What Grok Can Teach Us About Leisure Time
When we think of Grok, we often imagine him in full-fledged hunting action – spear in hand, muscles in action, eyes on the latest prize prey. (Hence, the logo.) But such dramatic displays of power and prowess were fairly limited engagements. Grok, of course, had no full-time job. The lives of hunter-gatherers entailed much more than our label for them suggests. Experts who have studied modern hunter-gatherer societies estimate that most members of these communities spend about 3-5 hours a day “working,” which included all the basics of their food preparation. So, what else did Grok and his contemporaries do with their time? Could it be that hunter-gatherers weren’t poor slugs incessantly roaming and writhing in near starvation? Could it be that most of the time they actually had ample leisure time – to play, create, decorate, imagine and invent? Yes. Now ain’t that a kick in the head?
From a leisure standpoint, what did Grok’s world look like? Although researchers admittedly work from limited remnants, there’s actually quite a bit we can surmise about hunter-gatherer cultures. Hunter-gatherer societies varied – and continue to vary – considerably, but the overall picture is far more elaborate than you might think. There’s the cave art, of course, which in many cases reveals impressively intricate narratives of cultural history as well as myth. Then there’s the pottery, baskets, bags, boxes and paddles among other practical items that that display aesthetic as well as functional character. Add to this the ornately carved spears and other weaponry, totem poles and rattles to signify social status and accomplishment. Finally, there are the costumes, masks, body paints and other ceremonial items that some of Grok’s contemporaries used for celebratory and spiritual occasions. Oh, and let’s just throw in a 12,000 year-old temple for good measure. Not what they taught you in school, eh?
Yet, beyond the concrete (and often surprising) accomplishments were the more common pastimes: socializing, dance, music performance, storytelling, sleep, and play. Yes, Grok as beach bum. (I knew there was a reason I liked him so much.) Although often criticized by colonizers and earlier anthropological researchers, hunter-gatherers’ leisure activities served integral purposes to the social stability and survival of the community. Socializing, music and celebration strengthened communal relationships. Story-telling passed down a sense of tribal history and cohesion as well as technical knowledge their ancestors had learned for living off the land. Napping through the heat of the day helped members conserve resources, while activity at night helped keep predators at bay. Play honed physical skill and fostered a cooperative culture within the group.
The point here is not to put the hunter-gatherer existence on a pedestal or to declare them executive geniuses of time management. I’ve said numerous times before that there is much I don’t envy in Grok’s existence, the constant threat of ferocious predators being the most obvious. Nonetheless, there’s something to be gained, I think, in contemplating the disparity between our lives and those of our ancient ancestors. Our modern culture with its penchants for motion, commotion, individualism, productivity and specialization tries to sell us the idea that this is normal and ideal – that it’s not the way it’s always been only because it’s the pinnacle of ever moving progress. We’d better keep up, or we’ll be left behind. Even the little free time we do have is too often filled with the obligatory chores of modern life: yard keeping, house cleaning, car maintenance and endless errands. As for vacations and longer breaks, we better come back with a good story or we clearly just wasted good time. The modern practice of leisure is co-opted by achievement.
Shouldn’t leisure be more enjoyable, more life-giving, more leisurely? When it comes to real R&R, what can our ancestors’ example teach us? For example, we sometimes imagine that if we can just “manage” our time better and organize our lives better that we’ll be happier and more relaxed. Maybe we need less to manage in the first place. (That goes double for the kids.) We need more impressive weekend plans. Then again, maybe we should just spend more time sprawled out in the grass laughing with the kids or curling up with our partner. A Sunday afternoon nap. Lounging at the beach – or in a kiddie pool – in the backyard. Simple but scarce pleasures, I guess.
What do you want to do more of this summer? Have you filled your leisure quota, or do you feel like the summer’s gotten away from you? What role does leisure play in your Primal life? Lessons you’ve gleaned from Grok’s example?
I’ll look forward to your comments. Thanks for reading, everybody, and have a great week!
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Posted By: Mark Sisson
I believe it was much easier for Grok to relax because his mind was free. They were open minded, individual thinkers not controlled by a structured system like government and health care. From day one we are told what to think, how to think and why we think this way (the creation of a false reality for you). I have been working on an uncluttered mind for years…..talk about relaxing! When you can stop all the unnecessary chatting that your brain does non-stop you can really relax!
To be fair, I’m sure there were some pretty rigorous (even if unspoken) social rules and role obligations in most tribal-style social structures, even the ones without official central leadership.
And when you’re so dependent on your village for cooperation, being socially outcast is more than just the downer of being declared an oddball… could be Really Bad for your survival.
