alt Hacker NewsYep. This is the human condition for the vast majority of humans.
I grew up in a place where education and hard work wasn’t valued much by the community. Those that could scam some sort of government benefits did so, and they certainly were not working on art or helping out their communities with all their spare time. At best was a consumption state - the median was actively self destructive behavior, and the worst was behaviors that ruined their surrounding community.
This whole idea that on average humans would hit some utopia of creativity and community mindedness if only they could throw off the yoke of needing to work to survive goes against every single bit of my lived experience. And recent history.
The kids who went to the local public school my nieces went to basically did the bare minimum - usually just showing up is enough these days. Zero interest in learning or putting effort in. Only when they were removed from that environment and put with self-selecting (well, parent-selecting) peers that were curated beforehand did this fact change.
The vast majority of humans are not inherently motivated to better themselves in any way.
Its so sad that humans perform best when suffering. I adopted a supper skinny worn out street cat, all she did was sleep eat and poop, she never went outside, straight from the sofa to the food and back to the sofa, really really slowly. For 4 years it did nothing but sleep, no exceptions. Then one day a different cat looked around the corner of the open door. In 0.3 seconds she launched from the sofa covering impressive distance and ran after it to the end of the street. Safe to say, if I don't move for 4 years I wouldn't be looking to pick a fight. But cats do get stupid if they don't have to work for food.