I think it’s natural to want to want to work and be active. It is a behavior that has been reinforced by evolution since we were hunter/gatherers. But, there are certain tasks that have definitely frustrated me.
Context is irrelevant in my opinion, in the same way that hunger and survival are irrelevant to a dog expressing its prey drive on a plush toy. I also believe we have more agency now than ever; we live in a time when food is abundant, and taking a day or two off might leave you with a smaller paycheck rather than at risk of starving to death. When a job needed to be done thousands of years ago, it was often imperative to the survival of yourself or your community, and not necessarily a matter of choice. Those communities likely also had harsh means of enforcing labor contribution of the able-bodied, consequences exceeding the typical outcome of homelessness that we’re familiar with today, which contributed to this evolution. Those who found work itself to be rewarding were much more likely to survive and reproduce, as opposed to those who only found reward in the outcome of work (food, now money).
I think it’s natural to want to want to work and be active. It is a behavior that has been reinforced by evolution since we were hunter/gatherers. But, there are certain tasks that have definitely frustrated me.
It’s natural in a survival or creative context where we use our own agency to decide what to work on.
It’s unnatural when we have no agency on the daily and our reward has been abstracted to numbers in a bank account.
Context is irrelevant in my opinion, in the same way that hunger and survival are irrelevant to a dog expressing its prey drive on a plush toy. I also believe we have more agency now than ever; we live in a time when food is abundant, and taking a day or two off might leave you with a smaller paycheck rather than at risk of starving to death. When a job needed to be done thousands of years ago, it was often imperative to the survival of yourself or your community, and not necessarily a matter of choice. Those communities likely also had harsh means of enforcing labor contribution of the able-bodied, consequences exceeding the typical outcome of homelessness that we’re familiar with today, which contributed to this evolution. Those who found work itself to be rewarding were much more likely to survive and reproduce, as opposed to those who only found reward in the outcome of work (food, now money).