A bonus second Sketchy Komik™ this week. At couple of years back I was reading several books on primitive societies. The phrase The Original Affluent Society kept popping up in various texts. It referred to early hunter-gatherer cultures which worked the equivalent of four hours a day to feed and clothe themselves. The rest of the day was spent in leisure. The farm based cultures that followed spent a lot more time toiling in the fields, trying to get the earth to grow some food for them. Farming set the civilization on a work oriented course for the next several millennia. Only the wealthy ruling classes (artistocrats, etc.) were afforded any kind of leisure time, hence the phrase ‘the leisure class’. The modern society we live in is the first time leisure has been experienced by a wide portion of the population. We work eight hours a day or more, I guess we still have some way to catch up to the hunter-gatherers.
This sketchbook comic really has very little to do with any of this.
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by Tom K