The Worst Mistake in Human History

[dust]

http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html

 

This is something I've felt to be the case for a long time now, but hadn't really realized was a viable belief. I've never shared with anyone my feeling that being a hunter-gatherer would be far preferable to living in a flat in the city and working 9-5.. because I knew that everyone I've ever met would laugh and call me a fool.

 

I suppose that our society's foundational beliefs are based on the idea that what we have now is necessarily better than what they had before. Constant "progress". We live longer, we're more powerful, there are more of us. How can that mean we're not better?

 

Well... I have now accepted my belief that modern human society is an evil monster.

Edited December 30, 2014 by dustybeijing

[soaring crane]

I didn't read much of the article (because reading a Jared Diamond piece means searching for all the better-informed voices on the topic) but want to point out that agriculture wasn't an invention. It was a development, made neccessary by changing climatic conditions. If humans are anything, we're adaptable. If it wasn't agriculture, it would have been something else.

[dust]

I've never heard of him before. Why does reading his stuff require such effort? Lack of citation?

(edit: I did check some studies he mentions, and a couple do not check out, but nothing in the article is far-fetched or flying in the face of common sense.)

 

Clearly humankind went the way we did, and I would argue that there can therefore have been no other way to go. Development is inevitable, indeed.

 

That doesn't mean that we should continue to accept and perpetuate systems or processes if we believe that they are faulty...

Edited December 30, 2014 by dustybeijing

[soaring crane]

I've never heard of him before. Why does reading his stuff require such effort? Lack of citation?

 

he's kind of a self-promoter and a professional troll. He's brilliant, no argument, but doesn't get much respect from his peers because his main objective is usually pushing his personal politics (which I actually agree with, but prefer to have supported by more objective researchers).

[gendao]

I've never shared with anyone my feeling that being a hunter-gatherer would be far preferable to living in a flat in the city and working 9-5.. because I knew that everyone I've ever met would laugh and call me a fool.

Well, modern cushy civilization is still just an option, albeit an increasing one. But, you could always revert to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle somewhere if you truly wished?

 

Honestly, it probably is healthier in many respects (especially for our own species and planet as a whole), albeit more rigorous. Hunting and foraging can be a lot of work...although I'd also imagine very rewarding as you really intimately become a part of the natural food chain and ecocycle of life again...

[Taomeow]

I have come to the same conclusion a long time ago. And I don't believe for a second, after years of research and contemplation (and something else, which I will mention in the end), that it was adaptive. Nope, it was coercive -- historic evidence abounds of this never, ever having been a free choice anywhere on earth. It has always been installed by violent force and with extreme, mind-boggling cruelty. It always came hand in hand with slavery, large scale construction projects of the most ridiculous kind using slave labor on a mass scale, and periodic like clockwork, and frequent at that, catastrophic famines. It never served humanity, not for a second. It has always served someone or something else.

 

The fact that we survived and thrived for (per newest assessments) close to 2 million years without this "blessing," which was only introduced a few thousand years ago (a few seconds in our overall time on earth), can't be disputed unless one is brainwashed to believe that we dragged on a miserable existence throughout our long history and then were finally shown the light a second ago, and have lived better than eve ever since. Which is the overall ideation we're spoon fed from the get-go and aren't supposed to ever question.

 

As for changes that purportedly caused us to adapt to new conditions in this manner -- holds no water if one considers that changes (of climate and our overall environment) in the past 10-15 thousand years were infinitesimal compared to the major, far more dramatic, and far more abrupt changes during the overall period of our life on earth. Suffice it to say that we survived a 400,000 year stretch of the deep ice age without either going extinct or leaving any evidence of anything but stellar health and unmatched cooperation (try hunting mammoth without being attuned to each and every member of your hunting party of hundreds. Or raising children for that matter -- furless and helpless in minus 70 degrees conditions, and totally dependent on our adaptability not just to changing conditions but to the unchanging harshness of these conditions for hundreds of thousands of years apiece. This calls for grandparents and great-grandparents -- fully functional, not decrepit. We couldn't have survived our history if we weren't good and kind and caring toward our young and our old. We are a species that must maintain at least three, preferably four generations of functional members of our communities at any given time -- and this suffices for us to survive and thrive. And when this is damaged, nothing else does.)

