I really do hope tthat we can make that massive cultural shift ttowards finding meaning outside of laboring for the capitalist class. For most of human history, people had no boss and worked for themselves or werr tradesmen(essentially contractors)
Kahneman and Harari also discussed how the shift to agriculture, while a great step forward for humanity as a collective group, was a major bummer for the individual. (Much more interesting and healthier to be a hunter-gatherer than a serf.)
Have you ever farmed before? I spent one summer doing it and it is the definition of toil. I couldn't imagine how much more it sucked without modern tools, yet people built irrigation ditches and terraformed the land.
People often miss the meaning behind the Biblical story of the fall of man. The garden of eden can be seen as a metaphor for the hunter gatherer lifestyle. Knowledge, (a metaphor for agriculture) led to the fall. It is further highlighted when God curses cain for killing abel, that when he tills the soil, it will resist him as an enemy. Farmers have to work day and night doing back-breaking work while a sinlge pig can feed nearly 100 people.
Also, interestingly, hunter-gatherer remains had larger skulls as well as a more developed physique. While they had a more nutritious diet, the mental demands required to be a hunter gatherer in those times required relatively extraordinary cognitive ability...a near encyclopedic knowledge of the safety of foods, its various uses as medicines, the ability to accurately map your entire stomping grounds and the memory necessary to store and recall all this information
