Meirl
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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Another unpopular opinion: people werent meant to be exposed to everyone’s lives and opinions through pictures and videos 24/7 leading to comparisons that slo lead to anxiety and depression.
Honestly, society celebrates constant hard work, but humans aren’t designed for endless hustle. We’re meant to rest, build relationships, and simply exist. This nonstop pace is why anxiety and burnout have become so common. Taking time to slow down isn’t being lazy, it’s essential for survival.
We’re all meant to have meaningful work in our lives, but nobody should have to slave away like we have been.
In tribal hunter / gatherer societies, it is estimated that they did about 4 hours worth of “work” per day & the rest of the time was spent on leisure activities like singing, dancing, and communal cooking.
Looking at the US from the outside is weird. Constant overtime, next to no vacation days, and people get praised for “working hard”. Not for doing good work, just working a lot. Sisyphus should be an American hero.
I think actually the opposite is true. It’s that modern humans aren’t busy *enough*, at least not with any meaningful activities.
Hunting and gathering your own food, fighting off predators, literally building and maintaining your home and entire community by hand is a 24/7 project. You don’t have the time to sit around moping or feeling restless or bored. You have important, meaningful work to attend to all of the time. Even when you do have time for liesure, those liesure activities are focused on communal activities that bring everyone in your tribe together, or on mastering a skill that is vital or important for the well being of the tribe.
Modern humans spend their days doing mostly meaningless work in order to afford comparatively luxurious lives where everything of consequence is already taken care for them. This frees up a lot more time for liesure, but that liesure time itself is also generally filled with comparatively meaningless activities. We tend to just spend out time consuming things that have been prepackaged for us; tv, movies, video games, pornography, etc. People just become isolated in their little bubbles with no sense of meaning or purpose.
Popular. Belongs in R/unpopularopinions
This is not an unpopular opinion.
They, whoever they might be, have succesfully fully turned us against each other.
• You have to be better than your co-worker to get that promotion.
• If you take more than 3 sick days a/year, you are weak and they should get rid of you. No matter if you worked 25 years and never took a sick day before. Better get rid of you before this illness comes to light.
• If you are a stay at home mother, you are a golddigger. Doesn’t matter that you both agreed, your days are equally exhausting and the last time you bought yourself clothes is 5 years ago.
• If you are a stay at home father, you are a lazy piece of shit. No matter the circumstances.
• If you volunteer for a cause you support or love to do you are stupid. Could have gotten a job that paid you.
• If you suffer from mental illness, you should get over yourself already.
• If you skip breakfast all year, and only drink water to save up for this 2 week holiday, you can’t complain about barely making ends meet. You went on a holiday. That is not necessary.
• Others always have it worse. Get over yourself.
• If your boss knows you struggle financially, brace yourself. You’ll get **ALL** the overtime and a snarky comment. Instead of, just offering a reasonable wage.
Etc etc.
I work part time in a field that lets me earn enough money to get by really well and I think a mandated four day week should be the norm.
I hate this notion so much. Humana are basically animals – smarter ones sure but we did and do need to work constantly to survive. We evolved and made it so we don’t have to do that as much any more but of course our rulers force it on us anyways.
Yeah we’re meant to handle this kinda stress for maybe a couple weeks or months. During harvest season or when clashing with a rival tribe.
Most of the animals in the world have abilities we could only dream of having. Imagine what we could accomplish having even a few of the amazing abilities animals have? What do animals do with these abilities, nothing. Let’s take a page out of their book and relax and chill all day like they do.
Nobody and nothing was ever meant to be this busy.
I mean, have you ever seen wild animals? Yeah, maybe some predator will spend a half day hunting but for the rest they just eat, fuck and sleep their entire lives.
Nobody ever mentions social media when it comes to anxiety and depression. It’s a huge factor as well in my opinion. Depression and suicide rates have increased every year since around 2006, right around the time when social media became a thing.
Our lives are more comfortable, and we “work” far less than we ever have. I’d argue our anxiety and depression come from other modern sources.
*’What if… society BAD?’*
Yes, very good, very insightful, very edgy.
Idiotic opinion. Where we evolved, much earlier than agriculture, it was a constant struggle for life. Getting food, getting water (on a fucking Savannah), getting shelter, fighting off predators, staying warm, it took these people most of their time, and the result of their work was very poor. They’re the ones who were actually busy.
Are people even more depressed and anxious now when you correct for the changing criteria? If we are i’d bet on information being fed to people via social media, and general change of the form of social interactions.
But if the plebs aren’t kept busy, they’ll realize just how badly they are getting fucked over and divided by an extremely small %age of the population, solely so they can get more 1s & 0s and pieces of paper.
I struggle with work in long hours leading to being exhausted and then taking care of life admin afterwards. Looking back when I first started work 21 years ago, this was different. I wasn’t required to work as many hours and work itself was more relaxed, and after work I didn’t mind going shopping, doing laundry, etc.
When I talk to my parent’s generation they are all talk about “hard work” and maybe throw in how “today’s generation is lazy” but when you go through how they actually worked it’s so much less work and stress — minus the story of how great grandfather walked 2 hours to work and back and afterwards two hours to a football game to play, and somehow everything including the pitch was always uphill.
We were never meant to have this much opportunity. We haven’t evolved past survival instincts, but we have opportunity for permanent shelters, exotic foods, internet, amusement, all sorts of things we don’t need but absolutely love. We strive to have all these opportunities instead of just being happy with basic survival.
Yes
https://youtu.be/hvk_XylEmLo?si=f4zEimFVTDRaeU0W
Nah, I think everyone fees this way atp 😂
We didn’t evolve to use our pre-frontal cortex for everything either.
Unpopular? Opinion?
This is a known fact, isn’t it?
Where the hell is this unpopular?
I think it’s more of the opposite I think people have too much free time. Enough free time to say my life sucks and then change it.
Imagine being prey, youd be busy 24/7 watching you back
unironically it’s actually the opposite. depression is a “rich mans disease”, caused by having too much time on your hands. Makes the world a lonely, empty place.
I think the monkeys do it greatly. They just don’t speak, solve simple things and we gave them food shelter and let them be. They’re the smart ones
When humans first evolved into the playing field, they were too busy trying to not starve to understand concepts like “being bored”
Live a homeless life then.
Chase your dream!