 

Of course now that we're told that Monsanto feeds us better, when they find completely perfect skeletons of prehistoric folks, they explain it away by telling us that our ancestors lived very short lives, that these are skeletons of people who died young. Reminds me of the way they used to write in scientific books for doctors that mercury is a natural constituent of the human bones -- because ever since Paracelsus, every cold in every child was treated with mercury, so anatomists never saw human bones without mercury having eaten through them for a few hundred years...

 

My best evidence, however, can't be "proved" to anyone else I don't think, so I'll just mention this FWIW. The thing is, I remember... Don't know how or why. I do have a whole bunch of traits (always did) that are suggestive of certain memory blocking mechanisms not having been flipped on properly. I try not to remember too much though, because it seems utterly uncalled for to be part of here and now against the backdrop of those memories. Paradise lost kind of painful.

 

But I sometimes think researchers who go against the grain embark on this particular route of inquiry because they are tormented by their own memories of paradise lost... and are looking for a way to say the same thing by different, "respectable" means.

 

Curious: does anyone have opposite memories? Of how it sucked to be wild and free, and then came the blessing of slavery?..

Edited December 31, 2014 by Taomeow

[Brian]

I hear such things often but I see very few walk off into the wilderness.

 

There's strong plenty of wilderness in the world, you know. Put your smartphone down and walk away.

[Taomeow]

I hear such things often but I see very few walk off into the wilderness.

 

There's strong plenty of wilderness in the world, you know. Put your smartphone down and walk away.

 

Been there done that. I'm a taoist and we worship timeliness. Untimely actions have no merit.

 

Let me try to explain a bit about what it is exactly that I remember -- then maybe you'll see how frustrating this advice sounds every time I get it, and trust me, I get it every time.

 

I remember a cloud, a field, a constant flow of loving and loved people around, nonstop -- not just parents and grandparents but many relatives, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, friends, visitors -- also animals, plants, insects (for some reason I remember the bees especially, dozens of varieties, and of these, especially the night bees that gathered nectar from those flowers that only open at night -- they had pale translucent eyes, and their honey was also pale, almost white, and we called it moon honey -- I wonder if the term "honeymoon" has anything to do with that memory... the night bees' honey was an aphrodisiac, incidentally, and children weren't allowed to touch it... anyway, I could go on and on about those bees if I don't keep my digressions in check.) This cloud of care and closeness was physical, not abstract. All of it touching with love and care not just the mind but the body, constant physical contact, a hand on the shoulder, a hug, a pat, a caress, heads stroked, cheeks and noses brushed against each other, the whole live unity of the tribe felt and feeling. And eyes talking constantly, smiling, laughing, thinking, teasing, informing -- constant flow of light and touch, warmth and reassurance, and sheer joy of "you are here, I am here too, life is good!" -- total absolute acceptance -- you are here, and we are always, at all times, happy that you are, I am here, and I'm always happy that I am here, and I never want to be anywhere else but with you, all of you. Wilderness? It was all about love, if you know where this kind of wilderness exists today, drop me directions, OK? -- on that smartphone and I swear I'll put it through the blender before going. Hard to explain... I remember what it's like to really be human, and unless one does, there's no point trying. It's not about seeking a way away from people. There was nothing about people to push me away from people. THAT's what wild and free is about. Not what we've been conditioned to believe, raw in tooth and claw and all that outrageous BS that they taught us how to be and then convinced us that that's what we are.

