I can see this ludic world coming about. I am working (in a ludic fashion) to create an internet Gift Economy. i.e. one that is organised to record who help out whom, but which is decentralised, so can't be shut down by taking out any single site. This has the potential to save people from wage slavery, by allowing their needs to be met by the gifts of others. Illich was on this vibe in the 1970's

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I've got a tip for anyone who's into the joy of giving: Set up boxes around where you live, with stuff in 'em that you don't need, or that's made to be given away. Insist that everyone bring along at least one thing.

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...why exactly are we working so much? One of the essays here alluded to a study about primitive hunter/gatherer lifestyles, which indicated that they did about 4hrs of "work" per day.

If this is the case, then we clearly can't assume that vestigial urges are to blame for the contemporary consumer/worker lifestyle, where nothing is ever enough. What is its survival value? Why is it so pervasive these days?

Russell's essay suggests a vast gulf between passive and active consumption of, and participation in, culture.

One hypothesis as to why we are working so much, might relate to the passivity of consumer culture. Perhaps we are driven to work harder because we desire to have more access to culture. Maybe the only kind of culture we really know these days, is passive and unfullfilling, but for whatever reason, we keep thinking that what our souls really need is just a little more of it. If this hypothetical were accepted, it would be fairly easy to argue that "consumer culture" parasitizes natural instincts.

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"Work" does not refer to physical or mental labor. Work does and has meant wage labor, wage slavery. The daily necessities acted upon by hunter/gatherers was a mix of survival and betterment of one's surroundings, and I doubt that any unbearable aspects of it even reached 4 hours, it was probably much lower, but then again it's near impossible to measure this given there was no wage labor, therefore, what do you consider "labor" and what do you consider "play" and is there a difference between the two? This argument also leads us to the argument against measurement, such as the clock, which makes a lot of sense.

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Yeah, I grasp the distinction between labor and work, and I dig the concept of "the tyranny of the clock," but my question is aimed squarely at describing how we have gotten to where we are, in an evolutionary sense.

This is important, because if we know specifically how we've been "infected," we can more precisely treat our common ailment.

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We got here via horticulture, trying to live in scarce environments and some chief's privatization of horticulture's surplus.

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We were infected a long time ago with the invention of the clock. Read Marshall Macluhan. Also, don't watch TV.

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You “anarchists” have overcomplicated a very simple matter. Any school child can tell you; the reason we work so hard is because we need wealth. Wealth feeds our ego and self esteem, we gain acceptance and status. It becomes an addiction which takes a toll, not just on our health, but on our family and friends as we allocate more hours commuting or at work. Like all addictions we cannot step back from the situation, stop and think about our problem. We justify the growing burden of work in whichever way us idiots fancy.
The truth of the matter is it is always the INDIVUDALS choice to subject himself to this daily horror because the individual chooses to maximise the size of his wallet and ego. Just as employees are overburdened with work, many of the unemployed feel drained by the lack of activity in their life. Therefore I assert to you that humans are NOT collectively rational at all, and are incapable of deciding an optimal work-rest balance. A strong state sector is needed to allocate the optimal amount of work we do as we so frequently fail when we try this ourselves.

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I lol'd

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You are on the right track with the hunter gatherer societies. They weren't so much "primitive" as they were "free". It is true they weren't slaves to labor like we are. Check out the article titled, The Original Affluent Society. http://www.eco-action.org/dt/affluent.html

Anarcho-primitivists have a lot of insight into human nature and how civilization is necessary for domination and opression to exist. I'm finding these things out, I can't wait to read Ishmael.

As to the reason we work so much, is it the desire for wealth? The U.S. is literally flooded with money but you don't see it because its tied up in corporations and furthereing the military industrial complex. Are we all working to produce wealth, or only get what little will be given to us from those in power. With all the technological advancements there should be a decrease in work, at least a few hours less in the average workweek. But there hasn't, quite the contrary there are some who work 7 days a week nearly all day even in America. The reason we work is because it is necessary to keep us busy so those in power, the opulent minority, can remain in power.

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Maybe the problem isn't as much wage slavery as it is worker tolerance of wage slavery? I have a job i love, i work my ass off, 10-12 hours a day, make not much money, and love it. Sure, i look forward to the end of the day, a hot shower, a good meal and sleep, but the work itself is refreshing, i learn and improve myself and my skills, I become a better person and a better artisan.

Find something to do that you can love, and support yourself. Don't go work in a factory because it's the easiest and best paying job available to you. If you're on the internet, you're almost certainly one of the lucky 10% or so of the world's population that even has the opportunity to complain about their working conditions, much less alter them.

If you hate your job, find a better one.

Still, excellent essays, excellent project. Love it.

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it is what anarchy is not

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A simple idea occurred to me several years ago: "Even at work I can think my thoughts". As I found out in practice - it is not easy, you really have to discipline yourself to do it. So my first challenge was how to do it so it is not noticeable to other people, second one - how to find subjects to think about, third - how to partition time so I do not slip back into "just doing my job and proud of it" insanity. These days my boss pays me for couple of hours of my thinking about my own interests and I am actually looking forward to some days at work. If anyone is interested here are few tips:
1. stay anonymous; never share your ideas with anyone around you, NEVER. This is your private space - do not sacrifice it to your friends, lovers, and children. If you want to share - do it anonymously online.
2. Your first thoughts should be on how to protect this space for ever. Develop strategies and goals and stick to them. Start very small - we humans have overwhelming herding instinct - one way to fight it is to start a small routine and expand it bit by bit.
3. look into art - there are tremendous varieties of artistic problems in the world around us, in images, words, partitions of space, plays of meanings, etc. This way you can look straight at your manager and keep solving problems relevant to human face proportions, gesture meanings, color and shadow plays, wrinkle structures, distribution of masses in space, illumination of planes, etc. You will see that such dreadful faces as faces of your coworkers are quite interesting landscapes where you can freely walk and get paid for.
4. if at your work you allow to listen to music - mp3 player helps a lot. Get yourself Neospeech text-to-speech software and some program like TextAloud to convert any text you find online into mp3 file that you can listen to. Make sure that you have ear buds headphones and keep volume fairly low. Do not let anyone know that you listening to books - just talk about music that helps you to concentrate on your work.
5. do not overdo it in the beginning, after initial couple of weeks you mind will want to revert to old routine - simply reduce the time you spent on it but never give up completely, after a while it will restore itself and you can expand both interests and time.
6. it is very tempting to share your discovery with other coworkers, since you may want to help some of them, but do not do in your surrounding it is truly not safe and if others are in bad enough shape , hopefully they will come up with similar ideas on their own.

I will look into this forum again. If anyone wants me to expand this thread, then I will.

Happy thinking.

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"never share your ideas with anyone [at work]"

So I take it you're against work-place organising?

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what absolute stupidity....

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That's about what I thought, too.

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