Thanks for sharing your wealth of wisdom and experience, heathcliffe. You've provided so much to ponder.

I have a few related thoughts to offer up.

It's so important to recognize the jarringly quick transitions that we homo sapiens have made in a relatively short time.

As I understand it, our species has been around for about 200,000 years, give or take. As you stated, for much of that time we lived in small groups and were utterly focused on finding out next meal, trying to avoid predators, other tribes, and illness. The men were always on the prowl for a mate, and those poor women with whom they mated often died painfully during childbirth. Life was short, nasty, and brutish, if I may offer a bit of Thomas Hobbes.

Around 10,000 years ago, agriculture began and that changed almost everything. We could settle down a bit, form encampments and some folks could now specialize some and great strides were made. All the while, we were among our own tribe and we rarely strayed very far from them or from our birthplace. Over the millennia, we formed small villages, then larger ones, and eventually towns, cities, and now mega-cities. Hell, we're even looking at colonizing Mars!

We once grasped farm equipment and various tools only to lose them to these mind-bogglingly powerful hand-held devices. We often live far afield from our families. But we remain the social animals that we've always been; we still crave community. New communities form (on-line) while old ones decline some (faith communities).

This is all so simplistic of course, but my main point is that human beings, as adaptable as we are, are contending with a lot of profound social, economic, political, and cultural changes. Some of us are adrift and that presents some real challenges since the communal support network that is desperately needed may no longer be available. It's a lot to contend with!

One last point regarding man's psychological connection with work. New England lost one of its finest singer- songwriters a few years ago, Bill Morrissey. I'll ways remember critic Robert Christgau's assessment of Morrissey's great theme: "how much men need to work and how much they'd rather be doing something else."

Okay, enough said, hope I've added a few things to chew on here at DBIS.

Peter T.