 

Where do I find a wilderness that isn't missing what was there and is free of what wasn't there before we got "civilized?" Why do you think we can't step in the same river twice, as Parmenides noted echoing taoist thought? Not only because the river is a different river. But I am a different I too. To go through the motions isn't where it's at. The heart had been ripped out of that lifestyle -- there's no going back anywhere in a space (inner and outer) that has been shaped and is held fast by the very hand that did the ripping out.

 

Going back in time -- that's a different proposition altogether. This, I'm working on...

Edited December 31, 2014 by Taomeow

[Andrei]

There is a big movement right now of people trying to return living in nature, even advertised on TV. In my opinion for living like this is necessary a community, otherwise the life in wilderness is very difficult. But I am considering this possibility to retire someday in an Off grid community.

 

Live free or die on National Geographic

http://youtu.be/RzAcHNYeiEw

 

Mountain men on Discovery

http://youtu.be/Dhj_bUdALvo

 

The legend of Mick Dodge on National Geographic

Edited December 31, 2014 by Andrei

[dust]

I hear such things often but I see very few walk off into the wilderness.

 

There's strong plenty of wilderness in the world, you know. Put your smartphone down and walk away.

 

I don't have a smartphone.. I do have this laptop. That's not what I'd miss, though.

 

There are many people I wouldn't want to leave behind.

 

 

edit: There's also the small issue that I wouldn't have the first clue where to go or how to survive. What to eat, how to hunt, how to fish, how to build a shelter, how to make tools.....

Edited December 31, 2014 by dustybeijing

[dust]

It was all about love, if you know where this kind of wilderness exists today, drop me directions, OK? -- on that smartphone and I swear I'll put it through the blender before going. Hard to explain... I remember what it's like to really be human, and unless one does, there's no point trying. It's not about seeking a way away from people. There was nothing about people to push me away from people. THAT's what wild and free is about. Not what we've been conditioned to believe, raw in tooth and claw and all that outrageous BS that they taught us how to be and then convinced us that that's what we are.

 

I love reading your writing. And this time it's nice to share the same belief as you (for once)

[dust]

Anyway, though it inevitably leads to talk about going 'off-grid' and whether or not people should leave civilization behind, the article is intended to question whether agriculture was in the first place a mistake -- or, in other words, whether people would be happier if it hadn't developed (however unrealistic that hypothetical actually is).

 

It's not a popular view, I know, but in my opinion -- and there's quite some evidence for it in recent discussions in the TTC subforum -- Laozi originally spoke of the benefits of keeping agriculture going to keep the masses fed and stupid. Not in a malicious way, but because he knew it was easier to keep the peace that way.

[Apech]

The traditional view of history as distinct to modern one is of a long slow decline. And the so called steps of progress are either attempts to slow/halt that decline or simply products of human desire to try things out. Many of the things we see as progress are, as far as I can see, actually responses to decline. For instance the invention of writing is a response to the loss of oral tradition knowledge.

 

I don’t think the development of agriculture was a one step process. We have hunter gatherers … who may have taken some steps to encourage or preserve the growth of seasonal crops, pastoralists who cultivated animals such as cattle and sheep and also may have started to cultivate some grasses to feed to cattle, then some kind of symbiosis between early agriculture and pastoralists … where the cattle graze on stubble and refertilize the earth through defecation. So there would be people living different life styles but in a kind of harmony.

 

I think as soon as urban concentrations emerge and people start to defend their territory this all breaks down and this might be the beginning of real problems. Some of these early experiments just died out e.g. Indus Valley Culture while others persisted e.g. Mesopotamia and Egypt giving birth to what we now call civilisation.

 

We are in part products of our age and have to deal with what we have. For some returning to the wilderness might work … if you can find a place where human terraforming hasn’t already occurred (very rare) but other wise maybe we should think about new alternative ways of living which make the best of our technology and so on … since we have now got it and for the most part lost our ancient connection with nature.

