And that effort was usually understood to be necessary and directly for our personal benefit. They still eventually revolted against the labor that was being forced upon them by rulers that wanted to exploit them and the systems that made their lives needlessly more difficult than it had to be.

Our lives might be easier, relatively, but the effort required for most of what we do is entirely arbitrary and obviously only there simply to make things harder for us so we can more easily be exploited.

There is a gigantic difference in the effect on our mental health between labor that is understood to be necessary and mindless toil or effort spent overcoming arbitrary barriers. There is so much wrong with our society and only recently have we had the science to understand just how detrimental it is to our mental well-being.