that the typical human does not have any of these pleasures. The typical human works in a rice field all day and still can barely eat enough to get by. It was not until I started to realize that all of these pleasantries are possible because my culture has all the money. I started to understand that my culture has all the money because of the hard work of humans from all the other cultures. The equation does not make sense if I were to say that my culture could be this lavish without these other cultures working so hard. This was the way it was before mechanized agriculture. One thing they do not properly teach in grade school is the truth about the history of colonization. Where do you think the Europeans got the money to build all those factories at the beginning of the industrial era? It was a direct result of the sugar/slave trade. The wealth generated from this trade route may have funded the industrial revolution. If you do not understand the implications of this, then you should read into it, because the industrial revolution was a turning point in human history. If you do not understand why this matters, then you have not thought very much about your existence, and just how crazy the world you live in is. I try to think about it every time I flush the toilet or turn on a light switch. I try to appreciate the little thing that makes my life easier.
These things are all great, but they come at the highest of costs. It costs half of my waking hours. It costs half of your free time. Half of our lives. Growing up, my father always told me that the secret to happiness is loving what you do. When this is the case, you are enjoying these 8 hours a day that you give in exchange for these creature comforts. The vast majority of humans do not enjoy what they do. I wish it were the case, but we are very similar to each other and many humans want the same jobs. The unpopular jobs need employees and some humans must settle to put food on the table. The majority of the jobs are the unpopular ones.
I am not bashing on the day job and I see how important it is for a functional society. The thing that bothers me is not the fact that people work, it is the fact that people don't have a choice. What if I wanted to revert to being a hunter and gatherer instead of working? What if I wanted to do what I had evolved to do? What if I wanted to be a hunter and gatherer?
After watching countless zombie takeover movies I have imagined what would happened should society collapse. I was thinking that it would be a good idea to train myself to be able to survive should this happen. This means reverting to hunting and gathering. How can I train? The answer is that I can't. Not only is it frowned upon, it is illegal. I am not allowed to kill an animal and eat it unless I give money to the government and they give me a hunting permit, or I could save money my whole life and buy land and hunt within my rectangle. Either way, it seems that my existence has been taken from me hasn't it? Comparatively to the rest of our species, there is a handful of privileged people that get to do what they want and have creature comforts at the same time. The rest of us must work our whole lives to give our offspring a shot at being one of these privileged few. There is something very wrong with this isn't there?
It is hard to imagine, but what if behind your house there was just a forest that nobody owned and was free to be expanded into. Every direction I look, there is land, but I am not allowed on it unless I pay. In other words, I need to give hours of my life to go to places I want. This system is fantastic for those who have the land and money. Not only do they get to go where they want, but other annoying humans can't come too unless they are permitted. Our existence has radically changed. Our predecessors could not have imagined a world where there was no more room to expand. This is the reality we live in today. America is called the land of the free, and this term was coined when there was still space for expansion. This day has ended. As I write this I imagine humans in the future studying the time period when all of the Earth was bought, and there was no more room. This too is a turning point in human history. We have not completely reached this point, but it is safe to say that the space left to expand on Earth has never been smaller.
Our problem stems from overpopulation, and lack of environmental checks and balances. Nothing keeps humans in check with their environment. We don't realize it, but the sweetest part of the human history seems to be fading out of memory. The time when the world wasn't all mapped out.
We are confined to this planet as of now, and it is finite and we are reaching the point were there is no more room. As space on this planet runs out, so will our freedoms. Freedom and space for expansion go hand in hand. Our addiction to these fantastical developed creature comforts has blinded us from what really matters. The sweet part of human history is over and now we must take responsibility for our overpopulation. Nobody around me seems to see the problem that I do. To help you understand, picture yourself standing somewhere in your town, on the sidewalk. Do you feel like you can walk in any direction? Other animals certainly can, but we can't can we? We can walk in two directions, up the road, and down the road. Do you see? There is something fundamentally wrong isn't there?