[iain]

I like Jarred Diamond; he writes ideas that are so simple that you wonder why you never thought to write them down yourself, yet his depth and style are hard to read also, though well worthy of the Pulitzer prise to my mind, as received for "Guns Germs and steel".
Why people do not just wonder off the grid is simple, there is no space left; the inherent roots of today's sprawling occidental lifestyle are attached to, and require, both its geographical constraints and its wars; no place to run.
As population reaches certain thresholds, as Diamond mentions this as a primary forcing attribute; the dominant or successful phenotypes and the hierarchical order therein, change.

The parasites of one age are the leaders of the next, and vis versa. It is interesting that he has mentioned in another writing that He finds the wits (an intellect of sorts) of tribesmen of Papua New Guinea to be better formed or sharper than those of the average city dweller; The city being more like an ant hill or a bee hive than a herd or tribe.

As a side note, most influential people are disliked by their entourage; it is a necesity that to instigate a change of thought you must step upon the toes of those who guard knowledge by convention; their are many of those conventionalists; alas their are very few original thinkers.

[i am]

The basic idea being: community. Without it, you're just some dude (or dudette) foraging berries during the day and gnawing on a deer leg at night around the fire by yourself.

 

Which does sound kinda cool, but it would not be, really. You need a community. One group hunting while another forages, and while others are making things, preparing things etc. As one person out in the wilderness, life would be brutal, hard and lonely.

 

As a community, yes. Much better than the agricultural system. But there are only a couple places left, deep in the jungle, where this is still happening, and their way of life is severely threatened, and coming to an end. Hard to believe they lasted this long.

 

It's as proven of an idea as any archeological/anthropological fact, that hunter gatherers had more leisure time than we do. They didn't have healthcare, but they were much healthier because of their diet and lifestyle. And modern research is showing how a healthy diet and lifestyle is more important than the whole medical system in most cases for most people. And when the first European settlers came over to America, it was common for whites to go over and live with the natives, or if captured during war, to happily live with them. Never once happened the other way around, until much much later when it was clear that the whites weren't going anywhere, and would take over, and take everything. So some "civilized", agricultural folks went native, happily. Preferred the lifestyle and people. Of course because of racism it couldn't happen the other way around. But that's all a part of the same system we're talking about here.

 

There has been a lot of romanticizing of hunter gatherer culture which stretches the truth. But if you think it's actually all just romanticization, and that if you went back and lived it, you'd realize agriculture really is better and it's good we went that way...I think you'd be in for a big surprise. I don't think many of us can comprehend the type of happiness, and the daily mindset, of a hunter gatherer. To call ourselves "free", would likely sound like some cruel joke to them.

 

So to say "go do it"...There needs to be a community. And though there's plenty of wilderness out there, there is not necessarily the huge swaths needed for seasonal migrations.

 

And don't think that because the vast majority of us are sheltered from warfare and abuse, that it isn't happening on a huge scale out there. We have a military who fights our battles for us. That doesn't mean the battles aren't happening. Thousands of people are dying, all over the world, in modern society. You're more likely to get killed by a person than a wild animal. Etc. You're surrounded by toxic chemicals in your house, in your food, in your water, in the air. You couldn't get away if you tried. Cell phone signals. All that.

 

Off grid communities, ecovillages and the like are probably the most realistic route for people who believe in the above stuff enough to try and live it.

 

We're at where we're at and I'm happy with my life; but yeah, there are times when I truly believe I'd be happier beyond description if I were born in an earlier time. I say "oh well" and get on with my life. But it doesn't change the facts.

[iain]

All comes down to territory really, I am certain that the Gypsies understand this well; I quite fancy becoming a Gipsy if I'm honest.

[Brian]

 

Been there done that. I'm a taoist and we worship timeliness. Untimely actions have no merit.

 

Let me try to explain a bit about what it is exactly that I remember -- then maybe you'll see how frustrating this advice sounds every time I get it, and trust me, I get it every time.

