From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu May 22 2003 - 19:55:20 MDT
Anders writes
> Jared Diamond:
> > "Archaeologists studying the rise of farming have reconstructed a crucial
> > stage at which we made the worst mistake in human history. Forced to choose
> > between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose
> > the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny."
>
> It also set us on the path towards culture, superhuman intelligence and
> the stars. While I am no fan of technological determinism, to some
> extent the "choice" of farming leads to a competitive situation of
> expanding population, brainpower and civilization that rewards expanding
> our ecological niche and likely transforming our species.
Absolutely. The "paradise" of living a hunter-gatherer existence,
which, Jared Diamond not withstanding, could also often be brutish
and short, wouldn't be for *me*, even assuming that "I" somehow
could be other than the product of a 20th century civilization
(as, I would definitely say, all of us are).
Emlyn adds
> Hunting and gathering was a local maximum; getting out of those
> is never going to be fun. I'm all for it, though.
Yes, and I hope that it's meant that we ought to get out of the
local maximum and advance to a better destiny, for everyone's
sake.
gts writes
> [Eliezer wrote]
> > Let's not forget standing armies. Agriculture enabled people to
> > produce more food than they needed to feed themselves alone, enabling
> > the rise of a ruling class that subsisted off other people's work and
> > could force them to work 16-hour days to feed as many boss-class
> > individuals as possible.
> Yes, before agriculture there was no ruling class.
I would say that from the standpoint of individual psychology, only
*now* are most people free. Living in a small hunter-gatherer band
would have meant for most people enduring the domination of a few
particular (and doubtlessly loathsome) people. One of the glorious
things of civilization is the individual's ability, by and large,
to isolate himself from unpleasant people.
Lee
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