Interesting article. I never thought about how important it is not just how many days off you have, but also when exactly you have them. It's really bad when you have days off, but you can't see your family. I actually like the concept of a four-day workweek. I wonder if it will ultimately prove successful, and if the whole world will adopt it?
Also, the week itself as a 'hard' delineator of time also appears to be fairly recent:
> Henkin treats the seven-day week as a social and cultural institution, focusing primarily on the nineteenth-century United States. Unlike years, months, and days, which have astronomical foundations, the week is an entirely historical and social construct with no scientific basis. The study argues that the early American republic was an unusually week-oriented society, in part because American colonists abandoned most of the annual feast days common in Europe, leaving the weekly Sabbath as the primary calendrical anchor. The influence of Puritan settlers, who rejected the Church of England's abundance of saints' days as redolent of Catholicism, contributed to this dominical orientation. Through industrialization, urbanization, and mass education during the nineteenth century, weekly consciousness became increasingly entrenched in American life.
> He identifies several factors that strengthened Americans' associations between specific weekdays and particular activities. Weekly wage payments, which became more common during the antebellum period, tightened the relationship between money and time; workers paid on Saturdays often spent much of their earnings quickly, creating what one passage describes as a financial hourglass pattern across the week. Standardized housework routines assigned specific tasks to particular days, with Monday widely recognized as washing day. Common schools organized curricula around weekly schedules […]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Week:_A_History_of_the_Unn...
While Christianity's seven day period would make you think it was 'obvious', it tended to be broken up in more Catholic cultures (i.e., not Protestant, perhaps more Puritan), and so was a bit of a 'softer' delineation:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_day
In pre-industrial times a large portion of the population was agriculture, and you may go to church, but you still have to take care of animals and such even on the seventh day; it was only in a more 'mechanized culture' (e.g., with factories) that time itself could perhaps be treated more mechanically.
Also also:
while the seven day week is arbitrary, it is also worth noting that the French Revolution had experimented with a metric ten day week, which ended up being a total bust because laborers only got one week in ten of rest rather than one in seven.
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“It is not just about rest, but about reclaiming autonomy from the industrial clock.”
That phrasing sounds a bit strong for temporary symptom relief.
The weekend was invented by the ancient Zionists circa the 8th century BCE, so it’s at least 2700 years old - not 100 ;)
Just like today - the rest of the world didn't liked the idea and thought that these Zionists are lazy
Anti-Jewish hate should not be welcome here.
Speaking as a Jew, I don’t read GP as being ‘anti-Jewish hate’ — it seems to be at least vaguely positive in claiming the weekend as a Jewish invention, albeit with very muddled phrasing. (For one thing, Zionism didn’t exist 2000 years ago…)
Thank you for the submission. I have long wondered if in the old days we had weekend off, and did we just work continuously 365 days?
It is not that working 365 days is hard. It is the job in today's world are very different, Muti tasking, context switching and anything but simple even in the lowest rank.
This is mentally tiring and I have also wondered if it is a recent thing. My argument is that cutting cost over the past 20 - 30 years meant what used to be a 5 person's job is now a 1 to 2 person job.
On a farm there's always work, and most were farming or similar back then.
An old farmer I know let me in on his trick: don't work so hard. He said young and inexperienced folks would work way too hard, ie put in too much effort, and get exhausted quickly. Instead lower the effort so it's sustainable. Move slower, don't lift near your max and so on.
In the past, a professional job might mean extended periods of travel by rail etc with little work to do. A small acreage farmer has to wait for plants to grow.
The advent of factories with limitless and constant demand for labor is a new development of the industrial revolution.
Even on a small farm there is always work to do.
That doesn't mean that there isn't any downtime though. Most activity would be confined to daylight hours if nothing else. You'd probably do less on rainy days, and avoid hard work during the peak heat hours in the summer.
Jewish, Christian, and Islam have a Sabbath.
Not sure what anyone else did.
Lots of holidays, especially in places with multiple calendars (lunar/solar/etc).
> Lots of holidays, especially in places with multiple calendars (lunar/solar/etc).
And in Catholic cultures (historically):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_day
The English word "holiday" comes from "holy day" after all.
Not really a day of rest since you have to go to <place of worship>
Considering what work looked like in even the 18th century it was indeed rest in comparison.
Going to church is equivalent to watching tv, its not work.
People didn’t have much more to do back then. There was no TV.
Let's celebrate its 100th birthday by moving labor day to Friday! Every Friday.
The two-day weekend is a 100 years old.
The one-day weekend is ancient.
Hence the dowager said "What's a weekend?"
I wonder if someday we’ll have a “monthend”, where most of society takes a whole week off at the end of a month. I think I’d like this better than a 4 day work week. People could come back truly rested.
With the shift to AI, it could happen.
And work all 3 weeks?
Nah, I'll keep my Friday's off.
Your Fridays.
Other things that are surprisingly less than 100 years old include electronic music, Germany, Croatia, capitalism, the end of slavery, worker's rights, fiat currency, central banks, stock markets as more than a niche thing, and so on.
What year do you think it is
2026
Didn't the Dutch East India Company go public in 1602?
Also, in ancient Rome, coinage with Caesar's face on it was traded above its bullion value. They'd kill 1/10th of your population repeatedly until you agreed to this (such was the origins of the word "decimation"), and then they'd buy their dinner from you with caesar-face coin and move on to the next village tomorrow. Now that you have some caesar-face coin, you have some incentive to continue upholding its inflated value, and the tax collectors will show up later and re-apply threats of violence to ensure that you continue to do so. That sounds like fiat currency to me.
Also, the federal reserve was established in 1913.
Dude, I'm all for framing the status quo as mutable, but maybe do a bit of research.
While there was legal slavery in some countries well into the second half of the 20th century, capitalism and workers' rights movements are definitely older than 100 years.
The lack of understanding about the change in day-to-day life over the last 200 years in truly unfathomable - I fully do not understand it but a little that I appreciate — it’s just profound
It’s like we’re living on an entirely different planet than the people who existed prior to the industrial revolution
Bertrand Russell’s grandfather was alive during napoleon’s rule and he speaks about the difference between 1950 and 1900:
It once came up whether my grandmother went to music festivals in her youth. Of course not, she said, they hadn't been invented yet! They didn't have electronic music, because they didn't have electronics. And nobody was playing guitar on stage for 12 hours. You could hold a short small concert in a hall, but you couldn't hold a big rave.
Great example of what can happen when the US has geopolitical competition. The rise of China will be good for everyone.
My company picks up holiday policy from one of its dev center and applies to all other engineers who live in different cities. On my "vacation" I am the only one in myfamily who has day off; and when my kids have some holiday I have to work.
It is impossible to explain this to HR team. Sic.