Our historic dislike for physical work

August 30th, 2006

Ever since man invented the wheel, he has been on a gradual march towards lesser and lesser physical work. So the invention of wheel is the first landmark on our road to a society which finds physical work menial and a drudgery. Of course the wheel saved us lot of walking to begin with.

The second landmark in our history of evolution is industrialization, which brought in automation. Life thus came to depend upon machines. We have had motorized devices running simple household chores and producing everything we need.

Industrialization saved us lot of work we were used to doing with our hands.

Information technology is pushing us towards a culture of work which is computer mouse-driven. It seems our grand ambition of achieving a culture of ‘effortless work’ is nearing fulfillment.

I recall an article by an eminent scientist I read sometime back. In his predictions about science in general and information technology in particular, the writer drew our attention to a scary future. Accordingly, in another couple of million years from now, we as a human race will be reduced to grotesque looking creatures – with an oversized head and our right hand connected with an arm-like limb. That is if we go by Charles Darwin’s famous sub-theory of ‘disusage’ of organs under the theory of Evolution.

Hence as we reduce in our usage of our organs or body parts we gradually lose their strength and size, and finally lose them altogether. Thus a generation heavily dependant upon brain and the computer mouse will be ruled by the creatures who are capable of using only their heads and the right hands. The rest of the body will disappear, the writer scientist predicted.

I shared this view with my neighbour, who is an information technology professional.

Being overweight and suffering from a host of digestive problems, his doctor had advised him to clean his car every morning before he goes jogging. While he agreed to do the latter, he refused to take the car-cleaning chore. I asked him the reason, thinking that he would quote the most clichéd one – shortage of time. “My neighbours will think that I cannot pay to have my car cleaned”, he said, in all honesty.

Our dislike for manual work is historic, as old as our civilization. And we all know it in our wisdom why we suffer from the physical ailments, as a result.

Entry Filed under: Healthy Lifestyles