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#15263223

Groups with high prestige in preceding non-class societies would set about organising the labour needed to expand agricultural production by building irrigation works or clearing vast areas of new land. They would come to see their own control of the surplus—and the use of some of it to protect themselves against natural vicissitudes—as in everyone’s interest. So would the first groups to use large scale trade to increase the overall variety of goods available for the consumption of society and those groups most proficient at wresting surpluses from other societies through war.

Natural catastrophes, exhaustion of the land and wars could create conditions of acute crisis in a non-class agricultural society, making it difficult for the old order to continue. This would encourage dependence on new productive techniques. But these could only be widely adopted if some wealthy households or lineages broke completely with their old obligations. What had been wealth to be given away to others in return for prestige became wealth to consume while others suffered: ‘In advanced forms of chieftainship…what begins with the would-be headman putting his production to others’ benefit ends, to some degree, with others putting their production to the chief’s benefit’.66

At the same time warfare allowed some individuals and lineages to gain great prestige as they concentrated loot and the tribute from other societies in their hands. Hierarchy became more pronounced, even if it remained hierarchy associated with the ability to give things to others.67

There was nothing automatic about this process. In many parts of the world societies were able to prosper right through to modern times without resorting to labour intensive methods such as the use of heavy ploughs or extensive hydraulic works. This explains the survival until relatively recent times of what are misleadingly called ‘primitive’ societies in Papua New Guinea, the Pacific islands and parts of Africa, the Americas and south east Asia. But in other conditions survival came to depend on adopting new techniques. Ruling classes arose out of the organisation of such activities and, with them, towns, states and what we usually call civilisation. From this point onwards the history of society certainly was the history of class struggle. Humanity increased its degree of control over nature, but at the price of most people becoming subject to control and exploitation by privileged minority groups.

Such groups could only keep the surplus in their own hands at times when the whole of society was suffering great hardship if they found ways of imposing their will on the rest of society by establishing coercive structures—states. Control over the surplus provided them with the means to do so, by hiring armed men and investing in expensive techniques such as metal working which could give them a monopoly of the most efficient means of killing.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 25-26
#15263278
Image

There is a fatal flaw on this chart. On the right where it is written "technology," it should say "scientific discoveries."
By writing "technology," you have stated - in your chart - that the purpose of science is to invent money-making chemicals and gadgets. I strongly disagree with this notion.

He's (Oscar Wilde) speaking of the *negative*, *obligatory* side of living-for-others, while you're speaking of the *positive*, *hunter-gatherer* side of the term. It's *romantic*, but it's also *idealist* since the most-likely-hypocritical critiquing of tech usage automatically assumes that we *shouldn't* live with tool-usage.

He's also talking about his countrymen who are living through a hellstorm of new polluting technologies that have lowered lifespans and destroyed the human soul for the vast majority of the non-rich. There is a kind of fatalism in Wilde, like he's saying that mankind can never defend itself against "the latest tech." All mankind can do is cry and write very sad stories.

ckaihatsu wrote:What about the development of *agriculture*, Qatzel -- ? Is *that* 'tool-usage' -- ?


Not only is modern agriculture tool-addicted, it's also totalitarian and unsustainable according to this essay:

Films for Action: The Great Forgetting wrote:...Totalitarian agriculture subordinates all life forms to the relentless single minded production of human food. It is the belief that the whole world is ours by right and we should turn all of the land into human food.

This generates huge surpluses which generates rapid population growth and rapid geographical expansion.

Through sheer weight of numbers totalitarian agriculturalists overrun neighboring regions obliterating other cultures and their way of life. The agricultural revolution wasn't something that started and finished thousands of years ago. It is still happening today, being driven forward by our cultural doctrines which tell us that the earth is a foe that must be conquered.

