“Imagine if we worked less. Imagine if we walked around our communities, talked to our neighbors, spent time in nature, played. Imagine if we could read, write, fall in love, without that nagging feeling of ‘needing to do something’; imagine if your life was your own.”
What is this expectation that I either need or want to talk to the people that live within a particular proximity to me? No thanks.
Almost certainly you feel this way because you have to interact with people you didn’t chose to interact with on terms that aren’t your own. In the nice version of reality you get to chose your community, one that fits you and one that you fit in
humans evolved tribes and it is detrimental to most people’s mental health to not feel included in a community, and sadly most people’s 9-5 doesn’t fill that instinctive void. I think that’s what the OP was getting at