 

I remember a cloud, a field, a constant flow of loving and loved people around, nonstop -- not just parents and grandparents but many relatives, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, friends, visitors -- also animals, plants, insects (for some reason I remember the bees especially, dozens of varieties, and of these, especially the night bees that gathered nectar from those flowers that only open at night -- they had pale translucent eyes, and their honey was also pale, almost white, and we called it moon honey -- I wonder if the term "honeymoon" has anything to do with that memory... the night bees' honey was an aphrodisiac, incidentally, and children weren't allowed to touch it... anyway, I could go on and on about those bees if I don't keep my digressions in check.) This cloud of care and closeness was physical, not abstract. All of it touching with love and care not just the mind but the body, constant physical contact, a hand on the shoulder, a hug, a pat, a caress, heads stroked, cheeks and noses brushed against each other, the whole live unity of the tribe felt and feeling. And eyes talking constantly, smiling, laughing, thinking, teasing, informing -- constant flow of light and touch, warmth and reassurance, and sheer joy of "you are here, I am here too, life is good!" -- total absolute acceptance -- you are here, and we are always, at all times, happy that you are, I am here, and I'm always happy that I am here, and I never want to be anywhere else but with you, all of you. Wilderness? It was all about love, if you know where this kind of wilderness exists today, drop me directions, OK? -- on that smartphone and I swear I'll put it through the blender before going. Hard to explain... I remember what it's like to really be human, and unless one does, there's no point trying. It's not about seeking a way away from people. There was nothing about people to push me away from people. THAT's what wild and free is about. Not what we've been conditioned to believe, raw in tooth and claw and all that outrageous BS that they taught us how to be and then convinced us that that's what we are.

 

Where do I find a wilderness that isn't missing what was there and is free of what wasn't there before we got "civilized?" Why do you think we can't step in the same river twice, as Parmenides noted echoing taoist thought? Not only because the river is a different river. But I am a different I too. To go through the motions isn't where it's at. The heart had been ripped out of that lifestyle -- there's no going back anywhere in a space (inner and outer) that has been shaped and is held fast by the very hand that did the ripping out.

 

Going back in time -- that's a different proposition altogether. This, I'm working on...

My post followed yours, TaoMeow, but wasn't aimed at you. I probably should have quoted one of the earlier posts but my reply wasn't really aimed at any particular one of them, either. Instead, my post was in response to the recurring theme of "agriculture is the devil and life would be so much easier if we were all hunter-gatherers." I find such views very uninformed, and are they generally presented by people who have never farmed and have never so much as gone on a primitive camping trip.

 

On aggregate, our diets are very wrong and our food supplies are terrible. Individually, however, we have great latitude regarding our lifestyles and our locales. And it isn't a binary option, either -- that's a false dichotomy. There is an entire spectrum of choices between a penthouse apartment in Manhattan and a cave in the Yukon. My "drop your phone and walk into the woods" advice is rhetorical and is intended to illustrate that most of us are only trapped by comfort and lethargy -- not by agriculture itself.

[Taomeow]

My post followed yours, TaoMeow, but wasn't aimed at you. I probably should have quoted one of the earlier posts but my reply wasn't really aimed at any particular one of them, either. Instead, my post was in response to the recurring theme of "agriculture is the devil and life would be so much easier if we were all hunter-gatherers." I find such views very uninformed, and are they generally presented by people who have never farmed and have never so much as gone on a primitive camping trip.

 

On aggregate, our diets are very wrong and our food supplies are terrible. Individually, however, we have great latitude regarding our lifestyles and our locales. And it isn't a binary option, either -- that's a false dichotomy. There is an entire spectrum of choices between a penthouse apartment in Manhattan and a cave in the Yukon. My "drop your phone and walk into the woods" advice is rhetorical and is intended to illustrate that most of us are only trapped by comfort and lethargy -- not by agriculture itself.

