The Freedom to Experience Life isn’t “Luck,” the Lack of it is Oppression.
How modern systems have stolen our time and destroyed traditional values.
I woke up today with a knotted throat. It’s not really depression just a knowing that there’s something brewing inside.
It started with my dreams, having to leave my family behind. Not being able to help them. I was told I was needed for something else and if I went back we’d all die.
I’ve been writing daily for the last 66 days. Part of what has allowed me to stay inspired is the fact I share so much of my personal experience and the ways I work with and learn from them.
People have remarked how lucky I am to have the space and time to do this and in the context of the modern world they’re right, I’m incredibly fortunate to be able to do this.
But it shouldn’t be such a rarity.
The lost time of the modern day.
Our ancestors evolved as hunter-gatherers. It wasn’t all buffalo fat and daisies but their daily workload was much shorter than ours with estimates of 3–4 hours a day.
This is echoed in modern hunter-gatherer societies. Agriculture changed this with intense work days in the plowing and harvest seasons but the space between was relaxed.
In comparison, most modern full-time workers work more than eight hours a day and that doesn’t include commuting or food shopping and prep which are both included in the hunter-gatherer estimates.
The United States has an average workday of 8.8–9.4 hours according to the United States Labor Bureau and the national Gallup poll.
Clearly, we’re spending more time working today than agricultural societies and hunter-gatherers.
Where the West has improved is on the insane hours of the industrial revolution where the poor and children were forced to work up to 100 hours a week just to make enough to survive.
This is where the modern expectation of consistent comes from. It’s not our traditional farmer roots, they had a healthy work ethic that knows how to work with the seasons and cycles of the year, rather the modern expectation of consistency comes from a recent technological advance and social changes that exploited the poor and powerless.
Humans, as we know them, arrived on the world scene 100,000–200,000 years ago this increase in the daily workload has only occurred in the most recent 0.13–0.26% of our existence.
When people say “this is the world is,” it’s the way we have created it without foresight for a tiny segment of our history.
The amount of time we are expected to work isn’t aligned with “traditional values” it’s a consequence of a techonological-social revolution that undermined the old traditional values of community, family, and the local spiritual traditions.
The unconscious programming of our modern society.
The Enlightenment era painted ancient traditions as superstitious and backward. This allowed Enlightenment thinkers to paint themselves as rational visionaries.
The thing is while ancient traditions certainly needed to change for a variety of reasons many of the ancient cultures were consciously shaped.
The rituals, the relationship to the seasons and others in the community were structured, planned, and thought through.
It’s important not to romanticize the past and to remember that it was restrictive but also remember that it was more thoroughly designed.
In the modern day our attempt to escape the past for something new has left us at the mercy of movements and systems we neither understand nor are we in control of anymore.
Our capitalist economy and all the ways it has been exploited has shaped a world devoid of conscious cultural structure. Rather than hold to traditional values of family and community people are forced to chase jobs across countries.
This takes away time spent with loved ones not to mention ritual and ceremony in relation to a spiritual tradition that reinforces the community and its connection with the land and the divine.
On top of this, the consumerist culture of smaller nuclear families all owning their homes has divided elders from their children and grandchildren.
Part of the reason why ancient cultures could reduce their workload was because a multigenerational family could split household work amongst all its members.
In the modern day, the division of generations means more isolation for elders, less help and insight for the children, more expenses for all members involved, and more time spent on basic necessities as each generation runs its own household.
Enlightenment authors claimed the ancients were living unconsciously through the fears of their superstitions but we are living as an unconscious society through our fear of challenging “the way the world is.”
Everyone should have the time to process their life.
Processing and dwelling on our experiences are a natural part of life. When we combine this with sharing our experiences with loved ones and our community we come to what may very well be the purpose of life.
The world of the modern day, however, has been hijacked by technological and economic systems that steal away our ability to make time and space for these processes.
What is life if we’re not able to experience, share, process, grieve, and enjoy it?
Having the space and time to engage in this process should never be a matter of “luck” it should be our natural right.
A society that does not allow for this due to its unconscious distribution of resources and labors isn’t a society of freedom but rather one of oppression that robs from us the time to spend with family, community, our spiritual practices, and gaining the wisdom that comes from processing our experiences.
What about you?
Do you have the time you need to do the healing work and integration you are called to do?
Do you have the time you need to be with your family? With your community? With your Self?
Love and share.
I’m starting something new. Writing every day as I put my random thoughts down on binary paper.
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