The Absence of Physical Engagement

I have a vivid recollection from my teenage years of observing a neighborhood couple seated on their front yard, using weed pullers to extract dandelions from their lawn. I remember looking at them with contempt and thinking, “If I ever consider weeding my lawn a day’s accomplishment, shoot me.” If I had flashed forward thirty years, I would have observed the 50-something version of me happily pulling weeds from his yard. In fact, I’m pretty sure if the fifteen-year-old me could see me today, he’d probably blow his brains out. But the thing is, I’m happy being the fifty something version of me, and tinkering in the yard or in my workshop is – for me – one of life’s simple pleasures. Sure, by the middle of August I want autumn to arrive and cajole my yard into dormancy, but the joys of spring are undeniable.

But a little yard work is a far cry from mankind’s roots. For most of us, the days of hunting, gathering, farming, cutting, chiseling and building are long gone. For the past several hundred years, we’ve done everything we can to delegate our active engagement with our natural surroundings to machines or to other people. I think of the stereotypical commercials from the 1950s geared toward housewives, touting the benefits of a vacuum cleaner or dishwasher and how much time will be freed up as a result, but of course the trend to free our time started long before the post-war years, and we’re all active participants.

Few of us grow our own food. Even fewer of us create our own fabric and sew our own clothing. Not many of us can build our own homes or the furniture and household items in it. And so what, right? Mankind has flourished largely as a result of the increased efficiency of specialization. If experts take care of many of our day-to-day activities, then we can become experts in some other activity, and society as a whole benefits.

But I do wonder what’s been lost along the way, and I wonder if there is any limit to our avoidance of manual and mental labor. Those of us with yards may no longer cut our lawns, plant flowers, lay down mulch, rake leaves or shovel our driveways or sidewalks. Others may have a cleaning service for their home’s interior. Some of us no longer shop for food or other items, having them delivered to our doors instead, and most of us outsource cooking to restaurants on a regular basis. Some hire nannies or daycares to look after their children and hire tutors to manage their kids’ homework or to prepare them for college entrance exams. We may have someone else managing our finances and preparing our taxes. We may also outsource teaching things like driving, playing an instrument, playing sports, etc. And while it might make great sense to hire a company to, say, pour concrete for our driveways or rewire our homes, many of us can’t install a ceiling fan, outlet, toilet or faucet. Even the easiest of activities like painting a room are often outsourced.

And billions of people are now living in urban environments that bear no resemblance to the natural environments that our ancestors tended to. Is there something innate in humans, some connection with the Earth that’s been lost as a result?

I imagine there are loads of anthropological studies on this subject, but I’ll be damned if I know the correct key words to search for them. I couldn’t find anything relevant when I searched for articles that apply to this blog entry. But here’s my hunch:

I believe that man’s evolution away from physical engagement results in a disengagement from and a loss of empathy for our fellow human beings, the environment, and Earth itself. I think there’s some primal need we have to engage with the ground we walk upon, the air we breathe, and the waters we sail, and in foregoing engagement with our environment, we are likely denying ourselves our most meaningful existence.

I know, I sound like fricking Henry David Thoreau from Walden, a book I tried to read three times as a young adult and hated it, never getting past more than a few chapters. I wonder now if it might speak to me.

Nevertheless, those of us who can afford to write and read this blog entry have likely achieved the goal that mankind set out centuries ago: loads of free time so that we can achieve great ends. I’ve always claimed that creativity required two things: time and silence. Agatha Christie once said, "I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness - to save oneself trouble.” After all, we probably don’t get Monet, Beethoven, Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Hemingway, Martin Luther King, and The Beatles if they are busily tilling their farms for survival. 

On the other hand, long before Agatha Christie, the Bible’s book of Proverbs stated, “Idleness is the devil’s workshop,” and I think there’s something to this as well. Would an 18-year-old ever consider gunning down people in a Buffalo grocery store if he was tending to his crops?

Fortunately, most of us don’t go to such wicked lengths to fill our time. Instead, we play Wordl, watch gameshows and sports, read blogs, drink, snort and inject foreign substances, watch porn, get spoon-fed soundbites on social media, and happily believe whatever lies we’re told with nary a glimmer of critical thinking.

It just might be that using weed pullers to extract dandelions from your yard could be the cure that ails you.