What we do for food.

It occurred to me today, that I've been working very hard everyday whether it be at home or in the office for nearly 5 straight weeks. I can't remember the last time I woke up and languidly went about the day, free of a schedule to abide by or a demanding objective to address. What happened to the age when humans would work for themselves, spending from dawn until dusk tending their livestock and fields or hunting mammals and picking berry's. I can't think of another species that doesn't spend their everyday addressing the natural duties of life, building nests, hives, burrows, etc., fending off predators, and of course securing a reasonable consumption of energy in whatever form fits them best.

Nowadays, the modern western human spends their days performing tasks which are highly irrelevant to their basic needs as a mammal, but through some peverse marriage to the monetary system, critical to their survival. The green paper I used today for lunch was earned by performing the several dozen duties of my career. Let's just say for the benefit of consise point, that those seven dollars and thirty-two cents were given to me as a direct result of answering an hours worth of emails at work. Emails that are so distantly removed, but somehow related to the production of food and shelter. The 732 cents I gave to the girl at the deli, purchased me a tuna sandwich with horseradish sauce, sprouts, Swiss cheese, carrots, cucumbers, Italian dressing (oil, vinegar, dill, basil, garlic, etc.), and a French roll (floor, water, yeast, salt, chicken eggs, etc.). Between the growing, harvesting, catching, culturing, planting, transporting, preparing and other tasks related to the creation of that great sandwich, there were quite likely as many people involved as there were pennies spent, not to mention the thousands if not millions of other individuals indirectly involved in the processes (i.e. the people who built the machines that made the hose that watered the garden that grew the carrots that went on the sandwich). It makes me wonder, did we craft this marvelous society of ours simply so we could eat better foods we couldn't think of raising/catching/growing ourselves? After all, America was discovered by a man who was simply looking for a quicker way to sail for Indian food.