"The worst mistake in the history of the human race"

[G. Adams]

Quote by: tman_ndsu08 Ah, so you are using a modified definition for health. A longer lifespan = better health. So go ahead and live out in the jungle. Have fun being torn apart by lions when you're 35. You'll have really proved your point! They didn't live long enough for those! IE, they sat around and did nothing for 20 hours a week. Yeah baby! Now that's being productive! Look, you can go sit around outside for as many hours a week as you want, right now! It's called being a bum. Have fun. And liberals make fun of conservatives for wanting to go back to the way things used to be! LOL!

I didn't refine health, you did. You made the leap that good health was defined by a long life. It's not. People can live 70 years through constant sickness. How is that good health?

Yeah sure, lions eating me in the jungle. Don't know much about lions or jungle, do you?

Asthma is an old person disease? Or allergies? Diabetes? Obesity and tooth decay? I don't know which world you come from but these hit kids all of the time.

Do you think hunter-gatherers simply sit around outside, doing nothing? No wonder you don't have a clue.

I'm not a liberal. Your dualistic mind set just shows up your ignorance further. Keep digging that hole you live in tman.

[tman_ndsu08]

Quote by: G. Adams How is that good health?

How is dying at 35 good health?

Asthma is an old person disease? Or allergies? Diabetes? Obesity and tooth decay? I don't know which world you come from but these hit kids all of the time.

Lions eat kids too.


Think about this.

Anthropologists have only have the skeletons that were strong enough to survive. IE, those particular people had the best genes.

That doesn't prove that hunting and gathering diet is the most healthy. That only proves that having good genes is the most healthy thing.

Do you think hunter-gatherers simply sit around outside, doing nothing?

You just said they did!

[G. Adams]

Quote by: tman_ndsu08 How is dying at 35 good health? Lions eat kids too. Think about this. Anthropologists have only have the skeletons that were strong enough to survive. IE, those particular people had the best genes. That doesn't prove that hunting and gathering diet is the most healthy. That only proves that having good genes is the most healthy thing. You just said they did!

How has the age of death, when the death is unrelated to health ie fighting, got anything to do with health? Right now I live a much healthier life than the vast majority of people. I might live to 100, I might get hit by a bus and die tommorow. But does being hit by a bus and dying change the fact that I lived a healtheir life than others?

Yup, lions eat kids. The sky is blue out my window. I think I can hear the tap running. Want to continue making irrelevant points?

They have only the skeletons of people with good genes? Riggghhhtt. I'll think you'll find they have only the remains of people whose bodies were fortunately left in the right conditions to be preserved, like peat bogs.

No, I said they only worked on average for 4 hours a day, then they had time to look after their family and engage in cultural practices (music, dancing, religious bits). I can't see 'sit around on their asses all day' in their. But then you are clearly special, maybe you can see things I can't.

[Osborn F Enready]

I still say the biggest mistake of the human race is not understanding the interdependency of collective and individual views, and how they are both natural to our origins at different times of our lives.

[tman_ndsu08]

Quote by: G. Adams But does being hit by a bus and dying change the fact that I lived a healtheir life than others?

Being hit by a bus is one of the least healthy things you can do to your body.

If you're talking about instantaneous health, then I could see how you could say you had a relatively healthy life...up until the moment you were hit.

Average health, on the other hand, would have someone who lived into their 70's beating you in every case.

No, I said they only worked on average for 4 hours a day, then they had time to look after their family and engage in cultural practices (music, dancing, religious bits).

IE, they didn't do any work. They weren't productive.

[Arawn-ap-Hywel]

We still have hunter gatherers, we now label them as thieves

[lsbskins1]

Quote by: tman_ndsu08 Being hit by a bus is one of the least healthy things you can do to your body. If you're talking about instantaneous health, then I could see how you could say you had a relatively healthy life...up until the moment you were hit. Average health, on the other hand, would have someone who lived into their 70's beating you in every case. IE, they didn't do any work. They weren't productive.

You talk as if it is the purpose of the human animal to increase production on an assembly line. Are you that much of a numb-skull? If they provide enough food for their family unit/tribe and have built and/or maintained adequate shelter in 4 hours of labor, they are as productive as they need to be. They are not a drain on their society, they are not leaving work undone for another to do. They are productive. They do not do contract labor. They are not "at will" employees. You, however, are apparently just as silly as I have suspected.

[tman_ndsu08]

And you favor hunting and gathering and dying at 35.

I don't.

Indeed, how silly of me.

[lsbskins1]

Quote by: tman_ndsu08 And you favor hunting and gathering and dying at 35. I don't. Indeed, how silly of me.