Even so, I’d like to think that in areas with lower population density, less fighting over resources, etc… these sorts of constraints would be minimized as you describe.
Yeah, I don’t think so. In a small group where absolute survival depends on each individual behaving reliably, I imagine things were pretty structured & regimented; free thinking, unless it produced quick and clear results, was probably more likely to be quickly punished.
I agree that shutting out the chatter is necessary for relaxation, and I expect that we have more chatter now, but I don’t think it’s because of “government” and “health care.” It’s more likely because of overpopulation, requiring high levels of competition for resources; specialization of labor, which requires people to do the same thing over and over until their brains melt; and that human thing which insists than anything that can be done MUST be done – long-distance travel, packed schedules, more and more stuff and experiences. If you didn’t have to go to a boring job and then rush home to get your kids to 50 activities and take care of your old parents – on your own, unlike Grok’s likely community care system – you’d probably be more relaxed.
Grok’s life was easier because human life inherently had pragmatic value. Thus, simply being alive was an asset. You were needed for your tribe to thrive. It’s not about whether your elders told you what to do or not. There was a sense of family and purpose.
We have expanded to the point where this is no longer true. The tribes are now so big that no individual can really identify with them anymore. It doesn’t feel like a family. And since there are billions more where you came from you aren’t actually needed.
Thus you have to compete against everyone else both within and without your tribe (country). That’s why things are so hard. That is why you have to work at least 1/3 of your day everyday to get by, whereas Grok did not have to do anywhere near that much survival work. You aren’t valuable, and you have to spend all your days overcoming that fact. Grok was naturally valuable because there was a time when human life was not abundant. Supply and demand. We are over-supplied to the breaking point.
To me, that’s the big stress. Outsmarting a lion or rain storm is a cake walk in comparison, especially when you have the help of your tribe to do it.
Ten Four! It’s not easy to live simple, but being “selfish” with your time can be so rewarding. I’ve tried to approach a simpler lifestyle like one would approach weight loss: substituting healthy behavior (eg. social interaction, rest, play, walking, etc.) for not-so-healthy habits (surfing web at night, too much tv, being a slave to the to-do list). This has been the best summer of my life and all of the (truly) important things I “needed” to do have still been accomplished!
This is an interesting article, well I think a lot about this cause of course its such a big part of my life. It should be in everyones life, I think. Well, the way I see it I have an order of what I enjoy to do in my leisure time. First comes love, like talking, communicating with someone you love or trying to make something happen with one you love(this is kind of my life right now). Second, well I guess this goes hand in hand is just chores. Just doing stuff with my hands, the necessities, cooking, eating, blah blah blah, all of this stuff you can just do and your not bored thinking. Your doing. Well, thats basically all I got, if those things arnt time consuming enough I get bored, plain and simple, and I just try hard to make those two things more a part of my life.
My wife and I spent a month in Greece last year with little to no agenda. We spent entire days on the beach guilt free, did some sight seeing and ate long meals outside every day.
It was great. I have never been so relaxed in my life.
Towards the end I actually started to itch for a new challenge and was excited to get back home.
The lesson is, we really need to decompress on a regular basis, but we need challenges as well. We can’t be all work or all play for too long.
Hey all,
In one of the article about sleep that Mark posted, the author said that one of the tribes spent a portion of the night awake…That being said, maybe shift work is not so bad after all? As long as you get enought sleep?
Tell me what you think…
frank
hMM. I think the whole point of agriculture was to have more leisure time and less roaming (HARD WORK)
park: Dead wrong, and all the anthropological research disagrees with you. The ‘point’ of agriculture is to increase the number of offspring you can raise on a given area of land. Farming is WAY more labor-intensive than foraging.
While foraging is less labor-intensive in the short-term, isn’t it also less controlled in the long-term? Couldn’t any number of misfortunes befall a local ecosystem, forcing the hunter-gatherers to make do, since they have limited control over their environment and the very processes which they depend upon.
I could see hunter-gatherers enjoying an abundance of leisure time when things were going well, but they might have also experienced very strenuous periods of famine and scarcity which they could do very little about.
I imagine agriculture (and animal domestication) as the original solution to this problem of inconsistency. A solution that quickly mutated into a problem of it’s own. Just my thoughts.
As long as we’re talking leisure, I came across this little comic and thought some of you Groks might enjoy it:
http://www.thedoghousediaries.com/?p=1893
I thoroughly enjoy the “free time” I can spend knitting, because it becomes almost meditative once you memorize a pattern. I don’t necessarily enjoy doing nothing at all, but rather having open time during my day to spend with other people, or just alone reading or knitting! Technically, something is usually being accomplished,