Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

One of the hallmarks of modern industrial civilization has been its phenomenal ability to make what was once the exclusive province of the rich and privileged available to the general population. Statistically this has been a good thing. Life expectancies have increased, and quality of life has improved.

One of the hallmarks of human nature has been our tendency to want whatever we don't have - especially if it's something we didn't want when we previously had it. When we do finally get what we think we want, the next generations will likely reject it. We also have a tendency to over compensate for past frustrations, amplifying what should have been minor pendulum swings into wild oscillations between extremes.

Consider the following contrarian human responses to the changing conditions brought about by the continuing industrial revolution. (And yes, I know there are exceptions to the general trends addressed here. Human contrarianism works on multiple levels - even to the extent of contrarian rejection of contrarianism...)

The foods enjoyed by the rich have long been desired by the poor - not so much because of their nutritional value, but mostly just because they were unavailable to commoners. Much of the motivation in developing modern industrial agriculture has been the market demand to make the "rich man's foods" of previous generations available to the common people. Ironically, as the previous foods of the rich became the common diet, the rich have tended to adopt the foods being abandoned by the poor.

Foods grown with minimal use of artificial chemicals were previously the norm back when the majority of the population grew much of their own food in small gardens. These foods were "organic" largely because of economic necessity. The organic foods that were once the default for most people have become premium products that are now marketed to the affluent. The processed foods that were once a luxury that only the rich could enjoy, are now most heavily consumed by the poor.

One of the early attempts to regulate working conditions in Colonial America restricted the number of times per week indentured servants could be forced to eat lobster. At the time lobster was considered a trash food fit only for those who couldn't afford anything better. Lobster is now associated with fine dining and premium prices. Having to eat lobster several times per week would now be considered an exceptional employment perk.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the natural organic diets of the poor were healthier than the indulgent gluttony of the rich. As the tables turned and the poor were able to enjoy the foods that had previously been unavailable to them, they also acquired the diseases that had previously been the exclusive bane of the rich. Obesity, diabetes, gout, cholesterol, etc. have now become the diseases of the poor, while the rich consume the premium organic foods that were once considered only suitable for the poor.

Regular travel was an unavoidable fact of life for tribes of hunter-gatherers prior to the development of agriculture. Stationary life must have been a desirable alternative considering how quickly it became the norm. And once stationary life became a viable option, there was a strong tendency to become very stationary.

It wasn't that long ago when even local travel was the exception. The majority of the population already lived where they worked by the time we started actively recording our history. There was typically little separation between work and life in either time or distance. Shopkeepers typically lived above or behind their stores. Farmers lived on their farms, with the farm often intruding into their living space. Only a few occupations such as sailor, minstrel, or itinerant tinker did much traveling. Most people spent their entire lives without ever venturing beyond their local village. Travel was largely the privilege of the ruling elite.

By the middle of the last century it had become common for workers to live further away from their jobs than previous generations traveled in their entire lifetimes. My father commuted an hour each way for most of his life. He spent two stressful hours a day driving 65 mph on crowded two lane highways where major accidents were a daily occurrence.

My father's long commute allowed him to raise his family in a pastoral rural environment while working in a high tech specialty industry that could only be found in an urban industrial environment. Commuting allowed him to create a lifestyle that would have been impossible in earlier times. It would certainly have been a challenge to commute over 100 miles/day by foot or draft horse. I was a beneficiary of his willingness to drive such distances, and I'm certainly glad he did it for so many years. In the context of the world he grew up in, it seemed a reasonable solution. It gave him what previous generations had been unable to attain.

I grew up in the rural environment that my father had to work so hard to provide, which predisposed me to place a lower value on it. I want what my father couldn't have - the extra 2 hours of free time each day that he spent commuting. While I would prefer to live "out in the country", time is more valuable to me. I want what in previous generations was the province of the "idle rich". As my contribution to overreaction, I've been so diligent in eliminating the ordeal of regular daily travel that my car suffers from lack of use.

Telecommuting is now allowing increasing numbers of people to work at home, avoiding the aggravation and wasted time of long commutes in heavy traffic. The privileged are now able to work where they live, while commuting long distances to work each day is becoming a hardship associated with the lower social strata.

The concept of a regular workday didn't exist until mass produced clocks became available a few hundred years ago. Before then the workdays of most people were determined by the sun and the seasons. They worked from sunup to sundown during planting and harvest, but had time to engage in handicrafts during the long dark hours of the winter off season.

Clocks made it possible to establish regular consistent work schedules, and factories made it possible to at least partly separate work from the variability of the seasons. The regularity and predictability that had been unobtainable for previous generations became the new norm as western nations shifted from agrarian to urban industrial socioeconomic systems.

One of the well publicized negatives of the early industrial revolution was the exploitation of workers by mill owners. The long workdays that resulted from trying to turn workers into extensions of the machines they operated were initially seen as an improvement over the uncertainties of seasonal agriculture. This resulted in an oversupply of workers migrating to the cities seeking what previous generations had been unable to achieve on the farm. Regular hours and a regular paycheck certainly had their attractions, but before long we started wanting what we didn't have - leisure time.

As the industrial revolution evolved, it rapidly expanded the economy, creating a growing demand for skilled workers. As the value of workers increased, so did the power of those workers to sell their labor to the employers offering the best pay and working conditions. The prosperity created by free enterprise provided workers with shorter workdays and the money to pursue other interests outside of their work.

The monotonous repetitive work of the early factories is now being progressively displaced by more intellectually stimulating alternatives. It's becoming increasingly common for people to work long hours because they like their job and want to spend more time working. Some are even able to converge their work and play sufficiently that time off from work becomes more of a punishment than benefit. As a result, it's the privileged that today can be found putting in 80-120 hour work weeks while the lower stratas have achieved the dreams of previous generations, and are now forced to endure extended amounts of leisure time.

Leisure industries boomed. Workers with spare time and money in their pockets bought endless varieties of toys with which to fill in their leisure hours. However, generations that grew up in a world where leisure time was the norm, now want what they believe was lost from earlier times.

Is it any wonder that so much of the unprecedented amount of leisure time enjoyed by the common man today is spent obsessing about having lost the sense of purpose and accomplishment, and close connection with the natural world that were common in past generations? Sedentary paper shufflers spend long hours on exercise machines attempting to artificially recreate the physical demands of a more arduous lifestyle. Suburbanites plant elaborate gardens to reestablish the close connection with the natural world that their ancestors moved to the industrial cities to escape. Some even spend their vacations trekking through the wilderness, seeking to experience a romanticized simulation of the primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle that our ancestors eagerly abandoned so long ago.

George Santayana is often quoted as saying, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it". It appears to me that George Bernard Shaw might have come a bit closer to the distressing reality of human nature when he observed, "We learn from history that we learn nothing from history".

I wonder if there is a goose quill font on this computer...