Thomas Hobbes wrote that, without some of the advantages provided by a nation state, the natural condition of man is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” This entry focuses on the term “nasty.” I take some license with all the terms to focus the meaning on particular misconceptions about the natural life of early foraging bands of humans. “Nasty” will be used to reflect the burdensome existence, the constant struggle for survival, that many assume must be the lot of early man. From Essay 22 in Systems out of Balance:
“The evolutionary axiom “survival of the fittest” provides a nasty image of all organisms, humans included. This axiom has acquired a status of infallibility, particularly with laissez faire scholars from Herbert Spencer to Milton Friedman. To survive we must compete better, to compete better we must work harder. Any slackers in the natural world of survival would have been weeded out and discarded. The nasty burden of a primitive quest for survival is reinforced by a corporate culture that wants to convince us how much leisure we have in a modern laissez faire economy. Hans believes this without reservation, since he knows early humans did not have access to television, automobiles or other leisure-enhancing technologies.
The alleged gain in leisure from our cultural evolution has proven to be more fallacy than fact. Conserving energy drives the behavior of all natural organisms. Lions lie around for a good portion of the day in wise management of their energy budgets, while bears hibernate for a good portion of the year. For Hans to believe that “survival of the fittest” created a burdensome struggle to exist for early cultures, he must also believe that natural humans refute other laws of nature. He must believe that we are dumber and grossly more incompetent than lions. Humans include more caloric rich foods in their diet than lions and other carnivores, yet Hans uncritically accepts the implication that humans have not the wit to use this to their advantage for conserving energy. Thankfully, the baseline data from early cultures provide no support for such a self-debasing assumption of natural human ineptitude and inferiority to other species.
All studies of the production (foraging) time spent by early cultures put them around the 20 hour a week category, part-timers at best.[1] A study of the Ju/’hoansi in Botswana revealed that the men worked 21.7 hours a week at the foraging culture’s version of a job, and the women worked 12.6 hours.[2] What makes this striking is that the women, as the main gatherers of mongongo nuts, are the more prolific producers of calories. This means that the foragers of the Ju/’hoansi could have even more idle time if they did not choose to supplement their diets with game. As with modern civilizations, the hunt just might be more of a leisurely diversion than real work to the Ju/’hoansi and, just as with modern corporate executive culture, the males protest how hard they are working while out having a good time with the boys.
The production surpluses of the agricultural age were not due to increased work efficiency, getting more food from the same amount of work. Comparisons of the work hours versus the calories produced reveal early cultivators to be no more efficient than foragers. The production surpluses of agriculture were a function of land efficiency, extracting more food from a smaller area, thus enabling humans to settle down and congregate. Early farmers actually worked longer hours than foragers, though they worked less than the modern day farmer.[3] A nasty existence of sixty hour work weeks or more for a family unit occurs only in “civilized” cultures.
The trouble with all “infallible” axioms is that none are based on infinite experience. Without the benefit of infinite experience to draw from all axioms are vulnerable to being proved fallible at some point. Sometimes an “infallible” axiom is refuted just by the limited experiences provided by getting away from one’s armchair. But that would prove to be too much of a struggle for some scholars spouting their idolized beliefs.”
[1] In the chapter “The Original Affluent Society,” in Stone Age Economics (1972), Marshall Sahlins provides an overview of these studies.[2] From The Dobe Ju/’hoansi (2001), by Richard B. Lee.
[3] Based on comparing data for cultivators in Sahlins with Lee’s Ju/’hoansi.
The misconception of the daily burdens faced by early humans has had severe consequences for the middle class. Some “libertarian” think tanks have even referred to our “right” to work hard, as if devoting all our labor to economic productivity is our highest and most free calling. There are many worthy things to be done with our labor. Some of them–personal improvement, family obligations, community service and political involvement–are not just worthy but essential to healthy communities and healthy democracies.
We live in a corporate culture where devoting labor away from economic productivity to those other essential activities risks the accusation of becoming a slacker, and sometimes even of being unpatriotic. This has led to a condition where corporations become master. The natural 40-hour work week for a family unit becomes impractical, unless that “family unit” has only one parent, even as wages for the middle class stagnated over the past thirty years. Supply and demand, baby! If culture trains us to flood the labor market with our supply of economic labor there is no need for corporations to keep up with competitive wages. Rather than a natural economic workload of 20 hours per week, some individuals work sixty hours or more, as families, communities and our democracy suffers the consequences of neglect.
Tags: Cultural Misinformation, Middle Class Culture, Quality of Life