The agricultural revolution wasn’t about humans finding a better way to live. It was about a single culture out of thousands beginning to live in a way that only worked through exponential growth. Civilization didn’t spread because it was a good idea. Civilization spread through force. The exponential growth of the totalitarian agriculturalists displaced anybody and everybody else. It wasn’t a revolution; it was an experiment that became a runaway train...


The author goes on to say how agriculture causes mass famines by allowing a population to grow to unsustainable numbers using unsustainable technologies that fail every once in a while, and then totally fail just before collapse. The idea that humans lived for million(s) of years before agriculture also suggests that we had everything we needed growing on trees before, and didn't have to work like slaves in order to survive BEFORE AGRICULTURE.
#15263282
QatzelOk wrote:
There is a fatal flaw on this chart. On the right where it is written "technology," it should say "scientific discoveries."
By writing "technology," you have stated - in your chart - that the purpose of science is to invent money-making chemicals and gadgets. I strongly disagree with this notion.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science#Natural_science


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science#Applied_science


---


QatzelOk wrote:
He's also talking about his countrymen who are living through a hellstorm of new polluting technologies that have lowered lifespans and destroyed the human soul for the vast majority of the non-rich. There is a kind of fatalism in Wilde, like he's saying that mankind can never defend itself against "the latest tech." All mankind can do is cry and write very sad stories.



That, of course, is your-own *idiosyncratic* interpretation of it, but more-to-the-point is that he's *not* fatalistic:


Wilde wrote:
Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others



---


And, Wilde's 'countrymen' / contemporaries are presumably *these*:


Wilde wrote:
Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M. Renan; a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand ‘under the shelter of the wall,’ as Plato puts it, and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world.



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ckaihatsu wrote:
What about the development of *agriculture*, Qatzel -- ? Is *that* 'tool-usage' -- ?



QatzelOk wrote:
Not only is modern agriculture tool-addicted, it's also totalitarian and unsustainable according to this essay:



And what about the *development* of agriculture, Qatzel -- it may have happened so *gradually*, from hunting and gathering, to *farming*, over generations, that no one would have really 'noticed' it as being tool-usage (favoring a particular 'sandboxed' area as a proto-garden).


QatzelOk wrote:
The author goes on to say how agriculture causes mass famines by allowing a population to grow to unsustainable numbers using unsustainable technologies that fail every once in a while, and then totally fail just before collapse. The idea that humans lived for million(s) of years before agriculture also suggests that we had everything we needed growing on trees before, and didn't have to work like slaves in order to survive BEFORE AGRICULTURE.



Point taken, and here's my favorite video on permaculture:


Mad scientist's homestead is parking size, off-grid system

#15263541
ckaihatsu wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science#Natural_science
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science#Applied_science

Yes, but *applied science* is not MORE science, it's just a way of using every new discovery to make money in order to be rich and famous. In other words, the "application" of science (and all the risks involved) are a product of society choosing to risk its survival in order to *win* (even temporarily). So I don't consider technology or applied science... integral parts of scientific discovery (which is harmless and not survival-threatening).


Germ Theory and Entertainment

Image

One day before his retirement, after working for 35 years as a community cop, Trevor Orebro was shot to death by Alfonso Vega - a drug dealer that he had arrested 10 years earlier.

But not only was Sergeant Orebro shot to death, but so was the five-week old puppy that he was holding. He had bought the pet dog for his young nephew's birthday, and they were scheduled to take a month-long trip to South Africa together during summer vacation.

Orebro's lifeless body suddenly crumbled to the ground, the puppy crushed under his falling body, as the sound of evil laughter echoed in the background...

(We have ourselves a bad-guy now. A germ. This type of story needs a bad guy in order to tell its story)

(Are most movies about killing germs?)

***

Germ Theory and Economics

Image

1950s In order to cleanse itself of the communist germ, the USA hunted and spied on its own citizens, putting many of them into jail or destroying their careers.

1970s-80s In order to kill the germ that is automobile company unionization, the West started encouraging their own citizens to buy Japanese vehicles.

