added by Johanna · updated 2y ago
How Civilization Broke Our Brains
- Despite the headline focus on happiness, Robinson’s most unexpected insights were about American discontent. We may constantly complain about our harried schedules, but the real joy-killer seemed to be the absence of any schedule at all. Considerably less happy than the just-rushed-enough, he said, were those with lots of excess time.
from How Civilization Broke Our Brains by The Atlantic
Johanna added 2y ago
- For hunter-gatherers, chiefs and shamans could, and did, moonlight as foragers and hunters. Overlapping duties preserved a strong sense of community, reinforced by customs and religions that obscured individual differences in strength, skill, and ambition. Shared labor meant shared values.But in industrial economies, lawyers don’t tag in for brain ... See more
from How Civilization Broke Our Brains by The Atlantic
Johanna added 2y ago
- In 2012, the University of Maryland sociologist John P. Robinson reviewed more than 40 years of happiness and time-use surveys that asked Americans how often they felt they either were “rushed” or had “excess time.” Perhaps predictably, he concluded that the happiest people were the “never-never” group—those who said they very rarely felt hurried o... See more
from How Civilization Broke Our Brains by The Atlantic
Johanna added 2y ago