It all stems back to (mainly) the industrial revolution, when the ruling classes realised that there was tremendous profit to be made by harnessing the labour of the proletariat - and then managed to get the clergy on side to preach the virtues of hard work. The introduction of full time paid work, rather than work enough to just harvest / grow / earn to supply your families immediate needs did NOT coincide with an improvement in quality of life for the workers.
Interestingly few people question this today and are happy to work 40-50 hour weeks when the first couple of hours of labour would be enough to cover our NEEDS (food / basic shelter) and the rest of our time is basically spent earning the means to buy useless **** and keep ourselves occupied.
Hurrah for Bertrand Russell!

SailCoothara said...
Without incentive there is no innovation and thus no evolution of society. If we all worked for our needs and our needs only, we wouldn't be making posts on this forum, over the internet, on a computer, at a desk, on a seat, on a floor, in a room, in a house, on a block of land and in Australia for that matter....
But we should question if we are evolving
in a good direction. In many countries work
is life. Modern, first world countries.
What are we working so hard for? To stay ahead? To get ahead? To progress? Of where, of whom, to where? Who really cares?
I know Seabreeze is great for conspiracy theories, but the truth is much, much scarier; There's nobody at the helm!
If we can look back at past society and propose it was so awful, then it stands to reason that future society can look at ours and do the same. And so on, and so on, and so on. Forever. At some point shouldn't we say "enough is enough"? We can make so much more than we need already (see useless ****), let's actually focus on enjoying our lives instead of building for the future that never comes.