1980s In order to kill the germ that is Latin American socialist governments, the USA funded terrorism in several Latin American countries.

1980s In order to cleanse Asia of Russian influence, the Taliban were injected into the country and funded, which caused a civil war which the Soviet Union entered and stayed for an entire decade.

1990 In order to cleanse itself of the germ of socialism, banks and private corporations were encouraged to buy up infrastructure all over the world.

2000 In order to cleanse Afghanistan of its Taliban government germ (which had been the cure for another germ earlier), the West decided to make a war in the country to clean it up.
#15263558
Qatzel wrote:
Yes, but *applied science* is not MORE science, it's just a way of using every new discovery to make money in order to be rich and famous. In other words, the "application" of science (and all the risks involved) are a product of society choosing to risk its survival in order to *win* (even temporarily). So I don't consider technology or applied science... integral parts of scientific discovery (which is harmless and not survival-threatening).



'Pure research' will inevitably *suggest* practical applications, though, even for 'everyday' / household kinds of concerns.

Is the following an example of benign pure-science 'scientific discovery', or that of soul-wrenching commercial 'applied science' -- ?



Design and process

Image
Yakhchāl of Abarkuh, Iran


By 400 BCE, Persian engineers were building yakhchāls in the desert to store ice. A yakhchāl takes advantage of the low humidity in desert climates which promotes the evaporation of water (making evaporative cooling more effective) and promotes rapid cooling once the sun sets (water vapor inhibits radiative cooling in less arid climates). In some desert climates (especially those at high altitudes), temperatures drop below freezing at night. Water is often channeled from a qanat (Iranian aqueduct) to a yakhchāl, where it freezes when the temperature is low enough. A wall is usually built in an east–west direction near the yakhchāl. Incoming water is channeled along the north side of the wall so that radiative cooling in the shadow of the wall cools the water before it enters the yakhchāl. Ice is sometimes brought in from nearby mountains and stored in the yakhchāl.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4 ... nd_process



---


Qatzel wrote:
Germ Theory



I think what you're objecting to is the *pathologizing*, and *commodification*, in 'scientific' approach, of any given event or recognized development / news.


Related:


History, Macro-Micro -- Political (Cognitive) Dissonance

Spoiler: show
Image
#15263596
ckaihatsu wrote:'Pure research' will inevitably *suggest* practical applications...

If research "suggests" something, than it's not pure. It's been contaminated by practical sundry concerns.
Example:

Q: "How can the Pharaoh live forever?"

A: "Build him a giant pyramid."

(This is a case where contamination affects shelter-building and social order by forcing labor into pyramid construction. Billions of man-hours of human lives are wasted, and ecologies are ruined.)

I think what you're objecting to is the *pathologizing*, and *commodification*, in 'scientific' approach, of any given event or recognized development / news.

I am objecting to the way that scientific discovery has always been hijacked by power-worshipping civilizations (or individuals) who simply don't have enough knowledge (ever) to guide its application.

*Monkeys with chainsaws* is ALWAYS the result. Right up to extinction.

In a game of ice-storage poker, you wrote:Yakhchāl of Abarkuh, Iran

I call your Yakhchāl of Abarkuh, and raise you one Mosquito Coast.

Wiki The "Mosquito Coast" wrote:Allie Fox is a brilliant but stubborn inventor who has grown fed up with the American Dream and consumerism. Furthermore, he believes that a nuclear war is on the horizon as a result of American greed and crime. After Allie and his eldest son Charlie acquire the components at a local dump, he finishes assembling his latest creation, an ice machine known as Fat Boy.
#15263599
QatzelOk wrote:

I am objecting to the way that scientific discovery has always been hijacked by power-worshipping civilizations (or individuals) who simply don't have enough knowledge (ever) to guide its application.




There is feedback.

From the beginning, success has encouraged investment. Look at the development of artillery in the Renaissance.
#15263616
QatzelOk wrote:
I am objecting to the way that scientific discovery has always been hijacked by power-worshipping civilizations (or individuals) who simply don't have enough knowledge (ever) to guide its application.

