Increased Leisure Time Is Not A Characteristic Of Civilization

Our culture believes that leisure time is a characteristic of civilization, that our way is a lifestyle that affords people more free time. The myth says that our agriculture is an efficient way to get more food for less work. As we became more productive in producing food one farmer could produce enough to feed many more people. Thus these people were freed from the need to be self sufficient and could engage in other activities. On the whole this created more leisure for everyone.

The same story says that primitive people don't have this leisure time because all of their energy is used constantly searching for food and warring with each other. It is they who are restricted, trapped by the primal need to always be seeking their next meal. How jealous they must have been when they stumbled across an orchard, awestruck by the overflowing abundance.

Agriculture Requires More Work

Yet every study of any culture has always shown that the more complex and more hierarchical a society is the harder its citizens must work. This is true for both civilized societies and "primitive" societies. In fact it is true of non-human creatures as well. Koalas spend all day sitting in a tree chewing on eucalyptus leaves. Giant pandas do the same with bamboo. Lionesses hunt when the pride is hungry and the rest of their time is spent frolicking and sleeping.

Many tribal cultures practice agriculture to some degree. They spend more time working than those tribes that are purely hunter/gatherers. 

The adoption of full-time totalitarian agriculture by our culture meant more work for people rather than less. 

We had to plow, plant, facilitate growth, ward off competitors, harvest, store and distribute. That's a lot harder than letting mother nature do all the work and then just plucking fruit off a wild tree.

But this goes straight over the head of most people in our culture. They are so ingrained in the belief that life in an indigenous culture must be detestable. They acknowledge that the highest goal is to have less work and more leisure time, free the strenuous demands of providing oneself a living. 

But our culture professes that this desired state can only be found in civilization, if one works hard enough. If we keep persisting with civilization now eventually we will get to that point. That glorious lifestyle is just waiting around the corner. It certainly wasn't enjoyed by savages.

We Are Chained By Our Beliefs

This myth is what keeps most people in our culture working back breaking and soul destroying 40-60 hour weeks while the dream of leisure time is enjoyed by only a very few wealthy people at the top of the hierarchy. They are quite happy to spread the idea that "anyone can make it." But in reality there is only room at the top for a small few.

Tribal cultures spend 2-4 hours a day working.

Tribal cultures however spend on average 2-4 hours a day providing the necessities of life. It is easier to just go out into the world and gather the food that is already there than to slave away all day farming.

They spend the rest of their day socialising, having fun, telling stories or contemplating the mysteries of life. Contrary to the myths of our culture this actually was a comfortable, happy and satisfying way of life.

They spend their work time producing for themselves and their families. They don't work for a boss. They don't produce in order to support an upper class of non-working aristocrats. They don't work to pay tax. And they don't work in order to pay off debt.

Related Articles From Deep Ecology Hub:

• The Story Of Civilization
• Mother Culture
• The Great Forgetting

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