Look, I understand that we have gained certain advantages in the agricultural model. That is not the question. This is the core issue: Abandoning the hunter/gatherer lifestlye brought certain immediate advantages that seemed to outweigh any first glace disadvantage. You are asking yourself the wrong question. The right question is whether it is better to have the human animal continue to exist with an average lifespan of 35 until the sun burns out or a huge meteor takes the earth out all together, or if it is better to have a group of humans survive for an average life span of 75 years for anouther 200 years or so, when we manage to so over-tax the ecosystem that we render it usless for human habitation.

[tman_ndsu08]

Quote by: lsbskins1 is it is better to have humans continue to exist with an average lifespan of 35 until the sun burns out or is it is better to have humans continue to exist with an average life span of 75 years for anouther 200 years when we manage to so over-tax the ecosystem that we render it usless for human habitation?

Without pause I will go for the second option.

By 200 years from now, we'll have found another planet to habitate.

[lsbskins1]

Quote by: tman_ndsu08 Without pause I will go for the second option. By 200 years from now, we'll have found another planet to habitate.

And that is why I say you are an idiot.

[tman_ndsu08]

And you're not an idiot because you want the whole world to go back to hunting and gathering?

[G. Adams]

Quote by: tman_ndsu08 Being hit by a bus is one of the least healthy things you can do to your body. If you're talking about instantaneous health, then I could see how you could say you had a relatively healthy life...up until the moment you were hit. Average health, on the other hand, would have someone who lived into their 70's beating you in every case. IE, they didn't do any work. They weren't productive.

Now I remember why I try not to deal with you. Your frustrating, dull, incapable of understanding. I'll stop now, your not worth another moment of my time.

[tman_ndsu08]

IE, because I won't conform to your proprietary set of definitions and preconceived notions, you have no way of winning this debate.

And you used the wrong form of you're.

[Autolykos]

I'd like to jump into this thread, if it's all right with everybody. :)

It seems to me that Tman and G. Adams are both right. Tman is correct that the advent of agriculture allowed people to live longer, and often healthier, lives. On the other hand, G. Adams is correct that human beings, as a whole, are weaker now than at the dawn of agriculture.

However, I think both of them are missing a piece of the puzzle. That piece of the puzzle is human compassion. I submit that, if it were not for human compassion, the entire field of medicine would not exist. Think about it. What is medicine? It consists of things like fighting and curing disease, helping wounds heal, and performing corrective surgery. In short, medicine helps people live longer lives. But more than that, medicine is people helping other people live longer. Why would anyone want to do that? Ultimately, because of compassion. People do not want to see their loved ones hurt, sick, or dead, so they do whatever is in their power to prevent these things. Otherwise, medicine as we know it would not exist.

However, this compassion comes at a price. It interferes with natural selection. People who would have likely died without medicine have instead been able to survive and reproduce, passing their genes onto the next generation. As a result, congenital defects which would have promised an early death in the hunter-gatherer era have proliferated by today. The development of agriculture helped to further this process. In allowing people to accumulate more food, it better ensured their continued survival, which in turn let them have and spend more time on doing other things, which made their survival even more guaranteed, and so on. Of course, in so doing, it made the traits which were highly successful in the hunter-gatherer world become much less beneficial.

In the final analysis, I would have to say that, by and large, Tman is right. Technology does trump nature. What would have taken millions of years for unconscious processes to evolve (if ever) have taken mere centuries or decades for people to create. Any person from the hunter-gatherer age would probably kill to have the life of one of us. Furthermore, many of the health problems that G. Adams has pointed out are largely preventable, and the means of prevention are readily available. Whether people take the initiative to employ those means is their own problem. But what may be perhaps the ultimate irony is that, while our compassion has lead to the proliferation of congenital defects, it will also lead to technology that can reverse that trend: genetic engineering.

Perhaps things aren't quite so bad as we may think. :)

- Rob

[G. Adams]