*Monkeys with chainsaws* is ALWAYS the result. Right up to extinction.



---



The two millennia immediately preceding 3000 BC had witnessed discoveries in applied science that directly or indirectly affected the prosperity of millions and demonstrably furthered the biological welfare of our species…artificial irrigation using canals and ditches; the plough; the harnessing of animal motive-power; the sailing boat; wheeled vehicles; orchard-husbandry; fermentation; the production and use of copper; bricks; the arch; glazing; the seal; and—in the early stage of the revolution—a solar calendar, writing, numeral notation, and bronze… The 2,000 years after the revolution produced few contributions of anything like comparable importance to human progress.81

The advances which did occur (‘iron, water wheels, alphabetic writing, pure mathematics’) were not made inside the ‘great civilisations’, but among ‘barbarian peoples’ on their periphery.82

Bruce Trigger contrasts the early dynastic period in Egypt (3000-2800 BC), which ‘appears to have been a time of great creativity and inventiveness’ with the period after, when ‘control by scribes and bureaucrats’ discouraged change in methods of production, so that ‘development ceased’.83



Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 34
#15263697
A text that ckaihatsu provided wrote:...The advances which did occur (‘iron, water wheels, alphabetic writing, pure mathematics’) were not made inside the ‘great civilisations’, but among ‘barbarian peoples’ on their periphery


The Central Civilizations always consider their unabsorbed peripheries germs, thus the word "barbarian." (savage, terrorist, illegal alien, intruder, marginal, etc.)

Those "barbarians" probably *needed* technology to defend themselves from eradication by the Great Civilizations of germ killers.

In much the same way, North Korea and Iran need "new types of weapons" to not be destroyed by the Current Empires.

And they are likely to consider these empires "germs." (The Great Satan, Cultural contamination, Imperialism, etc.)
#15263849
Perhaps Germ Theory can explain most of the inventions of humanity.

Image

GERM: climate cools, less food to eat. starvation results.
SOAP PRODUCT: agriculture, make war on neighbors

GERM: drought, crop failure. starvation results.
SOAP PRODUCT: irrigation, make war on neighbors

GERM: River irrigation ends up depleting soil with minerals.
SOAP PRODUCT: switch to other crops, make war on neighbors

Image

GERM: women are going insane in their suburban isolation
SOAP PRODUCT: pharmaceutical drugs for depression, make war on neighbors

GERM: children are bored to tears in their suburban isolation
SOAP PRODUCT: Television and board games, make war on neighbors

GERM: Television (and other hand-held media) limits the empathy of suburban kids as they age
SOAP PRODUCT: Mass death? (Neighbors have caught up)

That text that ckaihatsu provided wrote:The advances which did occur (‘iron, water wheels, alphabetic writing, pure mathematics’) were not made inside the ‘great civilisations’, but among ‘barbarian peoples’ on their periphery.

The vocabulary of germ-killing is contained in that text.

BARBARIAN = Other civilizations are germs (Barbaros = speaks Greek with accent)
SAVAGE = People who don't live in civilizations are germs (Sauvage = lives in the forest)
#15263872

iron, water wheels, alphabetic writing, pure mathematics



Anything to say about any of *these* emergent developments, Qatzel, and maybe also on the aforementioned pre-class primitive 'garden plots', that gradually turned into the tool / technology of *agriculture* -- ?

