The division of labor has been around civilizations for millennia, when mankind were hunter-gatherers. Throughout history, men and women had roles to play in their small, tight-knit tribes. The typical story goes that men were the hunters of the tribe, while the women were the gatherers of edible, and medicinal plants and berries. The idea of the hunter-gatherer relationship where labor was divided among individuals, moved into the rise of agriculture. The dawn of agriculture allowed for humanity to be less restricted in where they could go and what they could do -- hamlets and villages were settled and allowed for social and governmental institutions to be built. The hamlets and villages grew larger, and collectively, people needed more to survive as a group. The division of labor became highly important, with farmers being attentive to their crops full-time, the baker creating bread for the community, the nanny for taking care of the children, the lawyer to settle disputes, etc, etc. These jobs came about because of society’s need for those jobs. We can question why certain jobs exist, and we can wonder why we aren’t doing another job, but we choose a specialty and we are assigned tasks from there. This does bring about some issues though, as Michael Pollan points out, due to our ability to feel connected with one another and the Earth. With our modern day jobs, we extract, morph and put natural resources  together to create technology and advance ourselves further by producing more and more -- taxing the world of its natural resources. We have pushed the capacity of the world too far with our division of labor, because we do not understand how our industries have an impact on the world. When our main prerogative is growth, why would any of us stop to see what’s going on? We have a problem, yet many of us don’t know or don’t care enough to try and help. The problem is accentuated further due to us being specialized in a certain field or industry.
