One of the whines of kids (and I remember making this exact same whine when I was a kid) is "I'm boooooooooored".
From an early age, most of us want to be human doing, rather than human being. Our parents are the earliest examples of humans doing rather than being, so, partly through the parent-child relationship, partly through social conditioning, we wind up doing the sorts of things the parent we most connect to does.
If what they're doing is the result of deliberative reflection, thought and choice, fair enough, but, in many cases, it is simply the continuance of what their parents did which is the continuance of what their parents did which is the continuance of what their parents did which is the continuance of what their parents did which is the continuance of what their parents did and so on. (Not ad infinitum, but certainly back to the beginnings of "civilisation" [aka, the domestication of humans doing?].)
One of the problems of this is that it makes human beings subservient to habit and unthinking imitation. As a result, we have things like:
- thinking housework is a valid activity, rather than a chore that should be minimised by efficient design (e.g., paints that resist being marked, furniture that can be cleaned under, self cleaning glass, surfaces that resist the accumulation of dust and/or effective air filtration, etc). If you must be a human doing rather than a human being, there are better things to do with your time - such as thinking, being moved by art, making the world a better place, becoming and staying reasonably self-sufficient / self-reliant (not in the "prepper" or "be a hermit" sense, but in the financial independence sense);
- thinking that doing the most skilful refinement of what others before have done is valid - which it is sometimes, but it certainly can bear some deliberative reflection, thought and decision-making. Just doing what others have done is why Australia has housing that is basically little better than tents, for instance - and why economic thinking is still addicted to growth and neoliberalism; and
- the perpetuation of bigotry and hate.
There is, in my opinion, some validity to Socrates' adage to the effect that the life unexamined is not worth living.