The point here, of course, is how would people *avoid* tool-usage / technology, even if they *wanted* to, when we're hard-wired for 'sociability' and beyond -- ?
#15264022

Max Headroom

TV Series
1987–1988
1h

20 minutes into the future, the world has become imbued network-television. It's illegal to turn off your TV, and televisions are given to the needy. In this world, Network 23 has a highly-rated news program with a roving reporter named Edison Carter. But Carter uncovers a plot to cover up lethal "blipverts" and is almost killed. In the process his mind is copied into a computer and the computer-generated personality "Max Headroom" is born. Together, Max and Edison, along with Edison's controller (Theora), their boss (Murray), their boss' boss (Ben Cheviot), and Network 23's boy-genius (Bryce) combat crime, placate sponsors, defeat rival networks, and turn in stories. 14 episodes.—Kathy Li



https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092402/?ref_=tt_trv_cnn
#15264335
Listing 'iron, water wheels, alphabetic writing, pure mathematics,' ckaihatsu wrote:Anything to say about any of *these* emergent developments, Qatzel, and maybe also on the aforementioned pre-class primitive 'garden plots', that gradually turned into the tool / technology of *agriculture* -- ?

The point here, of course, is how would people *avoid* tool-usage / technology, even if they *wanted* to, when we're hard-wired for 'sociability' and beyond -- ?

It's not a question of avoiding tool usage, any more than smoking cigarettes successfully is about "avoiding inhaling."

Since humanity is **made conscious** of the benefits of tools, and because the tool-dialectic means that new tools are often required once another group of humans has them (otherwise, you can be killed by that other super-strong tool-using group)... we are stuck with the knowledge that we already have. All we can do is add to it, and hope that this leads to a decreased admiration for the nature-cheating tricks of tools.

So, it's perhaps more likely that humanity could learn from the past, and the cultures that did NOT have certain technologies, but did well at providing healthy, happy lives.

And I say "learn from," and not "imitate." What I am interested in here is how to accomplish *the good life* without any invasive technologies, not in imitating some targeted hero culture of the past.

Image

For example, the Maya and Aztecs didn't have "wheels" for transportation or "iron" or "ploughs." Imagine. I don't believe they had comic books or vaccine passports either.

But they also didn't enslave other animals (animal husbandry), so what use would the wheel have been, or the plough? They lived happily without animal slavery or ploughs.

Notice, in this example, that technology requires the enslavement of other animals, including other humans. This suggests that germ-killing (using technologies to defeat natural constraints) also ends up killing a lot of non-germs (the ability of animals to live natural lives).
#15264359
QatzelOK wrote:
It's not a question of avoiding tool usage, any more than smoking cigarettes successfully is about "avoiding inhaling."



You're sidestepping the issue of *agriculture*, though -- would / should it be avoided *intentionally*, as you seem to suggest -- ?

What if gardening and crop-growing, using tools, came to be seen as being like 'inhaling' -- just the 'normal' way of living and working, so that everyone can eat -- ?

Here's from previously:




[A] prior change in the way in which people made their livelihood [was] a change that was initially centred on agriculture. The earliest forms of agriculture, using fairly elementary techniques and involving naturally found varieties of plants and animals, could lead over generations to slow increases in agricultural productivity, enabling some peoples to gain a satisfactory livelihood while continuing to enjoy considerable leisure.45 But conditions were by no means always as idyllic as is suggested by some romanticised ‘noble savage’ accounts of indigenous peoples. There were many cases in which the growth in food output did little more than keep abreast with the rise in population. People were exposed to sudden famines by natural events beyond their control, ‘droughts or floods, tempests or frosts, blights or hailstorms’.46 The history of the pre-Hispanic peoples of Meso-America, for example, is one of years in which they found it easy to feed themselves interspersed with unexpected and devastating famines.47

Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 17-18



viewtopic.php?p=15263218#p15263218



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QatzelOK wrote:
Since humanity is **made conscious** of the benefits of tools, and because the tool-dialectic means that new tools are often required once another group of humans has them (otherwise, you can be killed by that other super-strong tool-using group)...



Sure -- you can elaborate all you want about the 'flipside', *destructive* side of tech usage, certainly.


QatzelOK wrote:
we are stuck with the knowledge that we already have. All we can do is add to it, and hope that this leads to a decreased admiration for the nature-cheating tricks of tools.



