Peter Bessman

“Where was this book when I was a rebellious teen?” That’s all I could think as I read “Hunting, Gathering, and Videogames,” a wonderful extended essay by Todd Allen Gates that explains two things that confound most every young mind: why we have to work, and the relationship between work, wealth, and happiness.

A breezy 60 page read, Todd covers a lot of ground in few words, drawing upon history, economics, evolution, and psychology to create a whole that is far greater than the sum of its parts. We live in an era of hyper-specialization, and a confused young man who wants to understand why he has to work (and what that has to do with happiness) would probably read, e.g., an economics textbook, only to come away with the vague sensation that he somehow knows more and understands less. And how could it be otherwise? In keeping with the times, he’s following in the exalted footsteps of the specialist, seeking depth of knowledge in the hope that understanding will follow — but this is folly, because the challenge before him requires breadth, not depth.

“Breadth” doesn’t mean “shallowness.” To merely understand the basics of several obviously related topics is perhaps just shallow. But if you grasp the essentials of several apparently orthogonal concepts and can synthesize new insights from them, then you have what Todd has: true breadth of understanding.

Todd couples that breadth of understanding with clear, compelling writing, producing the only volume I know of that could set our confused young man straight after only an afternoon of reading. But don’t mistake this as a mere work of socioeconomic apologetics. Certainly, Todd explains why we have to work — indeed, why it’s good for us to work. But he makes us think about what work is, and what fulfillment means, drawing a distinction between work and paid employment, the latter being a subset of the former.

One of my favorite sentences in the whole book comes from Chapter 6, “Measuring Success,” where Todd writes that “The idea that our route to recognition must come through our paid employment rests on the premise that our most treasured talents will have a place in the competitive and sometimes overcrowded market.” Todd points out that there is no reason to expect success from fusing our pursuit of happiness with our pursuit of financial means. A successful approach to work and paid employment depends on many factors we can’t control, from our individual genetics to the environmental context surrounding us. Perhaps our confused young man finds much fulfillment but little money in playing music. If so, he might find Todd’s message liberating: it’s OK to separate your source of income from your source of happiness. In a sense this is an expanded view of the “day job,” which is traditionally something you do to make ends meet until you “make it big” with your passion. The other option which Todd presents is to get a nice, well-paying day job — preferably one that isn’t overly demanding — and to never pressure yourself to “make it big” with your passion, but to simply enjoy it on its own terms.

Perhaps the greatest lesson in “Hunting, Gathering, and Videogames” is that your most important work doesn’t need external validation in the form of payment — its significance is self-justified, and you can do something else to fund it without any embarrassment. And here our confused young man might find something in common with full-time mothers: that is, the most important work in their lives may not earn them a single red cent, but that should not deter them in the slightest. Grain and gold are essential for sustaining mind and body — hence our need for paid employment, whether as self-employed farmers or as corporate employees — but they cannot succor heart and soul. Nor should they, for that is the province of a deeper, more important sort of work: the work of the human spirit.