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Comment by chordalkeyboard | Hacker News Reader

This is an insightful question and likely points towards several fruitful modes of analysis.

Why are ants and amoebas always moving? Their biological drives continue to give them orders and so they are never satiated.

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Perhaps thats is because ants and amoebas have to find food in a bid to continue thier existence. Its safe to asume that for them to be satiated (not just resting) is to die.

Yes! So one wonders if aboriginal foraging humans have a concept of enlightenment.

Nevermind humans working for a paycheck.

"before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. after enlightenment: chop wood, carry water"

Indeed. I read a book called The Songlines which was about Australian aboriginals and nomadism in general. It qouted Pascal and proposed that the solution is to walk and to wander. That's what we are made for. The solution to the problem of sitting in a room is not to sit in a room!

> The solution to the problem of sitting in a room is not to sit in a room!

Wouldn't that itself be a form of distraction. Your subconscious will be activated but your conscious mind be distracted.

It is a misconception that all nomadic or foraging humans had to spend 100% of their time trying to stay alive.

I'm fact, if you look at African tribes and their original lifestyle you will realize how little time they had to spend on getting food and how much time they were able to spend just being happy, playing, drinking hallucinogenic substances to get into an enlightening trance etc.

There's a German standup comedian (Volker Pispers) who did a bit about this. It goes a bit like this: People always think that nature is so efficient. But nature doesn't optimize. Nature is lazy and does as little work as possible. You'll never see a lion hunt down a zebra and then go like "Okay, that took me 30 minutes, so I could do 10 more zebras today before dusk". He'll eat part of the zebra, leave the rest for the hyenas, and then spend the rest of the day basking in the sun.

> It is a misconception that all nomadic or foraging humans had to spend 100% of their time trying to stay alive.

Agreed.

> I'm fact, if you look at African tribes and their original lifestyle you will realize how little time they had to spend on getting food and how much time they were able to spend just being happy, playing, drinking hallucinogenic substances to get into an enlightening trance etc.

Generalizations about foraging populations are fraught with problems because there was a lot of diversity among them and its not possible to study them in a "pure" (untouched by agricultural peoples) setting.

>Why are ants and amoebas always moving?

Maybe because ant society expects it and can only function with ants constant in motion.

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