'Decreased admiration' -- ? *This* is the political line you tout -- ? Really? An overly simplistic, raw-nature-society regarding technological usage -- ?

Are hunter-gatherers allowed to use *spears* to track and kill prey, or would that be too 'technological' and 'slippery-slope' for you -- ?


QatzelOK wrote:
So, it's perhaps more likely that humanity could learn from the past, and the cultures that did NOT have certain technologies, but did well at providing healthy, happy lives.



*All* cultures have technologies of one kind or another -- the question is to-what-extent, and 'why'.


Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0

Spoiler: show
Image



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QatzelOK wrote:
And I say "learn from," and not "imitate." What I am interested in here is how to accomplish *the good life* without any invasive technologies, not in imitating some targeted hero culture of the past.

Image

For example, the Maya and Aztecs didn't have "wheels" for transportation or "iron" or "ploughs." Imagine. I don't believe they had comic books or vaccine passports either.

But they also didn't enslave other animals (animal husbandry), so what use would the wheel have been, or the plough? They lived happily without animal slavery or ploughs.

Notice, in this example, that technology requires the enslavement of other animals, including other humans. This suggests that germ-killing (using technologies to defeat natural constraints) also ends up killing a lot of non-germs (the ability of animals to live natural lives).



'Lived happily' implies that these should be considered as 'model societies', according to you. However:



C J Gadd notes that in the famous Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, ‘The hero is represented…looking at the wall of Uruk, which he had just built, and beholding the corpses which floated upon the river; such may indeed have been the end of the poorest citizens’.61

In Meso-America the pattern was essentially similar. Even with the first civilisation, that of the Olmecs, Katz observes ‘marked degrees of social stratification’, with ‘pretentious burial grounds furnished with rich gifts’ and ‘a representation…of a man kneeling in front of another who is richly clad…a nobleman and his subordinate’.62 Among the Mayas ‘multi-roomed buildings or palaces’ proved society was ‘sharply differentiated into elite and commoner strata’.63



Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 23-24



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[In] Mesopotamia patriarchal clans (lineage groups run by the allegedly senior male) controlled the land not in the hands of the temples, while the mass of peasant producers in Mexico as late as the Aztec period (the 15th century) were organised through ‘calpulli’— lineage groups which were ‘highly stratified internally’,70 with those at the top imposing the demands of the ruling class on the rest—and among the Incas through similar ‘aylulli’.71 Archaeologists and anthropologists have often used the term ‘conical clans’ to describe such groups. They retained the formal appearance of the lineages of pre-class society, linking groups of nuclear families to a mythical common ancestor,72 but now organised the labour of the exploited class in the interests of the exploiting class, acting as both units of production and social control.

In much of Eurasia and Africa private property was to develop among both the ruling class and the peasantry, but only over many centuries, with deep splits within ruling classes, bloody wars and sharp conflicts between exploited and exploiting classes.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 28
#15264367
ckaihatsu wrote:You're sidestepping the issue of *agriculture*, though -- would / should it be avoided *intentionally*, as you seem to suggest -- ?

What if gardening and crop-growing, using tools, came to be seen as being like 'inhaling' -- just the 'normal' way of living and working, so that everyone can eat -- ?


Humans were breathing (without technology) for a million years before an technologies changed our relationship to the rest of the world's creatures and minerals. They ate and made love and played and walked and walked and had adventures. Without agriculture.

Are hunter-gatherers allowed to use *spears* to track and kill prey, or would that be too 'technological' and 'slippery-slope' for you -- ?

I'll let you answer that question. See, the invention of the long spear... lead eventually to the death of hunting as a male lifestyle. What followed was patriarchy, sedentarism, totalitarian agriculture, and lots of other technologies that aimed to make the earlier technologies not so unbearable or fatal.

Men lost the meaning of their lives when hunting disappeared as a way to compliment a vegetarian diet. Women somehow managed to maintain most of their traditional roles (teaching, gardening, socialization of community, etc.) but that won't last.