 

No worries, I don't take the opposite-of-mine view of these matters personally, I know full well I'm not expressing a widely popular stance here. Which is why I don't often express it. Just got excited to find myself not completely alone with it, for a change of pace.

 

And, no, I don't think we are trapped by comfort and lethargy, I think we are trapped by our social conditions that shape our inability to live differently -- that's what brings about the quest for comfort to people who have a very dim idea, for lack of exposure, as to what comfort really is, and lethargy is our daily bread of chemical and electric and cognitive pollution. We didn't choose it, most of us have no idea there's anything else to choose, or ever was -- and they're right, for most, there's never been a choice, or even the vaguest idea of what an alternative would be like.

 

As for me, I did get exposure to lifestyles I can evaluate and compare -- urban, suburban, countryside, farming, and hunting-gathering (with 85% reliance on the forest and the river) and so have a personal frame of reference. My father took me on my first month-long kayaking trip in the wilderness when I just turned 13. Later I took my own kids on their first such trip when they were 5 (they're twins). Every time with a group of like-minded people, not alone, of course. I have all the skills for a European forest -- which I found not applicable to an American one, incidentally, much less to the Amazonian rain forest. And I can assure you that I am not uninformed regarding the history of the process -- death penalty for trapping the lord's hare in the lord's forest, and for the shooting of the lord's deer, death penalty for the whole family... stuff like that, always like that. That's how you make folks grow turnips, not via convincing them of the wonderful advantages of 14-hour days of backbreaking labor.

 

I did farm work with monocultures for stretches of one month at a time, and I can assure you it's mind numbing and hard and has no inherent spiritual value. I did foraging too -- dozens of varieties of wild mushrooms, berries, nuts, wild edibles of many kinds -- and fishing, and curing and smoking meats and making preserves, and making clothes and shoes by hand, all kinds of stuff. I can tell you that the first system to respond to the latter lifestyle is something cellular that opens up vast resources of energy and health you never knew you had, and it feels good, good to the bone. It's just a buzz of pleasure in your system, not a mind-clouding high but a mind-clearing, senses-sharpening down-to-earth pleasure. You wake up in the morning, and you don't yet know you're awake but you already know you're healthy, happy and strong, and the day will bring more of the same. Nothing like that is brought about by doing farm work, whether by hand or with machinery. And chemicals used these days on farmed crops just snuff out everything down to the bone, numb out any and all natural senses and perceptions one might still have reserves for feeling and using given a chance -- or not anymore, anyone's guess.

Edited December 31, 2014 by Taomeow

[ralis]

No worries, I don't take the opposite-of-mine view of these matters personally, I know full well I'm not expressing a widely popular stance here. Which is why I don't often express it. Just got excited to find myself not completely alone with it, for a change of pace.

 

And, no, I don't think we are trapped by comfort and lethargy, I think we are trapped by our social conditions that shape our inability to live differently -- that's what brings about the quest for comfort to people who have a very dim idea, for lack of exposure, as to what comfort really is, and lethargy is our daily bread of chemical and electric and cognitive pollution. We didn't choose it, most of us have no idea there's anything else to choose, or ever was -- and they're right, for most, there's never been a choice, or even the vaguest idea of what an alternative would be like.

 

As for me, I did get exposure to lifestyles I can evaluate and compare -- urban, suburban, countryside, farming, and hunting-gathering (with 85% reliance on the forest and the river) and so have a personal frame of reference. My father took me on my first month-long kayaking trip in the wilderness when I just turned 13. Later I took my own kids on their first such trip when they were 5 (they're twins). Every time with a group of like-minded people, not alone, of course. I have all the skills for a European forest -- which I found not applicable to an American one, incidentally, much less to the Amazonian rain forest. And I can assure you that I am not uninformed regarding the history of the process -- death penalty for trapping the lord's hare in the lord's forest, and for the shooting of the lord's deer, death penalty for the whole family... stuff like that, always like that. That's how you make folks grow turnips, not via convincing them of the wonderful advantages of 14-hour days of backbreaking labor.

