Rush by Todd G. Buchholz

Author:Todd G. Buchholz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social aspects, Psychology of Movement, Competition, Happiness
Publisher: Hudson Street Press
Published: 2011-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

144 RUSH

Every nighttime local television news show seems to begin with a crime report, and the top-rated television program in the United States, France, and Australia is the same: NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service). Crime sells. From a historical point of view, there is good news, though: Levels of violence in modern communities seem to be dropping over the centuries. Homicide rates in Europe today are perhaps one-tenth the rate of the year AD 1300. And even the rate in AD 1300 Europe is small compared to the rates we find among foraging communities.

So why were premodern tribes apparently so violent and impulsive? They failed to do three things: (1) think sufficiently about tomorrow; (2) figure out how to trade with strangers; (3) develop persuasive moral codes that humanized the stranger.

Before I get into these points, you may be asking, "What does this have to do with work and our search for happiness?" Our best chance for happiness comes when we work hard now, anticipating a better tomorrow. Working for tomorrow looks like a rush, a frenzy of effort that takes us away from the ashram. But evolution, and our neurotransmitters, are all telling us to keep moving, to look to tomorrow.

Neanderthals may have died out because of frigid weather, but then again Homo sapiens appeared around the same time and managed to make it through an Ice Age. I would argue the Neanderthalic brain did not look forward to the same extent and, therefore, did not innovate. Why bother innovating and inventing new tools if you cannot picture them leading to bigger crops or healthier children? At the same time, Neanderthalic "culture" could not figure out how to trade with strangers and how to create moral codes that preserved life.

Work makes people less violent and less impulsive. Those foraging tribes today who labor the fewest hours of the day appear to be the most homicidal. Anthropologists who track foraging tribes report that they tend to work about one-third fewer hours than Europeans. Sometimes they work little because they can achieve subsistence nutrition without working harder. And that is enough for them. This brings to mind E. F. Schumacher's concept of "enoughness." Work less, consume

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