When people ask what the meaning of life is, they are asking the wrong question. Life doesn't require meaning. Look at how plants and other animals 'live' without demanding answers.

On the other hand, humans should really be pounding their heads trying to find the meaning of civilization (find germs and kill them?), because it might not have one. It might just be a mistake that will cost humanity dearly if germ killing is suicidal .
#15264377
QatzelOk wrote:
Humans were breathing (without technology) for a million years before an technologies changed our relationship to the rest of the world's creatures and minerals. They ate and made love and played and walked and walked and had adventures. Without agriculture.



Okay, sure, no prob, but where -- perhaps -- should *society*, as a *whole*, draw-the-line on the 'tech' issue?

Would the whole world be this romanticized natural playground that you're positing, or could we maybe also *store culture for later*, etc., in that same environment -- ?



In Western anthropology, philosophy, and literature, the noble savage is a stock character who is uncorrupted by civilization. As such, the noble savage symbolizes the innate goodness and moral superiority of a primitive people living in harmony with Nature.[2] In the heroic drama of the stageplay The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards (1672), John Dryden represents the noble savage as an archetype of the Man-as-Creature-of-Nature.[3]

The intellectual politics of the Stuart Restoration (1660–1688), expanded Dryden’s playwright usage of savage to denote a human wild beast and a wild man.[4] Concerning civility and incivility, in the Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit (1699), the philosopher Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, said that men and women possess an innate Morality, a sense of right and wrong conduct, which is based upon the intellect and the emotions, and not based upon religious doctrine.[5]



In 18th-century anthropology the term noble savage then denoted nature's gentleman, an ideal man born from the sentimentalism of moral sense theory. In the 19th century, in the essay "The Noble Savage" (1853) Charles Dickens rendered the noble savage into a rhetorical oxymoron by satirizing the British romanticisation of Primitivism in philosophy and in the arts made possible by moral sentimentalism.[6]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage



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QatzelOk wrote:
I'll let you answer that question. See, the invention of the long spear... lead eventually to the death of hunting as a male lifestyle. What followed was patriarchy, sedentarism, totalitarian agriculture, and lots of other technologies that aimed to make the earlier technologies not so unbearable or fatal.

Men lost the meaning of their lives when hunting disappeared as a way to compliment a vegetarian diet. Women somehow managed to maintain most of their traditional roles (teaching, gardening, socialization of community, etc.) but that won't last.

When people ask what the meaning of life is, they are asking the wrong question. Life doesn't require meaning. Look at how plants and other animals 'live' without demanding answers.

On the other hand, humans should really be pounding their heads trying to find the meaning of civilization (find germs and kill them?), because it might not have one. It might just be a mistake that will cost humanity dearly if germ killing is suicidal .



*I'll* contend that it was *climate change*, compelling the people of the time to 'trick nature' into agriculture.



Peter Richerson, Robert Boyd, and Robert Bettinger[27] make a case for the development of agriculture coinciding with an increasingly stable climate at the beginning of the Holocene. Ronald Wright's book and Massey Lecture Series A Short History of Progress[28] popularized this hypothesis.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution
#15264401
ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, sure, no prob, but where -- perhaps -- should *society*, as a *whole*, draw-the-line on the 'tech' issue?

Large *societies* are a product of technology. Humans without tech can't organize themselves into groups that are so big that you don't know everyone. And "drawing a line" sounds like it's part of a complex multi-phase process that requires fax machines and private jets. :)

Would the whole world be this romanticized natural playground that you're positing, or could we maybe also *store culture for later*, etc., in that same environment -- ?

I have never promised a romantic playground. Most of what I write about the anthropological prospects of humanity are dire, but this doesn't mean that surviving without technology for billions of years ... will be a fantasy of some kind. It will just be a return to nature. Humans will be as fulfilled and happy as other wild animals.

Where do other wild animals "socially draw lines" when it comes to tech?

