> We've built a society where our only consistent interaction with community (for many people) is via the labor market

Modern society arguably has more opportunity for play–and evidence of adults playing–than ancient socities.

We also have a larger fraction of labor that one can genuinely like doing, versus being forced to do.

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wing-_-nuts an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I think you should really look up the amount of work the average european peasant was doing in the middle ages, and the amount of free time they had off.

Or how much time hunter gatherers spend actually hunting or gathering.

Or how meaningful any of that was, compared to what we do today...

Our conditions are better today than in the early industrial revolution, but that's not saying much.

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entropicdrifter 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

On the other hand, ancient societies had more in-person community and common free third-spaces for people to congregate, socialize, and otherwise involve themselves with their communities

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JumpCrisscross 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> ancient societies had more in-person community and common free third-spaces

For the elites. Most people in the population were doing back-breaking labor.

I'm not saying there wasn't leisure. But when most of a society's labor goes into agriculture, most of the leisure time is going to be spent on the farm with fellow farmhands. (The exception being winter months.)

	▲	monocasa an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Medieval serfs typically worked about 150 10 hour days a year. In addition to the winter months there's a lot of gaps where the plants are in the ground, and now just need intermittent maintenance. All of this of course ignores women's work, which was more omnipresent across the year. But it was also pretty social as well, hence the lasting power of phrases like "sewing circles".