 

I did farm work with monocultures for stretches of one month at a time, and I can assure you it's mind numbing and hard and has no inherent spiritual value. I did foraging too -- dozens of varieties of wild mushrooms, berries, nuts, wild edibles of many kinds -- and fishing, and curing and smoking meats and making preserves, and making clothes and shoes by hand, all kinds of stuff. I can tell you that the first system to respond to the latter lifestyle is something cellular that opens up vast resources of energy and health you never knew you had, and it feels good, good to the bone. It's just a buzz of pleasure in your system, not a mind-clouding high but a mind-clearing, senses-sharpening down-to-earth pleasure. You wake up in the morning, and you don't yet know you're awake but you already know you're healthy, happy and strong, and the day will bring more of the same. Nothing like that is brought about by doing farm work, whether by hand or with machinery. And chemicals used these days on farmed crops just snuff out everything down to the bone, numb out any and all natural senses and perceptions one might still have reserves for feeling and using given a chance -- or not anymore, anyone's guess.

 

I give you a little credit for doing a few things, but to actually participate in a primitive lifestyle for decades, is vastly different than knowing that you can retreat back to your abode in civilized life.

 

Here are a few things to consider.

 

Hunters/gatherers are small in number; life spans are limited by lack of proper sanitation, communicable diseases, infections, parasites, fluctuating food supply and wild animals. I know several people that have lived in Africa for long periods of time, contracted malaria and parasites that no medical or herbal remedies can remove.

 

I see nothing spiritual regarding a romance of the primitive lifestyle. Group dynamics are primary in a primitive environment as opposed to the Western rugged individualist that sees him or herself conquering the world.

 

In certain environments, humans are not at the top of the food chain.

[dust]

Erm...

 

Firstly, using words like "primitive" and "civilization" in the way you just did is an excellent subtle way of degrading the viewpoint you want to attack. Well done.

 

There is no inherent value in the word "civilization" when one realizes that what "civilization" amounts to is a bunch of hairless chimps running around fucking and killing each other in concrete jungles.

 

Secondly:

 

Hunters/gatherers are small in number

 

Good...

 

 

 

life spans are limited by lack of proper sanitation, communicable diseases, infections, parasites, fluctuating food supply and wild animals.

 

And yours, and mine? Are we immune to disease? Is everyone in the "civilized" world well-fed? Have we not replaced wild animals with cars and guns and crazy bastards with bombs?

 

 

I know several people that have lived in Africa for long periods of time, contracted malaria and parasites that no medical or herbal remedies can remove.

 

I've known people, in cities around the world, who've died of cancer, AIDS, and mental disease. Not to mention hearing about violent rape and murder every single day in the media. And again, we're not immune to infection just because we live in cities. As mentioned in a previous post, crowding together has been a cause of many of our problems.

 

I'm not convinced that "civilization" -- living in the city -- is more "civilized" than living in the woods.

[Taomeow]

I give you a little credit for doing a few things, but to actually participate in a primitive lifestyle for decades, is vastly different than knowing that you can retreat back to your abode in civilized life.

 

Here are a few things to consider.

 

Hunters/gatherers are small in number; life spans are limited by lack of proper sanitation, communicable diseases, infections, parasites, fluctuating food supply and wild animals. I know several people that have lived in Africa for long periods of time, contracted malaria and parasites that no medical or herbal remedies can remove.

 

I see nothing spiritual regarding a romance of the primitive lifestyle. Group dynamics are primary in a primitive environment as opposed to the Western rugged individualist that sees him or herself conquering the world.

 

In certain environments, humans are not at the top of the food chain.

