This is like "respect is earned".
No mother fucker, respect is the default. You're supposed to respect everyone you meet. People can lose respect, and gain it back. But you don't start at zero and earn your way to being respected. You respect every human you meet
nah, i think you start at like 5/10 respect, but you can earn extra as well as lose some. people don't start at max
i think it depends on your (not literally your!) definition of “respect,” no?
i respect complete strangers right to live their lives and try to follow the golden rule, but i feel like people who say “respect is earned” mean you have to beg to be treated like a person on equal person-footing.
i’m also not going to invite random people (or new neighbors, say) into my house for tea right off the bat, though. some might consider that disrespectful. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I would say that is trust vs respect.
You don't start out as a respected craftsman/developer/engineer/mechanic/etc. It's something you earn.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't respect someone as a person.
Either You're confusing respect with respect, or you're purposefully misinterpreting the expression.
That was the default at one point in human history. If you didn't hunt or forage, you probably didn't get to eat. Eventually humans discovered agriculture and figured out a small group of people could produce enough food for a large group of people. You'd assume that would then mean not everyone would need to labour for their food, but you'd be wrong!
That is not the default.
Most forager cultures are based around sharing, and everybody's property rights usually include the right to use all of the group's territory, and a share of all food that was gotten in large amounts like large prey etc. [1] The amount of labor needed for feeding people increased a lot with agriculture[1][2]; in most forager cultures you'd have people with a variety of different roles, anything from child and elder care, to tool making, to cooking etc. – and even some people who basically don't do jack shit. Their concept of property and ownership was often different, so this'll sound surprising in today's culture where you need to earn a right to live.
Agriculture was initially only really good for population growth and rulers (easy to tax production), but it absolutely didn't make anybody's life easier or better for a long time when compared to foragers. In addition to taking a lot more work than foraging, it also led to diets getting much worse, a higher incidence of viral outbreaks due to more people living closer together for longer times, and a bunch of other problems, ultimately leading to early sedentary cultures having shorter life spans compared to foragers [1][3]
My sourcing isn't extensive because this isn't a scientific article 😁 just for the main points so people can verify I'm not pulling this out of my ass.
- [1] The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution and the Origins of Private Property, Journal of Political Economy
- [2] Persistent Controversies about the Neolithic Revolution, Journal of Historical Archaeology & Anthropological Sciences
- [3] The agricultural revolution as environmental catastrophe: Implications for health and lifestyle in the Holocene, Quaternary International
True, but agriculture and herding made stable civilizations possible. Hunting and gathering meant you had to go where the food was, and if you overhunted or overgathered, or your staple foods got wiped out by disease/famine/natural disaster/etc then your society was probably just done.
Writing only comes into existence after the first cities are established. Arguably, the ability to share knowledge in this way has improved quality of life for everyone (not just rulers).
Fair points, but also a bit moot. We can't stop agriculture and go back to tribal hunting, we are entirely too many people on earth and we have already hunted many species to extinction. I'm also fairly sure we wouldn't have remotely enough "wild" growth of food and game to sustain our global population. All that would do now is cause famine and wars. And probably the extinction of many more animal species.
I mean, it still is. As another commenter pointed out, even in foraging societies people can share, so individuals might survive without labour, by the help of others - but only because others are labouring on their behalf.
If everyone stops working, everyone dies.
Labour in a society is about doing your share, even if others have the generosity to give you their food when you lack. And, in turn, you give to them/others when they lack. Or you make an 'economy' so you can kind of mix sharing with selfishness and try to make it fair.
Either way, labour has to be done for you to keep living. By you, or by others.
What we have now is a lot of wealth from a lot of labour, and a hugely complicated economy allowing even the fungible trade of such things as ideas, entertainment, trickery, authority and abstract property inheritance. But still, down at the bottom of it, people have to labour so that people can live.
You are precious without working to earn it; what you earn is your share of the ability to live on this difficult earth.
How do babys survive? They can not hunt nor forage. Even more so we have remains of a person with Down sydrom who died in his mid 20s having been unable to walk on two legs for at least a decade before he died. So clearly unable to surive on his own. Also hunter gathers ususally work 15 hours a week. At least modern ones do that. Agriculture is able to provide food for more people, but tends to do so with a lot more work until relativly recently
The Problem with things, like the 15 hour per week claim, is that work isn't comparable in different forms of society.
The article for example never specified, what it defines as work. Is only the time spent hunting or foraging 'work' ?
Is making & maintaining tools work? Is learning a new skill from an elder work? Is experimenting with a new technique work? Is keeping the campfire alive work? Is keeping watch for dangerous animals work? All of which are work in today's society. Hell, over half of my work week is spent 'socialising'. Do I only work for 20 hours a week now?
Every article or study, that I know of, that claims that people in the past worked significantly less, fails to specify what it defines as work.
Yeah, but can't really go back to foraging, can I? I have to somehow become a cog in the big societal machine, if I can, to survive.
Bumping this from my other reply to root in short form:
You are precious without working to earn it; what you earn is your share of the ability to live on this difficult earth.
Our society and economy are so complex, and many people will devalue you, value you wrongly, and do every evil under the sun. Others, I hope, will love you far more than you seem to deserve, and share with you at their greater expense.
But at the bottom of it, someone or someones, have to labour to earn the possibility for you to live. If no one labours, no one lives.
I don't feel like he's out of line at all, tbh
