I worked 55+ hours a week for years. During the pandemic I became a stay at home mom. I suddenly, never sped while driving and any road rage tendencies vanished, nearly overnight.

While I feel quite isolated and lonely sometimes, as everyone I know works and are busy all the time, I can't stress enough how much of a change my driving habits went through when I was no longer in "workmode".

I used to break an average of 3 traffic laws every morning getting to my 6am shift. Then, the rush to just.get.home.

To a point now, I don't like driving during rush hours, or shopping after the work crews get off. 10am on a weekday at the grocery store? Everyone is pleasant and polite."excuse me" I say, and we have a polite interchange. I'll give a compliment to a womans dress, and I've passed some good on to a fellow human, sometimes I even receive compliments from the little old ladies, I've learned from them after all.

If I go to the shop after 4pm or on a weekend? I can feel folks souls have been ripped out and stomped on, knowing what they feel.. I say excuse me as i have to scoot pass their cart, and I don't even get a response just a glare. Then I return home sad.

Eh, agreed except it’s no accident. A small group of people have managed to convince everyone else to do all the lifting in exchange for crumbs and little green pieces of paper. We have allowed ourselves to become our own worst enemy rather than unite and explore the stars

Competition is good for a lot of things, but it also becomes a day-to-day race to the bottom that rewards whoever is willing to sacrifice more of their life for the sake of their job than others.

The logical consequence is exactly this: we back ourselves into an increasingly uncomfortable corner that leaves less room for living than we could easily enjoy with our current technology.

B-b-b-b greed is human nature!

Yeah, go check out how any society outside of Europe worked before colonization. Winner writes the history!

The colonists were able to easily defeat most of the natives by out-arming them. But does anybody ever stop to think about why none of these societies ever invented guns? 🤔

Unfortunately there is a pyramid scheme in place filled with fools that think they can become that one and are willing to fight against those "beneath" them.

For anyone else reading this: you could be the one to make that change, and gain you and your coworkers better pay and time off.

Seriously consider joining the IWW. They'll train you on how to organize your coworkers and form a grassroots union, no matter what your job is.

I retired from my software developer job right before COVID hit, bought a very small (and very inexpensive) fixer-upper house for cash, and started driving a school bus. I make like 1/5 as much as I used to and I'm as happy as I've ever been in my life. I work less than five hours a day and I have a big break between my morning and afternoon runs so I can ride my bike, have a leisurely lunch and a nice nap in the middle of my day. If the school board would just take my suggestion to send all the middle-schoolers to the Antarctic for three years, my life would be perfect.

Nancy Birtwhistle has some great books that can help a bit with the cost of living. They include recipes for your own cleaning products and toiletries. It's only a few £s here and there but they start to add up into some real savings, plus you get the benefit of knowing exactly what's in your products, peace of mind from potential health effects, as it's all vinegars, citric acids, and alcohols instead of (to the layman) mystery chemicals.

And to save even more money they are available on the high seas, although she's put considerable care and attention into them so I've purchased the real things. But for getting started, they are available is all I'm saying.

Obviously that doesn't help with buying a house or anything as they're crazy prices everywhere but it'll save you on your shopping bills each week at least.

Imagine not working and still being able to survive.

So modern life is simulating an impending death scenario for the brain. All the time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation

I think you’re agreeing with the premise without realizing it. We weren’t meant to have the norms and expectations that society places on us to just survive. We’re not expected to just retain homeostasis and survival, part of that has been predicated on your “personal productivity” towards the systems that we live under. Access to community and group resources is something we’re made to seek out, but it’s been blocked behind paywalls and monetary requirements effectively.

Humans weren't "meant" for anything.

Hi, it's me, the creator. Your purpose is to create entertaining content, but your output has been slipping lately. You live in a simulation created by my multiversal corporation, which didn't meet growth expectations this cycle, so we'll be making some cuts to your simulation's fidelity — just a few fingers and toes for now. Try refocusing your civilization on pumping out Boss Baby movies (they're very popular here!) and we can talk again in 172 of your years.

Some of them fart 100s litres every single day. Fucking legends.

I've only gotten one minute into the video and already it's hit me with truth.

I'm a sahm, used to work in manufacturing. I enjoy keeping house, ..mostly. The beginning of the video it's stated in the stone age, people would usually have one day of heavy work, followed by a day of less work.

When I'm left to my own devices on planning and keeping house, this is exactly how my days go. I clean like hell for one day or do an outdoor project, and the next, I just do the bare minimum, maybe a load of dishes and a meal that requires more effort, but nothing else. I thought it was just part of my neurodivergencies. But I really do enjoy working in this manner. I actually get to enjoy the fruits of my labor for a minute.

Maybe thats what humans are missing, basking in a job well done is important to keep us motivated imo

Yeah, I feel this. We’ve been forced into a system that treat life like a nonstop grind instead of something we’re meant to actually live. Real connection got replaced by control. It’s crazy how unnatural all this ‘normal’ really is.

This is common, it's because there was a huge backlog of things you just never got around to doing because you didn't have enough time. When you're working you prioritize some relaxing time because you have to go back to work soon. Now you have to do all the tasks you've stored up.

From historical anthropology and studying modern hunter gatherer groups, I believe the current consensus is that these people work or worked between 20-30 hours a week. Please correct me if there is more recent information.

Yeah there's something to that. Like I feel as though we should always be doing stuff but not what it is that we're currently doing?

Like, we should be waking up and having tea with our neighbors or helping out in our communities and stuff .. perhaps just building, planting, fixing things that we'd like? I don't feel as though we should be fighting deadlines constantly.