This month’s issue of National Geographic features a story by Michael Finkel on the Hadza, a Tanzanian people who still live a hunter-gatherer existence. The Hadza don’t mark the time or count past the number four. They don’t have possessions or permanent shelters, nor official leaders or weddings. They hunt baboon and gather baobab fruit. Food is shared — or rather, grabbed from the beast in the communal cooking fire.

It’s very tempting to wax lyrical about simplicity when reading articles like this. Finkel himself, although he acknowledges his sentiments as “maudlin,” says that his time with the Hadza made him “calmer, more attuned to the moment, more self-sufficient, a little braver, and in less of a constant rush.”

Despite the very real dangers of living in the bush (snakes, lions, malaria, high infant mortality rates), it does make you wonder who has it better off — that eternal tension between Us and Them. The Hadza work somewhere around four hours a day. Can you say the same?