Our culture celebrates variety and change. People who move from small towns to big cities often go on and on about how those small towns were hells where nothing happened and the ignorant locals liked it that way. Sophisticated city folks love to visibly embrace change and variety, bragging about their new clothes, gadgets, and exotic vacations.
Different parts of our culture cater to different groups. The elites care more about city-culture but the elites also form that culture and are more likely to like whatever it is that city-culture preaches.
Sure it doesn't cater to country people but it isn't meant for them either and they don't care about that.
This is a species-by-species thing. Spiders and sea cucumbers have plenty of free time, but no hobbies. Perhaps humans have curiosity and enjoy leisure activities because they're programmed to learn. Work of the type pre-agricultural ancestors would have done are still popular leisure activities. What we call "leisure" resembles survival activity more than 2000 hours a year behind a desk does.
And do it for 40 hours per week, plus commutes, and then get home and cook and clean, pay bills, etc... Quite different from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and quite different from KidZania...
Most predators and omnivores have leisure time, while herbivores only stand around grazing which doesn't really elevate stress levels. Social predators and omnivores could spend all their leisure time scheming but this only happens to some extent. It just doesn't seem worth it to constantly elevate stress levels for some marginally better social position.
I find it doubly distancing, culturally speaking and then some, that those who opt to leave boring small flyover towns for the cool coastal cities are ALSO into taking vacations to exotic places. It's not enough that San Francisco has all these cultural amenities, you have to go to Thailand too and take pictures for the Facebook.
Hunter-gatherers do work that humans were built for. It makes sense that humans would want to do it. We weren't built for what we do now, so we'd need more incentive. KidZania is built to entertain kids. It's similar to adult work, but it's not adult work. If there's something about it that kids don't like, they can change it to make it more fun. Adult work is all about accomplishing something, so you can't just cut corners if it gets boring. You also can't just stop after an hour and switch jobs. And you have to keep doing it, day in and day out.
Funny, our culture just lost our Presidential election.
Its related to sexual display?
Different parts of our culture cater to different groups. The elites care more about city-culture but the elites also form that culture and are more likely to like whatever it is that city-culture preaches.
Sure it doesn't cater to country people but it isn't meant for them either and they don't care about that.
This is a big claim and I'd like to know your reasoning.
This is a species-by-species thing. Spiders and sea cucumbers have plenty of free time, but no hobbies. Perhaps humans have curiosity and enjoy leisure activities because they're programmed to learn. Work of the type pre-agricultural ancestors would have done are still popular leisure activities. What we call "leisure" resembles survival activity more than 2000 hours a year behind a desk does.
If by "our culture" you mean "the culture celebrated in big cities," then maybe.
Our culture celebrates big cities more than small towns.
And do it for 40 hours per week, plus commutes, and then get home and cook and clean, pay bills, etc... Quite different from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and quite different from KidZania...
Most predators and omnivores have leisure time, while herbivores only stand around grazing which doesn't really elevate stress levels. Social predators and omnivores could spend all their leisure time scheming but this only happens to some extent. It just doesn't seem worth it to constantly elevate stress levels for some marginally better social position.
Why hasn't evolution bred out leisure, anyway?
Robin, did you notice that the first paragraph of your post implies, "Our culture is the culture of big cities, not that of small towns"?
My impression is that people who are more work-oriented have better jobs or less imagination.
I find it doubly distancing, culturally speaking and then some, that those who opt to leave boring small flyover towns for the cool coastal cities are ALSO into taking vacations to exotic places. It's not enough that San Francisco has all these cultural amenities, you have to go to Thailand too and take pictures for the Facebook.
Nice!
Hunter-gatherers do work that humans were built for. It makes sense that humans would want to do it. We weren't built for what we do now, so we'd need more incentive. KidZania is built to entertain kids. It's similar to adult work, but it's not adult work. If there's something about it that kids don't like, they can change it to make it more fun. Adult work is all about accomplishing something, so you can't just cut corners if it gets boring. You also can't just stop after an hour and switch jobs. And you have to keep doing it, day in and day out.