Is All Our Hard Work Killing Our Future?

Why we shouldn’t overlook how important leisure is to our species.

A little while ago, I finished Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. It is quite good, and I recommend that anyone interested in history — in the vaguest sense of that term — read it. It’s a really fun read.

We Used to be Kings

One point that Harari brings up — kind of in passing — is that humans in the Paleolithic era worked much less on average than we do today. This comment came along with the statement that people of that era were much more dexterous, more skilled, and more knowledgeable about their natural surroundings than we could ever hope to be in the modern era. They were constantly interacting with the land, with its flora and fauna. Because of that constant interaction, they developed a deep knowledge and dexterity, simply because it was integral to not only living well, but merely staying alive.

What happened in the millennia that followed included two main milestones in human development: the agricultural revolution, and the industrial revolution. The former revolution preserved some of humans’ connection to the environment, but made a trade-off, in which we gained more specific connections to only a portion of land, and with a select few crops. We very gradually lost our connection with wildlife, and domestication began. Thus our default relationship with animals became more like one of owner and commodity — seemingly, a regression.

Have We Fallen Off?

As humans began learning how to produce and persevere surplus food via crop yields, the time that we used to spend on leisure began to be filled by work — work to produce more crops. The hunger for surplus was only fueled by the industrial revolution, which saw amazing advances in tools and processes. These advances were fueled by the new and exciting discoveries of the post-renaissance thinkers and scientists.

What I think goes unnoticed, or at least unnoted, is that so many of the discoveries that fueled the advances leading to the industrial revolution came because humans had leisure time. Even poor peasants had leisure time — time to think, reflect, and make intellectual headway.

The way we produce things, along with the push for growth following the industrial revolution has made leisure time all but the least affordable of luxuries. The poorest among us have little time for true leisure, and the rich often do not allow themselves much of it now either, lest they fall behind in their ambitious goals. It has become fashionable to always be busy, and downtime where one is simply relaxing is often viewed as wasted time.

So What?

My thought is this: I am worried that the amount of energy that we are throwing at working, and all the creativity that we are throwing at our jobs, we may be losing out on the benefits of leisure. Leisure — time with no expectations attached and no inherent goals — allows for play and free-thinking. It allows for learning for learning’s sake, and for the exploration of curiosities.

The benefits of leisure are not just ours, but they also (and perhaps more importantly) belong to future generations. After all, it takes many generations before the benefits of our leisure now can culminate into true innovation and advancement down the line.

I fear that we have been riding the wave of previous centuries’ leisure time dividends, and that our rate of return is thinning out, as we allow ourselves less and less to invest.

In short, I fear that at least for the past few decades — maybe centuries — we have been working too much. I fear that we’ve been working on the dreams that were realized due to the the leisure time of previous generations — that we haven’t put in enough of our own leisure time to dream and create. Sure, we’re disrupting other industries, but it’s all in the same paradigm.

New paradigms need that sweet, sweet leisure time — away from the forces of the market and the shareholders. The question is, are we prepared to take that time?

Liked what you read?