[1782635782]

> Having the time and energy to go aimlessly wandering was a luxurious privilege until very recently

You just made this up....

Firstly, you have never been around since the beginning of humans, and secondly, you haven't even read any history books if you think humans have always been extremely busy and that somehow they are not now.

The opposite is actually true. Humans have had a lot more free time in the past. It is easy to find this information out on the internet. Humans were estimated to only work about 3 hours per day in some time periods. In others they had months at a time off.

[christophilus]

Yeah. A political scientist I know told me that at some points in Catholic history people had almost 1/3rd of the year off. I couldn't find a reference for that, but this site indicates about 1/4 of the year off as leisure time:

"Altogether there were about 80 days of complete rest with over 70 partial holidays, that is, about three months of rest spread over the year."

http://www.traditioninaction.org/History/A_021_Festivals.htm

Not sure about the veracity of that site, but that kind of leisure time is in keeping with much western history that I've read. Looking at a timeline, the Protestant work ethic seems to have played a pretty big role in shifting the work/leisure balance more towards work.

[mjmahone17]

In the modern day, most jobs have ~100 days of complete rest (weekends), plus about 6 bank holidays, and if you took your PTO as half days, another 20-30 days of partial rest (if you get 10-15 days of PTO). That's not quite as much (20 fewer partial days, or 10 days less of time off), but you also likely have some reasonable expectation of not being required to work more then ~10 hours per day, which wasn't necessarily true historically.

[antognini]

Unofficially, there was also good ol' Saint Monday.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Monday

[dalke]

A popular past time in the medieval era was to go on a pilgrimage. Something like 1/2 the population in some areas went on at least one pilgrimage in their lives.

[alexhawdon]

Absolutely. I recommend GP reads some Thomas Hardy to get a sense of what you mean. Back before the industrial revolution the lower classes would work 'enough' to sustain themselves.