I just finished reading this article for a class, and it was amazing. Pretty much, it said that the worst mistake the human race has ever made was becoming agricultural. Just think of all the diseases, inequality, and such that has developed because people chose to live in huge groups and farm to stay alive, instead of hunting/gathering in small groups. I know that there's a lot of argument on the other side, but check this article or author out if you can find anything on it; it's called "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race", by Jared Diamond. It makes a lot of sense! ~Nova
i could buy that. humans in the wild would be hunters/gatherers, still a social animal but living in our environment rather than forcing the environment to try to live with us. i've long believed that modern science and medicine, for all the comforts and conveniences it offers us, will be the downfall of the human species, and possibly all other species. now people live abnormally long lives and use up more resources than ever while still being the single most wasteful society in history. and i dont see things getting any better! some would argue that developing agriculture and in turn "civilized" life is a sign of man's intelligence and superiority, but i would say that it is rather a sign of man's arrogance, destructive nature and lack of foresight. if we're superior to and smarter than the other animals, why are we the ones destroying the entire planet? theres evidence to support relatively high levels of intelligence among certain other animals, like chimps, gorillas, dolphins, octopus, and so on. just because we have technology we feel we're smarter or more advanced. i'd say since we dont fully understand the language and thought processes of other animals we have absolutely NOTHING to base this claim on - other animals may well be nearly, or even as intelligent as us, but wise enough to remain in their natural state....
I posted a book up here about a year ago that pointed out that same thing, along with many other great points. "Anthropology and Contemporary Human Problems" by John (?) Bodley.
I agree, I've heard it theorized that we only switched to the controlled growing of plants because of population growth, not choice. Humans, long dependant on plants and very close to nature anyways, already knew about seed growth and all that jazz, but it was more work than it was worth. Only when it came to feeding the clan did people say, well, I guess we'll have to start planting. As far as "civilization" goes, well, I could take or leave it. Hunter-gather (HG) peoples don't have a lot of the problems "civilized" folks do. Ever hear of a HG tribe that had rampant murder, theft, or rape? Isolated incidents might occur of course (and intertribal war was common and necessary), but within the group it was unheard of. Now we have kids killing their parents, then going to school and shooting their classmates. Our wars are out of hand, crime in general is rampant. HG people also work far less (2-5 hours a week getting food, more time on other things, but even so they probably only put in 20 hours a week), have far better nutrition (except in famine, an admitted downside), and better health (almost never have crooked or decaying teeth, far less communicable disease because populations are smaller and they don't live with livestock and have better sanitation). Also, they are more free to pick up and move if a given area isn't producing food, unlike the farmer who is dirt poor, has no survival skills, and is tied to his land. Modern medicine is probably the only truly great thing we have going for us. It's nice not to have women dropping dead during birth, or babies dying all the time, and it's nice to expect a long life.
Hey, I found that Jared Diamond article: http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron342/diamondmistake.html
If we had never developped agriculture we would still be living in caves or in tents made of animal hide. Life is hard as hunter gatherer society. Constantly fighting with nature to find your next meal, having to withstand the elements... Instead of concentrating on the destruction of man kind (somthing that is not yet permanent and can be rectified.) Think of all of the wonders of civilized man, space exploration the piramides the mona lise etc. etc. None of these could have been accomplished by a hunter\gatherer society.
You don't have to fight nature if you know how to live with it. We, who have divorced ourselves from anything natural, have come to see life as a struggle. It truly isn't. Think about it, every single living thing has to go out and find food daily. I mean, it's just part of life. We are the weird ones. We actually think it's a bad thing to do that. I'm not saying the things we've done are bad or unimpressive. It still amazes me that there were people on the moon, and that we can put hundred ton machines into the air and have them stay there (airplanes). But the question is this: has this "progress" actually improved life? They have for some, but for most, it has not. it is unlikely that it ever will, because in this system there is, built into it, rich vs poor. A few benefit on the misery of the rest. People on the moon, the mona lisa, and the pyramids are impressive. But have they made life better FOR EVERYONE? Sure, we got computers out of the space age, but do you think the starving Africans give a fuck about that?
About the fighting nature deal - It all depends on what area of the world you happen to live in and what the climate is like at that time. You better beleive that homo-sapiens wern't living it up much during the last ice age. I believe that our advancements as a race will eventually improve the life of all humans. We are at a technological transition point. People are developping ways to get computers out to the poor nations of the world. Actually just read an article about a Linux based crank powered lap top that can be produced for under 100$ a pop for students in developping nations. I figure if we've come this far, we can correct the mistakes we've made in the past. Some cannot be undone (Read: the dodo bird), but I don't think any of them warrants the entire race to go back to hunter\gatherer ways. I could never imagine giving up the sounds of Louis Armstrong the Beatles, Led Zepplin, Edith Piaf. Or the knowledge I've gained from computers and the internet. Or better yet - a written language and the printing press.
then we'll need to stop making kidz because we are to many to this earth to support a "hunter" lifestyle. This is a scientiphic fact i have read
i'm not suggesting we go back to that lifestyle, even though it is probably the most preferable. You're right, it wouldn't be possible. However, I also don't believe technology is going to be the savior of humankind. Computers are nice but not really solutions. Right now, energy problems, as well as population problems, are the main issues. Giving computers to poor africans isn't going to solve either. Really, technological advancement has just further hastened the destruction of the earth. We have computers and washing machines and cars. This frees up more time so we can do more work, while also requireing more resourses to make and fuel those advancements. We work more than we did a century ago, even with all our technology. Is this progress? I just think we need to stop being so materialistic. We'd use fewer resources and have simpler, thus happier, lives. But that's a whole other topic.
Its simple man just like Morpheus said in the matrix we are viruses. How we obtained this status to me makes the most sense that we learned it from extra terrestrial virus/Aliens and it began with the agricultural revolution. Either it was physical like all those elohim and annunaki records tell us. Or it couldv'e been all via a mind virus brought upon us, which made us "advance" as we call it. It very well could've came from ingesting psychadelic mushrooms, thus prompting one individual to come down with a mind sickness/genius and from then on spread through word and actions and consumption of more mushrooms. Whatever the fact that article is true in my opinion. Our so called "revolutions" are only upgrades in our knowledge of the alchemy of animal to virus. Makes alot of sense if you think about it. Space virus aliens make us to further their goals, we adopt their system we create a proto-material man (robot) robot destroys earth, robot moves on to venus. Eventually reaching the sun turning the sun into a black hole, just like the supposed center of the galaxy. Badaboom the milky way galaxy(star child) is now dead. Just apply it to the microcosm of when we are destroyed by a virus. Cell by cell, on and on untill our own heart and brain shut down. Success! Respond with any comments that'd be rad.
jared diamond is brilliant. although i'm not too sure if i fully agree with him, you have to admitt he's very talented.
Why would you posit aliens as the spark that caused people to figure out how to grow plants, when a hunter-gatherer society, who really mostly live by gathering, would have known for tens of thousands of years that plants come from seeds. They'd probably already been favoring some areas for foraging and even perhaps replanting, leaving the seed to grow for when they came back. It didn't happen all at once, the Ag Revolution was a series of steps towards full sedentary life and total dependance on the farm. And yeah, Jared Diamond IS brilliant, and many of his points I agree with. I have yet to read his latest, "collapse."
Yea well Trippin BTM The Agriculutural Revolution did not come in STEPS, and even if it did explain how the fertile crescent all the sudden had irrigation.
