From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Fri May 23 2003 - 11:42:21 MDT
>> So while agriculture was a mistake that did in fact create
>> powerful benefits, we must ask whether those benefits could have
>> been obtained without the mistake.
I don't see any way to answer that positively. Even if we could
have done without the food production, there's no way to get from
there to here without population density. The old tribes didn't
have the net--if they wanted to exchange ideas, they had to be in
physical proximity. And hunter-gatherer densities just don't allow
enough people to be in contact to get useful brainstorming. It is
the exchange of ideas that leads to civilization, not simply
production.
I think we should describe agriculture not as a "mistake", but as
a necessary evil.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri May 23 2003 - 11:53:22 MDT