The People Who Don't Think About Tomorrow

I met the people who don't think about tomorrow.

The Hadzabe are one of the last true hunter-gatherer tribes in Africa. Nomadic, they hunt with bow and arrow, moving around to where the food is - baboons, gazelles, wild pigs, birds.

Their "houses" are makeshift tents made of plants and twigs. Even mud is too much of a commitment.

Their language is something I have no comparison with - the roots diverged many thousands of years ago. Clicks and sounds my mouth doesn't know how to make.

The entire time I kept expecting someone to yell “AAAAAND CUT", to end the scene. The personalities instantly change, the players pull out their cellphones and start talking in perfect British English. No such reprieve came.

I kept asking why they would live like this.

The answer: they find our lives too complicated. By our lives, I mean the life of a farmer in a small village in rural Africa. Can you even imagine if you took one of them to New York or tried to explain blockchain?

This group was about 20. The government thinks there are about 1300 total, but they don't have a way get an accurate headcount, aside from throwing a feast and seeing who shows up. We aren't so different - everyone always shows up for free food.

They don't have the concept of birthdays, so no way to measure age. There is just today - what happened yesterday is irrelevant and what happens next - well that's a problem for tomorrow.

I ask this everywhere - do the kids go to school? No. Literacy isn't a thing. Just the daily hunt, tending to a fire, make whatever you need for right now.

However, I observed 3 things they haven't rejected from our world:

My mind is blown. As I leave, I think - the ovarian lottery strikes again. But who actually won this time?