hoo-ray for the weekend. alas for the demise of hunter-gatherers. if i were a nomadic hunter gatherer from one thousand years ago i would only have to work about two hours a day to supply myself with everything needed for survival. this is documented. (best i could find given 5 mins searching.) the risks of developing a degenerative disease would be greatly decreased and my overall nutritional content would be better although i would have less protein intake than what the USRDA recommends. Nuts and berries are good for you folks. but before you go gallivanting off to become a !Kung remember that the reason we switched over from hunter/gatherer to swidden agriculture was an increase in population that could only be supported by cultivation and domestication. it takes a lot of acreage to provide for even one person and lifespan is significantly shorter and the birth rate lower among hunter-gatherer societies.
all this DOES relate back to the weekend. back in the day the weekend wasn’t much different than weekdays. in fact if you got all of the work done in the morning, the afternoon was pretty much equivalent to the weekend. becoming sedentary changed that because it takes more work to provide for more people. eventually through the evolution of society we have come to have the concept of the weekend as our time to recuperate from 5 days of work (sadly this too is starting to disappear). The weekend is the carrot dangling before our nose. Glory be to the Protestant work ethic of Americans, which capitalism has utilized to its benefit. That is why I want to move to Europe where they take things easy for several months a year. Sure the standard of living isn’t as great as it is here, but i’m sure they don’t have as many ulcers as we do either. i don’t require a high standard of living anyway.