Sometimes I think that we may have progressed too far in the pursuit of free-time. In the old days, say when our country was being founded, men and women pretty much spent all of their waking hours trying to stay alive. It was a full-time occupation to keep some kind of shelter overhead, food in the belly and protected from predators, both the four-legged and two-legged varieties. The mortality rate was high and life-expectancy was low.
There was no electricity and there were no appliances, so you worked til the sun went down and the light disappeared and you dropped from exhaustion. There was no time for all the back-biting, lying and terrorizing of the public. Of course, the fastest form of communication was drums and smoke-signals, so it might take a while for an idea to make around to the general public. Rumor and innuendo were not effective weapons in the political world at that time because they required much more rapid communication forms to be meaningful.
Nowadays, we can say everything longer, louder, faster, and to many more people than ever before. And, you and I know that if you say it long enough, often enough and to enough people.....you can convince those people of anything.
I say turn off the electricity, make everybody hunt and grow their own food, make their own clothes, let them barter for everything. That ought to keep them busy enough to stay out of trouble.....at least...the kind of trouble we are in today.
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