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One of the most popular activities in non-industrial societies: doing nothing

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Re: One of the most popular activities in non-industrial societies: doing nothing

#51

Post by brimble »

Ekaros wrote: post #28
wodenokoto wrote: post #24

I've spend most of my day today napping and watching youtube and a bit of doom scrolling. With less technology, that would be categorized as mostly nothing.

I feel that what technology has changed is that we have something to do that is in actuality nothing. Watching Youtube, browsing news or reading HN and posting some comments really are for me doing nothing... Not that you couldn't do something in there, but I think many of the ways we spend time is doing nothing. We just have something to do while we do nothing. Back in time we did not.

> We just have something to do while we do nothing. Back in time we did not.

Back when? TV and very low-value, low-effort reading (periodicals, comics, books) have existed for quite a while and filled many an otherwise idle hour. I think you'd have to go back to the 19th century to find a time when there weren't very cheap options available to fill idle hours without effort. They still had cheap low-value books and such (penny dreadfuls, for instance) but volume and availability was more limited, so do-nothing entertainment wasn't quite as plentiful.

Re: One of the most popular activities in non-industrial societies: doing nothing

#52

Post by ZephyrBlu »

pdimitar wrote: post #37
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when does planning ahead have anything to do with anxiety???

Do enough of it every day, multiple times a day, for 10+ years, and you'll see. :)

I'm pretty sure I've already spent the last 10 years thinking about how to proceed multiple times per day and I'm only in my 20s... It seems hard not to do that.

Re: One of the most popular activities in non-industrial societies: doing nothing

#53

Post by [deleted] »

Aunche wrote: post #45
UglyToad wrote: post #30

As appears in Debt by David Graeber [0]: Missionary: Look at you! You’re just wasting your life away, lying around like that. Samoan: Why? What do you think I should be doing? Missionary: Well, there are plenty of coconuts all around here. Why not dry some copra and sell it? Samoan: And why would I want to do that? Missionary: You could make a lot of money. And with the money you make, you could get a drying machine,…

Doing nothing and relaxing in a tropical paradise sounds great until everyone else gets the same idea and wants to do the same and moves there. Then, your island is no longer self sufficient, and the only jobs locals are qualified for are low-skill services for foreign tourists.

[deleted]

Re: One of the most popular activities in non-industrial societies: doing nothing

#54

Post by ryan93 »

Epiphany21 wrote: post #27
Daishiman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take the social scientists who have man-decades of direct observation and interaction with said tribes over your random layman speculation.

When you have the data in hand and you're still making appeals to authority, you've lost the plot entirely.

the data shows a lot of time spend doing nothing

Re: One of the most popular activities in non-industrial societies: doing nothing

#55

Post by AlwaysRock »

I grew up in rural Vermont in the 90s. We lived on a dirt road. We were homeschooled, had spotty cell service at best, and when we did have a computer my parents limited it to 30 minutes of use at a time.

I spent a lot of time doing nothing growing up. We had a big yard so I spent a lot of time outside. Mostly doing nothing. Sometimes having bonfires where we sat, talked, and did nothing. Somedays I read.

But mostly I did a lot of nothing. I was bored sometimes but honestly I miss those days. I miss waking up and thinking that I had nothing to do and letting the day drag on and on.

Re: One of the most popular activities in non-industrial societies: doing nothing

#56

Post by AlwaysRock »

Ekaros wrote: post #28
wodenokoto wrote: post #24

I've spend most of my day today napping and watching youtube and a bit of doom scrolling. With less technology, that would be categorized as mostly nothing.

I feel that what technology has changed is that we have something to do that is in actuality nothing. Watching Youtube, browsing news or reading HN and posting some comments really are for me doing nothing... Not that you couldn't do something in there, but I think many of the ways we spend time is doing nothing. We just have something to do while we do nothing. Back in time we did not.

Functionally it feels very different. Doing something that doesnt feel like much of anything is still different from doing nothing. You could argue that the tweets linked included tidying up and making tools as doing nothing but those seemed more like something you could do while lounging around.

Interacting with social media feel very different from sitting on a porch and whittling. One feels like I'm doing something in my brain. One feels like nothing.

Re: One of the most popular activities in non-industrial societies: doing nothing

#57

Post by slothtrop »

bmitc wrote: post #49
api wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This line of reasoning is the same as the line of reasoning behind the idea that hunter-gatherers had it better than we do. It works until: - Your kid breaks their leg. - A natural disaster destroys your home. - You get cancer. - Psychopathic marauders sack your town and rape and kill everyone. - A draught causes a famine. - Your baby is born with a birth defect. ... and so on. I strongly suspect that humanity set of…

Hunter gatherers did have it better than the early agricultural societies. They worked much less during any given day, lived longer, and were healthier. Hunter gatherer societies can live as long as people in modern, developed societies. You're ignoring the amount of stress and mental disorders skyrocketing in modern societies. With those, it makes a human life almost a tragedy, stretched out due to modern medicine a…

I think you mean better than early North American settlers. Agriculture is quite old, and integral to the birth of Civilization. Not really clear what the disparity might have been at the onset, though it might have been a hybrid system. It seems that even some indigenous societies in the Americas experimented with agriculture.

> You're ignoring the amount of stress and mental disorders skyrocketing in modern societies.

That might say something about developments in technology, or wealth inequality - not so much society revolving around agriculture.

Re: One of the most popular activities in non-industrial societies: doing nothing

#58

Post by tluyben2 »

jsiaajdsdaa wrote: post #9

My dog also does nothing when not prompted, and he seems to be surviving just fine.

Your dog is convinced you will provide it with food and drink and other care until it dies(until you don't: it will look elsewhere eventually). I think if that would be the same for humans, things would be different. It seems it is something people strive to achieve even though when it finally happens, they won't be able to handle it. Dogs contemplate the passing of time and the waste (this is our sentiment, not inherent to nature) not at all in the same manner.

Re: One of the most popular activities in non-industrial societies: doing nothing

#59

Post by didibus »

So we're all just somehow happy assuming that we don't equally spend most of our time doing nothing without data?

I definitely spend a lot of time doing nothing, even though I might be pretending not.

And then we have giant industry all about passive entertainment where we can turn our brain off, like all the crappy TV and movies and tiktoks, and YouTube, and watching other people play games or do sport where we just sit doing nothing half paying attention.

If there "doing nothing" involved meditating, thinking, or what not, but as far as I'm concerned there "doing nothing" sounds like they're just watching the leafs blow in the wind, the bird sings, and that's just another version of watching TikTok that's slightly less entertaining.

Re: One of the most popular activities in non-industrial societies: doing nothing

#60

Post by bmitc »

slothtrop wrote: post #57
bmitc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hunter gatherers did have it better than the early agricultural societies. They worked much less during any given day, lived longer, and were healthier. Hunter gatherer societies can live as long as people in modern, developed societies. You're ignoring the amount of stress and mental disorders skyrocketing in modern societies. With those, it makes a human life almost a tragedy, stretched out due to modern medicine a…

I think you mean better than early North American settlers. Agriculture is quite old, and integral to the birth of Civilization. Not really clear what the disparity might have been at the onset, though it might have been a hybrid system. It seems that even some indigenous societies in the Americas experimented with agriculture. > You're ignoring the amount of stress and mental disorders skyrocketing in modern societi…

No, I meant all the way back to the birth of agriculture. See Against the Grain by James C. Scott.
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