 

Ack. You missed out on the whole terraforming chunk of history, and your logic is that of someone who has hurled against the wall a precious Ming vase, shattered it to pieces, picked out a few pieces, slapped together a cup out of them and then tells you, ah, those old containers are no good, try drinking from this cup, it's leaking, and it's ugly, and surely a styrofoam one does a better job! Yes, surely. If you ignore the preceding sequence of events that led to it.

 

Africa... How much do you know about how natural its present environment is? Did you know that the Sahara desert is man made, the outcome of agricultural activities of our forefathers? Guess not...

 

Two million years of lack of proper sanitation etc. and we're still here... wow, a miracle of god. What poor sanitation? Did you ever spend even a day in an at least relatively intact forest? I drank from rivers and lakes, I've never had any parasites I can assure you. Communicable diseases -- according to paleoathropologists, these came about only with urban living, we didn't have that blessing prior to that. Infections -- gee whiz, a compromised immune system is certainly better equipped to deal with these than an intact one. Fluctuating food supply -- ever heard of the devastating famines throughout our agricultural history? Wild animals? -- fewer deaths involving those in any one year in all of our history than due to car accidents in the US alone in just one day (3,000 per diem.) And so on...

 

One thing I will say for the overlords. They don't rest on their laurels. The Ministry of Truth is always working overtime.

Edited December 31, 2014 by Taomeow

[ralis]

Two million years of lack of proper sanitation etc. and we're still here... wow, a miracle of god. What poor sanitation? Did you ever spend even a day in an at least relatively intact forest? I drank from rivers and lakes, I've never had any parasites I can assure you. Communicable diseases -- according to paleoathropologists, these came about only with urban living, we didn't have that blessing prior to that. Infections -- gee whiz, a compromised immune system is certainly better equipped to deal with these than an intact one. Fluctuating food supply -- ever heard of the devastating famines throughout our agricultural history? Wild animals? -- fewer deaths involving those in any one year in all of our history than due to car accidents in the US alone in just one day (3,000 per diem.) And so on...

 

One thing I will say for the overlords. They don't rest on their laurels. The Ministry of Truth is always working overtime.

 

You never acquired parasites and therefor that is not a general problem? Broad generalization.

 

Small pox was first seen in human populations approximately 10,000 years ago long before urbanization. Small pox is definitely a communicable disease even small in primitive populations.

 

Your implication that I represent the ministry of truth was not well taken.

Edited December 31, 2014 by ralis

[thelerner]

Fear and paranoia of the Other (group). That, and not having closer knit communities. Two biggies.

[Taomeow]

You never acquired parasites and therefor that is not a general problem? Broad generalization.

 

Small pox was first seen in human populations approximately 10,000 years ago long before urbanization. Small pox is definitely a communicable disease even small in primitive populations.

 

Your implication that I represent the ministry of truth was not well taken.

 

Parasites -- no, not a generalization at all, I wouldn't drink from the river at 13 if adults who live on that river didn't tell me it's safe, having done it all their lives. (Don't try this at home, kids, self-cleaning bodies of water are all but extinct by now. In this country, only Lake Tahoe was left some fifteen years ago, don't know about now. They are disappearing of course, and what we perceive as "it was never safe" as the outcome of what we're dealing with now -- now THAT's an extrapolation.)

 

Smallpox -- precisely at the time of introduction of agriculture. I didn't say disaster struck in the form of urbanization and forgot all about agriculture. Agriculture always comes first, urbanization, next. Whether epidemic disease appears spontaneously as the outcome of agricultural lifestyles having altered the environment and the host (weakening both), or is introduced by the same entities, whoever they are, who forced agriculture on the species that was doing mighty fine without it, is anybody's guess. But the sequence is ironclad.

 

Ministry of truth -- no, I don't think you represent it, I think you are one of the victims.

Edited December 31, 2014 by Taomeow

[ralis]

Ministry of truth -- no, I don't think you represent it, I think you are one of the victims.

 

That is a real put down with no basis in fact!