Boredom

I was struck with a curious thought the other day, and forgive me if you've thought of it before, but anyway. Here goes.

All that humanity has created, all our fancy science, our efforts to explain our world, our attempts at expression and self definition, comes from the fact that we don't have to worry about survival. Left with all this extra time, we had to think up things to do. At first, we had to hunt and gather, reproduce, raise young - you know, all that work type stuff. That takes time. But suddenly, BAM! We get ourselves a farm, and shortly thereafter, a community. A little bit of division of labour later, we have some people raising the young, some people getting us food, some people takin' care of shelter, and if you're only doing one thing for the community, then you're alot more free to reproduce. This gives a bigger population, more people to do the same number of tasks, and with a bigger population comes an even bigger population.

Eventually we reached the point where we had too much time to kill with reproduction alone. I know, it sounds crazy, but it happened. And as soon as we hit that point, we were bored. And as we all know, being bored sucks. So we invent things to keep us amused. Literature? Discussing what other people have said and disguised simply so that we can discuss what they have said and disguised...it's just a way of eating up time. Science and Religion? We don't have to worry about where food is coming from, so we ask, "What is food? Why do we need it? Where does it come from, and where does it go?" Wars have been fought 'cuz we thought, "Well...I need something to do, and we can always use more land..."

Once we had agriculture, we simply HAD to kill time, or we would die of boredom. And everything we did from then on was either for our own amusement, to occupy us, or to give us MORE time to kill (See: Technology, non-pornographic uses of). It seems that, because we're all lazy, we work really hard to make things easier on us and give us more free time. I think the ultimate goal of humanity is to accomplish a perpetual state of Saturdayity. Which is why we always look forward to the weekend, to vacation days, sabbatical, holidays, what have you - it gives us a taste of what's coming. And new holidays are popping up all over the place - Christmas has evolved into a secularly commercial behemoth, reading weeks and summer breaks (originally there to help with, you guessed it, farmin') are everywhere and growing, and our governments decide to give us a Family Day. Who's really gonna spend Family Day at home? I know I won't. 'cept for the sleepin' in. That's some quality Family Time®, yep.

(DFR, shut up with the incest jokes =P)

Anyway, the point is this: Because I'm lazy, I embody everything that a human being SHOULD embody. Thus, I should be considered incredibly sexy, powerful beyond all belief, and have a country and harem all to myself. And a robot butler. I can't be bothered to open my own doors now, can I? (Which are made easier by oil, and hinges, but 'cuz that wasn't enough, we have automatic ones, rotating ones you don't even have to push...)

The future will be a glorious place.