NPR Just posted this opinion article in the Science section (as they frequently do).
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/11/15/142339570/is-civilization-a-bad-idea
It’s crazy to see a quick burst like this on mainstream media, however rife with mythology it might be.
Wow, what crazy comments! I guess from the topic it was posted in and the general comments the obvious path is colonizing other planets.
Yeah, the comments give an idea of where the general public stands on the topic. It’s completely off their radar.
I can’t believe how offended some people get when you question their way of living.
By civilizing ourselves, maybe at one point it benefited the survival of the human species. A constant food source meant starvation was less likely. Eventually, medicine and other modern technologies meant longer lives and less infant deaths. It seems obvious then that civilization is a good thing - unless you dig deeper. I don’t believe it is possible for civilization to be sustainable. At some point, we will reach capacity and things can not go on the way they are now. Humans will either die out or be forced to go back to a simple life (and many humans will still die). The only thing I do wonder is, if humans never became civilized is it possible we would have became extinct long ago - due to starvation or some other unforeseeable circumstance? Or possibly, could we have evolved even more and become better adapted to our natural environment?
All I do know is, if humans would have gone extinct as hunter-gatherers, rather than becoming civilized - at least we wouldn’t have taken millions of species with us, like we are now.
Take them with us? Does that mean that you think humans will go extinct soon? If so, I disagree: I think “Homo sapiens” will exist until some other human species evolves that is able to outcompete us. That could mean any number of things, including the somewhat unlikely morlock-eloi dichotomy from H G Wells.
Hey NerfHerder (great name by the way ;D)
Just wanted to throw this out there. Agriculture actually causes famine and health problems. The idea that it somehow saved us from going hungry or that modern medicine has made our lives better, is a myth. Here is the article that explains it from our online rewilding primer:
@oakcorn: I think its plausible that humans could go extinct soon, most likely from an apocalypse type scenario. Evolution of a new species is possible, but I believe it would have to take place after something catastrophic happens and surviving humans go back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
@Peter: Thanks! I’m in the process of reading the 30 theses now. I’m currently on 4, but hoping to get through them all as quick as possible. And I know agriculture is negative, but originally it was probably thought of as a good thing that was helping us, not hurting us - which is why we continued it.
NerfHerder, I bet you’re going to find this topic really interesting as you get into it.
Related to the starvation issue, there was an author interviewed on NPR about a week ago, talking about the long relationship between humans and dogs, how we domesticated wolves, etc. Discussing some particular point, the interviewer (one of the well known NPR voices) made a comment to the effect, “I’m picturing our ancestors, living as hunter-gatherers, and I imagine them always living on the edge of subsistence and starvation.”
To his credit, the author corrected him and explained that from what we know such people actually had a fairly steady food supply most of the time.
But what struck me was the reminder that the interviewer’s assumption is really the standard line most people today seem to have grown up with. Is it still in middle school history books or something? I know I kind of half assumed the same thing until, at some point, I thought to myself, “So pre-agricultural humans were living just as other species within ecosystems. They were basically omnivores, eating what was available, much like, say, bears or racoons. So if bears and racoons aren’t routinely struggling with starvation, why would humans have been?”
Call me easy to please, but for me that was quite a little insight! ;D
On the origins of agriculture, there are quite a few theories. Here’s one list:
http://courses.washington.edu/anth457/agorigin.htm
I don’t find any of those theories fully convincing, and some seem clearly wrong. But it’s fascinating to think about.
I understand that early humans weren’t on the verge of death everyday, unable to find any food. I just can’t believe that humans would have continued to farm unless they thought it was doing them good.
Like you mentioned though, “people actually had a fairly steady food supply most of the time.” Is it possible that during a time when there wasn’t a steady food supply that humans discovered agriculture and just blindly continued growing food rather than hunting it?
Just as chimpanzees from Gombe fish for termites with sticks but don’t hunt with spears, while chimps from Senegal hunt for prey with spears but don’t fish for termites (which is a cultural difference, chimps hunt with spears because their parents did) - possibly humans learned to farm from their parents(who grew up during a time of scarcity), so why would they do otherwise? Even if when they were born, wild food was plentiful, they knew farming, not hunting and gathering.
It’s more likely that humans just started growing foods they liked, for no other reason then they wanted more of favored foods. It’s also possible that they grew grains to make alcohol. At some point though, we didn’t stop farming because we were forced to continue under the threat of death/violence from the military controlled by the elites.
Cool, the author mentions a lot of authors. Might have more to say on this on NPR in the future.
Separation into distinct human species would take like 200,000 years without interaction. Would have to be a post-collapse society, or dystopian caste-based civizaton (lasting 20 times longer than Civ has so far (tough chance)), or split groups of colonies in space. Or, could possibly happen in a few generations with genetic engineering?
But it might be shorter if (a) group(s) consciously separated from all other populations. The cultural continuity that would have to exist for that to be realistic would be unrealistically tough though.