Work (human activity)

Work is something humans do to survive and sometimes for more intellectual or emotional incentives.

For most of our evolution, humans worked about 15-20 hours a week doing hunting/gathering and other survival tasks. The rest of the time was spent socializing, crafting, or making music.

The introduction of agriculture and rise of a class system greatly expanded the workday. This can be seen in skeletons from similar locations where the farmers show much more wear and tear.

The Sumerians divided the day into 24 hours, showing a greater interest in tracking productivity. The Egyptians held thousands of slaves, forcing them to work long hours.

With the Industrial Revolution, humans gained better access to food, clothing, and labor-saving machines. However this has not led to a return to less work, but paradoxically led to more work as bureaucratic systems have eaten into free time and workers spend nearly half their year covering taxes levied by the government.

Psychologically, humans have had a complicated relationship with work, sometimes despising it and sometimes deriving a sense of pride, identity, and purpose from their occupations.

Totalitarian ideologies, like communism and fascism, often exploit the human relationship with work, indoctrinating the underclass to associate their own individual value with their contribution to the whole society. These systems are led by tiny elites that usually do not work all that much themselves.