Why? Again, the problem is overpopulation. Other humans that we do not know are annoying to us because there is a possibility that they might mean us harm. Also, other humans outside of our pack are just annoying to us period because we constantly must concern ourselves with whether this new human likes us or not. I picture myself owning land. I would absolutely not want a random human hanging around on my land that I have given so much of my life for. It matters so much to me because I have given the most valuable thing that I have for the land. I have given part of my life for the land. I have given my time for the land. I will be damned if I see another human destroy what I have given so much for. This is why that other human has only two directions to walk. Up the road and down the road. Should he stray from these two directions, I have the right to call the police and have him arrested for trespassing. I have the right to take part of his existence away from him because he wandered on to my land. There is something wrong with that isn't there? If I were a duck, I could go any direction that I pleased because the human understands that I am a duck and don't know any better.
Do you see how this problem stems from overpopulation? We have gone to extremes to keep other humans that we don't know away from us because there is so many of us.
The day job is a means to have my land, and my food. If I work hard I can have more land and better food. These are the ends of the day job. There is something wrong with this isn't there. Before agriculture, I had all the land on Earth to wander, and I had all the food I could find myself. The food might make me sick, and I might not be able to find the food, but that was life. We give half of our waking hours everyday for our food and land. When humans were scarce, these things were plentiful. Now we must work much harder for them. There is a problem with this. Are we headed in the right direction?
This problem has been identified before. Karl Marx felt the same way as I do but he identified the problem as something else. He believed that these problems existed because of the institution of private property. Although private property is the reason I cannot wander anywhere I want, it is only the surface of the problem. He failed to look deeper into the problem. As an American, I love the idea of private property. Especially because there are so many annoying humans that I do not want to share with. He failed to see that private property was simply a technique developed to deal with overpopulation. We all like to share with our loved ones, but we do not want to share with people that we do not know. There is nothing wrong with this. There are too many lazy humans that we should not be responsible for. Universal love and communist ideals are a long ways away from where the human is now. Private property is a quick fix to the overarching problem of overpopulation. Overpopulation is the single biggest threat to the happiness of the human.
How do you deal with overpopulation? This is a very difficult question to answer. At this point in history, there have been two ways of dealing with this. The first, and more common way to deal with this is through human extermination and genocide. The second is being done by China today. Limiting the number of children people are allowed to have. The second solution is much better than the first, but being denied the right to reproduce is almost as bad as denying the right to live. But it is better isn't it?
As our health care technologies take off with the drug revolution, and the budding nanotechnology revolution still to come, our lifespans will increase dramatically. We need to face the facts. There is not enough room for everyone. This is something that all educated people understand. There are three solutions to this problem as of right now. The first is extermination, the second is capping the human race, and the third and best option is to open up the possibility for human expansion yet again. The third option is the only one that adheres to our standards for human rights.
I always start my posts with some topic, and end up on a radically different one. At the end of the post I try to tie things all together. The day job is a unique idea that has sprouted out of the human existence. Being human, we see it as a normal necessity for us to have a day job. What I often encourage my readers to do is to view the human race from outside of it. This is a very difficult task, however we are the only creatures capable of this that we have encountered thus far. The fruits of this ability are still not fully understood, but the great minds of human history (Aristotle, Socrates, etc..) were all very good at this and the fruits of their labor have had a rippling effect, and still live on. View the day job as a phenomenon of the human species, and then think about how it came into existence. Now try to understand the implications of the pervasiveness of the day job. In other words, try to understand how widespread and necessary the day job is, and next try to understand what that means underneath the hood. This post is simply me sharing with you my thoughts about this phenomenon. I believe that we have lost sight of something somewhere. That we have given up something more valuable that we as a species cannot seem to grasp yet. The day job has brought us to where we are today, but is it part of our future? What if everyone did what they wanted to do? Instead of doing what they had to do to feed themselves. What would the world be like? Would it be a world full of lazy, fat, drug addicted alcoholics? Or could it the next step on the path of the human? If we all did what we wanted to do all the time, with technology taking care of our creature comforts, possibly this is the human flurishing on a whole new level.
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