Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Until very recently in human history, there existed exactly one job: survive. Hungry? Get food. Tired? Sleep. In danger? Run or fight. The future did not exist -- the concerns of the present occupied all of our brain power. If I'm making this sound beautiful and natural, keep in mind that only 25 percent of humans made it past age 40, and that most deaths were due to brutal violence or horrific accidents -- step in a hole and break your ankle, you lay there in the snow until a wolf comes along and starts gnawing at your genitals.

hkuchera/iStock

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

"Sure, hunting has its perks, but sometimes I think I just became an alpha predator for my dad, you know?"

Realizing that this sucked, humans started to form bigger and bigger tribes, which allowed us to look out for each other. Soon, the number of "jobs" a person could potentially do started to grow. A village needed a person who only weaved baskets, or administered medicine, or stood screaming in the field to keep the crows away. Still, there probably was not a whole lot of choice in the matter beyond "Damn, you suck at this. Go help Ogg pile firewood."

Then we formed cities and nations, at which point there were hundreds of possible careers, but even then, you were usually born into one. That's why so many of our last names are the names of a family job (Farmer, Smith, Mix-A-Lot). Life still sucked in a lot of ways, but it was the rare person who was even asked the question "What do you want to do?" You smith the metal, get married, have kids, die. That was common all the way up to the 1950s and '60s -- you worked on the family farm or helped dad in the machine shop. If not, you still didn't venture far -- if you grew up in a coal mining town, you probably mined coal.