*I'll* contend that it was *climate change*, compelling the people of the time to 'trick nature' into agriculture.

What did rabbits do when the climate changed? Die off so that their numbers thinned out?

Why didn't they invent technologies so that rabbit-kind could expand into trillions and trillions of rabbits, covering every square meter of the earth's crust? Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit!

Image
"I found one! Let's kill it and eat it right away!"
#15264409
QatzelOk wrote:
Large *societies* are a product of technology. Humans without tech can't organize themselves into groups that are so big that you don't know everyone. And "drawing a line" sounds like it's part of a complex multi-phase process that requires fax machines and private jets. :)



You say that like it's a *bad* thing -- I, for one, appreciate being able to communicate over political and philosophical matters, by *interest* / topic, without having to find such people by covering actual geographic terrain.


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ckaihatsu wrote:
Would the whole world be this romanticized natural playground that you're positing, or could we maybe also *store culture for later*, etc., in that same environment -- ?



QatzelOk wrote:
I have never promised a romantic playground. Most of what I write about the anthropological prospects of humanity are dire, but this doesn't mean that surviving without technology for billions of years ... will be a fantasy of some kind. It will just be a return to nature. Humans will be as fulfilled and happy as other wild animals.

Where do other wild animals "socially draw lines" when it comes to tech?



You're mandating human history transmission via *oral culture*, *only* -- ?


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ckaihatsu wrote:
*I'll* contend that it was *climate change*, compelling the people of the time to 'trick nature' into agriculture.



QatzelOk wrote:
What did rabbits do when the climate changed? Die off so that their numbers thinned out?

Why didn't they invent technologies so that rabbit-kind could expand into trillions and trillions of rabbits, covering every square meter of the earth's crust? Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit!



And what did the *humans* do when the climate changed? Developed *agricultural* techniques (like irrigation) so that their numbers wouldn't thin-out -- ?
#15264415
ckaihatsu wrote:And what did the *humans* do when the climate changed? Developed *agricultural* techniques (like irrigation) so that their numbers wouldn't thin-out -- ?


Technologies act like steroids.

At first, your muscles bulge out and you're rock-hard and horny all the time.
...But then your body stops making natural male hormones, and you lose your muscles, grow breasts, and lose all sexual desire. Forever. And you can die if you try to compensate by using more steroids.

Humanity wanted to "stay rock hard" (demographics wise) so it invented tech.
...Now, its population is reaching plague size, the lives of modern-humans living in most places is similar to caged rats working on treadmills, air land sea and noise pollution dumb us down, and it's getting closer and closer to nuclear midnight.

At what point will most people realize that humanity took a wrong turn and never looked back?

It seems like "man in society" is unable to see how far off course he has gone because he is so deeply "in society." This has caused us to go deeper and deeper into the cave of artifice.
#15264418
QatzelOk wrote:Technologies act like steroids.

At first, your muscles bulge out and you're rock-hard and horny all the time.
...But then your body stops making natural male hormones, and you lose your muscles, grow breasts, and lose all sexual desire. Forever. And you can die if you try to compensate by using more steroids.

Humanity wanted to "stay rock hard" (demographics wise) so it invented tech.
...Now, its population is reaching plague size, the lives of modern-humans living in most places is similar to caged rats working on treadmills, air land sea and noise pollution dumb us down, and it's getting closer and closer to nuclear midnight.

At what point will most people realize that humanity took a wrong turn and never looked back?

It seems like "man in society" is unable to see how far off course he has gone because he is so deeply "in society." This has caused us to go deeper and deeper into the cave of artifice.

Yeah but easier said than done when you get sick or your kid gets sick and technology is right there to save your life.

Who is going to let their kid starve because "technology bad"?

There is no wrong turn. Darwinism says those who can adapt to change will survive to procreate & protect/provide for their children and those that can't will die off, and this also applies to technological change. If someone can't adapt to new technology their genetics will go the way of the dodo. This is nature's law.
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