Quote by: Autolykos I'd like to jump into this thread, if it's all right with everybody. :) It seems to me that Tman and G. Adams are both right. Tman is correct that the advent of agriculture allowed people to live longer, and often healthier, lives. On the other hand, G. Adams is correct that human beings, as a whole, are weaker now than at the dawn of agriculture. However, I think both of them are missing a piece of the puzzle. That piece of the puzzle is human compassion. I submit that, if it were not for human compassion, the entire field of medicine would not exist. Think about it. What is medicine? It consists of things like fighting and curing disease, helping wounds heal, and performing corrective surgery. In short, medicine helps people live longer lives. But more than that, medicine is people helping other people live longer. Why would anyone want to do that? Ultimately, because of compassion. People do not want to see their loved ones hurt, sick, or dead, so they do whatever is in their power to prevent these things. Otherwise, medicine as we know it would not exist. However, this compassion comes at a price. It interferes with natural selection. People who would have likely died without medicine have instead been able to survive and reproduce, passing their genes onto the next generation. As a result, congenital defects which would have promised an early death in the hunter-gatherer era have proliferated by today. The development of agriculture helped to further this process. In allowing people to accumulate more food, it better ensured their continued survival, which in turn let them have and spend more time on doing other things, which made their survival even more guaranteed, and so on. Of course, in so doing, it made the traits which were highly successful in the hunter-gatherer world become much less beneficial. In the final analysis, I would have to say that, by and large, Tman is right. Technology does trump nature. What would have taken millions of years for unconscious processes to evolve (if ever) have taken mere centuries or decades for people to create. Any person from the hunter-gatherer age would probably kill to have the life of one of us. Furthermore, many of the health problems that G. Adams has pointed out are largely preventable, and the means of prevention are readily available. Whether people take the initiative to employ those means is their own problem. But what may be perhaps the ultimate irony is that, while our compassion has lead to the proliferation of congenital defects, it will also lead to technology that can reverse that trend: genetic engineering. Perhaps things aren't quite so bad as we may think. :) - Rob

Very true, and thank you for dragging this back on course before I start clocking up warning points for diverting yet another topic.

While it is possible for individuals to correct their lifestyles and become healthy, I'm not sure if it's feasible for everyone on the planet to do so. We would lack the land to produce enough organic fruit and veg while sustaining a large enough population of healthy, un-treated animals. It's a bit of a bind, really. Have to count my blessings that I'm high up enough the capitalist food chain to be healthy.

[tman_ndsu08]

Quote by: G. Adams Have to count my blessings that I'm high up enough the capitalist food chain to be healthy.

You hit the nail on the head.

You're making a huge and quite unneccessary assumption when you say things like "I'm not sure if it's feasible for everyone on the planet to do so".

It isn't feasible.

That's where economics come in.

Scarce resources are most efficiently divided by a free market.


Those who can afford to be, will be healthy.

[weasel]

Quote by: tman_ndsu08 Scarce resources are most efficiently divided by a free market.

The division of resources can also be decided by whoever has the best military and the motivation to take them. As noted by Jared Diamond, agricultural societies (like the early US and its dealings with Native Americans) who needed the land for farming often took new resources from hunter-gatherers.

[Arawn-ap-Hywel]

Hunter gatherer's still exist.

Without them nothing would progress, those whom adopted the farming style were happy stay at homes with only slight whims for expansion.
Whilst the hunter gatherers roam and seek.
So it is today, the hunter goes seeks and objectively wins their goals. They can work in teams or singularly, adapting easily to whatever their surroundings.
Thankfully the farmer happily maintain their family ties and render stability.
But without that strain of the hunter in man their would be very little fun in life
"Bring and bye"

[Athena]

Quote by: weasel To me, the choice (or "process" if thats how you see it) between hunting-gathering and agriculture sounds like a prehistoric choice (or "process") between communism and capitalism: the good of the many versus the good of the few or the one. This may be a stretch but I think its a possible point that may apply to this topic. Additionally, do you think, had we not shifted to agriculture, we would be better off today without the advances of technology but benefitting from communal tribe relationships(i.e. maybe a greater sense of belonging)? Perhaps this is the reason why many early American colonists who were kidnapped by Native Americans decided to stay with them and why ordinary, regular colonists (and later citizens of the US) left civilization to live with in the "red man": perhaps they saw that the "communist benefits" looked better than the "capalist benefits."

A difference between native Americans and the European immigrants is this concept of ego. Native Americans practiced farming, but didn't have a concept of claiming that which is the Creator's as one's own private property, to do with as one pleases. They also thought collectively, not in terms of separate egos. I would say the bigger problem was not farming, but religion which brought together larger than normal human collectives. Religions that focused on evil and personal salvation, manifest a lot of evil in combination with unnaturally large human groups.

If I remember correctly, Desmond Morris said the upper end of people we can remember is 600. This does not include knowing their families. It is just that someone with a large company of 600 should be able to identify the employees. Much of our economic and political problems result for not respecting this biological limit of how many people we can know. Especially when we pass 600 people we start dehumanize each other. Well, we recognize another as a human being, but not a human being like ourselves. Obviously, we need to take care of our kind and can't take care of everyone.