Also, the week itself as a 'hard' delineator of time also appears to be fairly recent:
> Henkin treats the seven-day week as a social and cultural institution, focusing primarily on the nineteenth-century United States. Unlike years, months, and days, which have astronomical foundations, the week is an entirely historical and social construct with no scientific basis. The study argues that the early American republic was an unusually week-oriented society, in part because American colonists abandoned most of the annual feast days common in Europe, leaving the weekly Sabbath as the primary calendrical anchor. The influence of Puritan settlers, who rejected the Church of England's abundance of saints' days as redolent of Catholicism, contributed to this dominical orientation. Through industrialization, urbanization, and mass education during the nineteenth century, weekly consciousness became increasingly entrenched in American life.
> He identifies several factors that strengthened Americans' associations between specific weekdays and particular activities. Weekly wage payments, which became more common during the antebellum period, tightened the relationship between money and time; workers paid on Saturdays often spent much of their earnings quickly, creating what one passage describes as a financial hourglass pattern across the week. Standardized housework routines assigned specific tasks to particular days, with Monday widely recognized as washing day. Common schools organized curricula around weekly schedules […]
While Christianity's seven day period would make you think it was 'obvious', it tended to be broken up in more Catholic cultures (i.e., not Protestant, perhaps more Puritan), and so was a bit of a 'softer' delineation:
Also, in pre-industrial times a large portion of the population was agriculture, and you may go to church, but you still have to take care of animals and such even on the seventh day; it was only in a more 'mechanized culture' (e.g., with factories) that time itself could perhaps be treated more mechanized.
I wonder if someday we’ll have a “monthend”, where most of society takes a whole week off at the end of a month. I think I’d like this better than a 4 day work week.
Thank you for the submission. I have long wondered if in the old days we had weekend off, and did we just work continuously 365 days?
It is not that working 365 days is hard. It is the job in today's world are very different, Muti tasking, context switching and anything but simple even in the lowest rank.
This is mentally tiring and I have also wondered if it is a recent thing. My argument is that cutting cost over the past 20 - 30 years meant what used to be a 5 person's job is now a 1 to 2 person job.
In the past, a professional job might mean extended periods of travel by rail etc with little work to do. A small acreage farmer has to wait for plants to grow.
The advent of factories with limitless and constant demand for labor is a new development of the industrial revolution.
That doesn't mean that there isn't any downtime though. Most activity would be confined to daylight hours if nothing else. You'd probably do less on rainy days, and avoid hard work during the peak heat hours in the summer.
Other things that are surprisingly less than 100 years old include capitalism, the end of slavery, worker's rights, fiat currency, central banks, stock markets as more than a niche thing, and so on.
The lack of understanding about the change in day-to-day life over the last 200 years in truly unfathomable - I fully do not understand it but a little that I appreciate — it’s just profound
It’s like we’re living on an entirely different planet than the people who existed prior to the industrial revolution
Bertrand Russell’s grandfather was alive during napoleon’s rule and he speaks about the difference between 1950 and 1900:
It once came up whether my grandmother went to music festivals in her youth. Of course not, she said, they hadn't been invented yet! They didn't have electronic music, because they didn't have electronics. And nobody was playing guitar on stage for 12 hours. You could hold a short small concert in a hall, but you couldn't hold a big rave.
> Henkin treats the seven-day week as a social and cultural institution, focusing primarily on the nineteenth-century United States. Unlike years, months, and days, which have astronomical foundations, the week is an entirely historical and social construct with no scientific basis. The study argues that the early American republic was an unusually week-oriented society, in part because American colonists abandoned most of the annual feast days common in Europe, leaving the weekly Sabbath as the primary calendrical anchor. The influence of Puritan settlers, who rejected the Church of England's abundance of saints' days as redolent of Catholicism, contributed to this dominical orientation. Through industrialization, urbanization, and mass education during the nineteenth century, weekly consciousness became increasingly entrenched in American life.
> He identifies several factors that strengthened Americans' associations between specific weekdays and particular activities. Weekly wage payments, which became more common during the antebellum period, tightened the relationship between money and time; workers paid on Saturdays often spent much of their earnings quickly, creating what one passage describes as a financial hourglass pattern across the week. Standardized housework routines assigned specific tasks to particular days, with Monday widely recognized as washing day. Common schools organized curricula around weekly schedules […]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Week:_A_History_of_the_Unn...
While Christianity's seven day period would make you think it was 'obvious', it tended to be broken up in more Catholic cultures (i.e., not Protestant, perhaps more Puritan), and so was a bit of a 'softer' delineation:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_day
Also, in pre-industrial times a large portion of the population was agriculture, and you may go to church, but you still have to take care of animals and such even on the seventh day; it was only in a more 'mechanized culture' (e.g., with factories) that time itself could perhaps be treated more mechanized.
Also:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven-day_week
With the shift to AI, it could happen.
It is not that working 365 days is hard. It is the job in today's world are very different, Muti tasking, context switching and anything but simple even in the lowest rank.
This is mentally tiring and I have also wondered if it is a recent thing. My argument is that cutting cost over the past 20 - 30 years meant what used to be a 5 person's job is now a 1 to 2 person job.
The advent of factories with limitless and constant demand for labor is a new development of the industrial revolution.
That doesn't mean that there isn't any downtime though. Most activity would be confined to daylight hours if nothing else. You'd probably do less on rainy days, and avoid hard work during the peak heat hours in the summer.
Not sure what anyone else did.
And in Catholic cultures (especially historically):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_day
The English word "holiday" comes from "holy day" after all.
The one-day weekend is ancient.
It’s like we’re living on an entirely different planet than the people who existed prior to the industrial revolution
Bertrand Russell’s grandfather was alive during napoleon’s rule and he speaks about the difference between 1950 and 1900:
https://youtu.be/xL_sMXfzzyA