Occasionally, I make note of interesting ideas and concepts that were historically believed to be true and are now thought of as absurd. For instance, just today I was reading that Aristotle thought the urge to sleep was brought on in the human body by the stomach’s digestion process causing heat to rise (don’t ask me to explain that one.) The fact that women were thought unfit to vote until fairly recently might stand as another example. (I’m resisting the innumerable jokes that could be made at this point.)

This forces an obvious consideration. What modern beliefs will be shown to be absurd in the light of the future? As I read more about the brain and its functions, I begin to suspect that the eight hour workday will fall into the dustbin of history. I’m not saying the idea of working eight hours a day will become outdated, but rather the idea of working eight consecutive hours. Your brain goes through various states during the day, some are very conducive to deep thinking, some are better for passive creativity, some are pretty much worthless for anything. The idea that you’re going to get eight quality hours out of a person in a consecutive period of time seems unlikely. It would make more sense to figure out the periods during the day a person is best suited for a particular type of work, and assign the appropriate work to the appropriate period. It also seems very likely that having people take a nap somewhere after lunchtime would increase their productivity.

Of course, people don’t live simply for their jobs. They need to have mental brainpower available for the challenges of family life, and their own hobbies and interests. This is why I propose we eliminate the modern family from the equation, and instead provide workers with completely servile but incredibly realistic sexual robots. We can also use brain drugs to ensure that people do not pursue activities outside of work, and exist solely to serve the corporate oligarchy. Only then can we truly be happy.