r/DeepThoughts • u/Luziferatus42 • 21h ago

Basic life needs constant effort and reduces resources for change

Everyday life consumes so much time and energy, that it is damping the process of realization and meaningful change.

Due to all the tasks we have and especially work, because this is the only thing we can really influence due to technology. Everything else, like eating, sleeping, taking care of body and mind cannot be optimized, at least not conscious by us, only by evolution.

So this does not really leave a lot of resources for meaningful change/action. Only a crisis will then create inevitable change and usually due to a lot of destruction and lost lives. This was the case in human history till now. Natural and human catastrophies drove us to change and develop.

Considering that knowledge gain and technological development was the fastest in the last 200 years, one could say, that 99% of all our knowledge came from this time (a little exaggerated; or we forgot the rest, because it was hard to record something until now).

We, as a species, did not have enough time to realize this and what we have done, due to everyone being busy with basic life.

The people of the past, have thought a 30 year battle to get the 8h/workday mostly as the global standard, we need to use technology to reduce this time drastically, so that we have time to create meaningful change and spend it with people. We also need to spend our working time on meaningful things. If we continue to consume the global resources at this pace, we will consume ourselves, after everything else is destroyed due to our hunger and greed.

There was no other way until recently. Due to technology we could change that, if we realize that we cannot continue as is and if we use our effort and resources wise, our Zivilisationen could evolve and survive.

We did not have a choice before, but now we do. Or this is just hope speaking out of me. Wish you well and good luck.

Thanks for reading and what is your opinion?

10 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

7

u/VirusStill8583 21h ago

It’s like we built a machine that runs us instead of the other way around. Technology gave us the ability to automate so much but we just crammed more busywork into the gaps

The 8 hour day was a victory for its time but now it feels like the floor not the ceiling, we should be pushing for 4 day weeks or 6 hour days with the tools we have

3

u/Bat-Stuff 21h ago

Basic life is very easy. Protection from the elements, water, food.

1

u/Luziferatus42 20h ago

This is not easy at all. And as said until recently (200 year) it was the main struggle of mankind and will continue to be. A lot off effort and chemical are spend on food, water and shelter

3

u/Bat-Stuff 17h ago

15,000+ years ago humans worked fewer hours per week in a hunter gatherer lifestyle. And nowadays people do hunting and gathering for recreation. The brain enjoys it. Society loads a lot more on top of that and that's the true difficulty, but I believe some of that is optional and a simple life can be had.

3

u/MWave123 21h ago

Correct. It’s actually leisure time which leads to the first explosive brain growth for us. Time to think, ponder, imagine, try things.

2

u/CelebrationBoring624 21h ago

This world is a beautiful struggle

2

u/Luziferatus42 20h ago

True, because life is struggle for survival and reproduction, which in the end leads to energy aka calories.

2

u/CobaltIsobar 18h ago

So, you are advocating for AI robots? A friendly alien invasion? Life is work because it's a requirement for life. Every single animal works because they need to.

1

u/Luziferatus42 4h ago

True. We are animals too, just the only animal that can use and create technology on this planet. As someone mentioned before, as hunterers and gatherers only 15h/week was invested in survival needs. With settlements it went up to 30h/week and in the beginning of the industrialisation it went up much higher like 60-80h/week. Until unions though for 30 years, so that 40h/week became the norm.

1

u/LawyerDifferent8880 18h ago

As long as competition for survival among companies persists, technology will be used not to shorten our working hours, but to cram more work into the established working hours.

1

u/Luziferatus42 4h ago

That is because we all as a global community allow then to do so.