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I've long had a feeling of disquiet about just how far removed from the necessities imposed on us by the fact of our physical existence we are in the modern era. For me, this manifested most strongly as a revulsion towards a career that just pushes paper or people around, and made me interested in STEMy stuff, but I don't think I'm alone in this. I think this sense of disquiet undergirds a lot of strange behavior you can observe in left wing hippies and right wing homesteader types. For some people it isn't the disconnection from physical reality (by this I mean mostly agriculture and manufacturing), but instead from what one might call the societal production function. My grandmother once remarked that as a girl she thought the only jobs worth doing were being a soldier, a teacher, or a farmer, and I think this sentiment was coming from a similar place as my feeling that you have to be getting your hands at least a little dirty.
I think you're a bit like my grandmother in that you feel that there are certain social truths that will remain inescapable so long as we are a bunch of jumped up apes. As I get older, I've started to come around to this view more even as I loosen my grip on my old feeling that work is fake unless you're building a little. Pinker really convinced me that Hobbes was right, and watching the world devolve into chaos as US hegemony fades is only strengthening that view.
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