At 01:25 AM 12/28/2000 +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote:
<<Technology is adopted for a lot of reasons, but as a rule I think it
is adopted because it gives some benefit. Not necessarily to the
people as a whole, and sometimes at the expense of one factor (such as
farming providing more and more reliable food than hunting, but at the
expense of a lot of labor). >>
There was an interesting book published in the 1980's titled PALEOPATHOLOGY
AT THE ORIGINS OF AGRICULTURE. It was a collection of articles from various
academic journals which focused on evidence that human health declined
significantly with the advent of the agricultural lifestyle. It's been
years since I read it, but as I recall the evidence consisted of teeth (far
greater incidence of dental caries after ag. was adopted than before),
length of leg bones (bones longer before than after indicating greater
height), age (more old people pre-ag). Naturally the evidence is scanty,
being from so long ago, but there was enough there to make you question the
benefits of the agricultural lifestyle.
Agriculture must be distinguished from what's known as "incipient
horticulture" in which gardening and gathering are both practiced. The
latter is the method of food production I've used for the past 6 years up
until mid-2000 when the drought here was so severe that there was very
little plant food available (and many animals were dying or leaving as
well)--if I hadn't been able to go to the grocery store and buy food I
would have had to move. However, if I'd already built the cisterns to hold
my goal of 35,000 gallons, I would've been fine. Using gardening in
conjunction with gathering (and also keeping a few semi-feral chickens,
goats, and rabbits) I could take care of my food needs in an hour or two a
day (during some parts of the year I'd spend more time, during other parts,
less). I might actually spend 3 or 4 or even 5 hours out in the garden,
but much of the time was spent looking at interesting things, cultivating
ornamental plants, or resting. It's not at all a bad life, one of the best
parts of it being that it leaves plenty of time for thinking, learning,
appreciating and producing art works, inventing, producing, and
appreciating technological works.
>My view too - I love civilisation with its complex, intertwined and
>wonderous systems that make it possible for me to listen to Beethoven
>while communicating with similar minds halfway across the world, eat
>delicious fruits out of season and watch the snow settle outside my
>window while I'm warm and cozy. That is something well worth
>defending.
I would never want to live in an old-style hunter-gatherer society. I too
love the range of music, literature, and visual arts that are available to
me, love the Internet, the excitement of visiting cities, the intellectual
stimulation of studying various fields of science, supplementing the
empirical research I do in my own garden with theory from across time &
space. I prefer to eat fresh local fruits and veggies in season, but I'm
very happy to have access to modern medicine and aircraft. The idea that
"conventional" agriculture is necessary for "feeding the world" is false. I
hope that in the future more people will realize this.
Barbara
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:43 MDT