I somehow think this is an idea popular mainly among people who never had to live that way for real (and no, going for a weekend in woods for fun is not comparable). Yes, they don't have our types of stress, but it's just not true that this is stress free living. Their every single moment is fighting to survive, to collect enough water, to hunt enough meat, not to get hurt, not to get sick or injured. And they're used to that life, so superficially they might look like doing much better than us, but life is still hard for them. Walking for hours to collect water and then bringing it back every single day is not something that people who had to do it remember fondly. Looking for food can be fun when there is enough of it, but sometimes there isn't, and they know very well that if they fail their family will be literally be left hungry, their children might even die. I honestly doubt it's much less stressful than worrying about mortgage. And all of that is in the normal situations, until a drought or disease strikes, or until their best hunter gets killed or injured, or neighboring tribe attacks and steals their women. In such extreme times civilization is the safety net that saves your life, and that's why we come up with it, in the first place. To make our life easier. And it is. And if it's too stressful for you, is it really because of the civilization, or because of your own choices and ambitions?
Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?
101–110 of 136 posts
Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?
#102I somehow think this is an idea popular mainly among people who never had to live that way for real (and no, going for a weekend in woods for fun is not comparable). Yes, they don't have our types of stress, but it's just not true that this is stress free living. Their every single moment is fighting to survive, to collect enough water, to hunt enough meat, not to get hurt, not to get sick or injured. And they're use…
We don't have civilization today. We have a consumption machine that has gone of the rails trapping everyone from CEOs, Generals, Judges, Politicians to Janitors in mindless superficial activity. We have more in common with an ant colony than whatever civilization ideal anyone ever imagined.
Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?
#103I somehow think this is an idea popular mainly among people who never had to live that way for real (and no, going for a weekend in woods for fun is not comparable). Yes, they don't have our types of stress, but it's just not true that this is stress free living. Their every single moment is fighting to survive, to collect enough water, to hunt enough meat, not to get hurt, not to get sick or injured. And they're use…
One thing to consider is people lived like this for ages and ages. So our brains are evolved to cope with that kind of living. A lot of the Kahnemann/Tversky type biases that people exhibit is because their ancestors lived in an environment similar to the bush people.
Take people out, and all sorts of things happen. People get addicted to sugar, heroin, Facebook. You get unhealthy due to lack of exercise. You feel weird socially because you weren't wired to interact in the modern way (fast, tenuous, no strings). You grow up feeling awkward because you can't contribute from the age where you can talk, and you have to sit in front of a blackboard for years before you get let near anything. Your natural allies, your relatives, are not so near you as you'd like. You don't even have that many because you can't have a family until you're quite old.
I can see why there's this paradox that nothing seems to change how happy people are.
Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?
#104Of course, farming didn't overtake hunter-gathering because farmers are happier . It overtook because farming can feed massive armies capable of conquering hunter-gatherer land by force. Although I guess, in the end, not being conquered/enslaved/killed might make people happier.
Overpopulation is its own kind of mutual assured destruction.
Countries keep growing in numbers of people because other countries are also growing in numbers of people, and this correlates to their economic and military power.
Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?
#105I somehow think this is an idea popular mainly among people who never had to live that way for real (and no, going for a weekend in woods for fun is not comparable). Yes, they don't have our types of stress, but it's just not true that this is stress free living. Their every single moment is fighting to survive, to collect enough water, to hunt enough meat, not to get hurt, not to get sick or injured. And they're use…
We don't have civilization today. We have a consumption machine that has gone of the rails trapping everyone from CEOs, Generals, Judges, Politicians to Janitors in mindless superficial activity. We have more in common with an ant colony than whatever civilization ideal anyone ever imagined.
And anyone who mentions it will get marginalized. :(
Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not a settled question. The references in your link are mostly new-world non-state (nonstate != hunter-gatherer), whereas Africa, where most of human foraging history occurred is under-represented. There are significant differences in environmental constraints and physical and social ecology between these regions. The link also mischaracterises the argument that anthropologists make: they do not believe that…
My understanding is that it's a settled question and that the evidence of extremely high homicide rates in hunter gatherer societies is overwhelming. If you have any links suggesting otherwise, I'd be interested in seeing them. As for relatedness, that's relative (no pun intended). If everyone within 200 square kilometres is at a genetic distance of a second or third cousin, then a second cousin is the base for a non…
It is clear that homicide rates were higher in the past than they are in modern societies. What is not clear is whether hunter-gatherer homicide rates were higher than those of pre-modern agriculturalists. Here we are primarily comparing band-stage forager societies to other forms of social organisation/dietary lifeway (tribal gardening societies as found in much of Oceania, for example).
Of course relatedness is relative, but the argument is that encounter rates of whatever a group deemed "non-relative" were relatively low and that hostile contact was very costly/relatively unproductive. The "other" was known, cementing feelings of kinship, but distant.
The most violent societies according to your charts are post-band but pre-state with relatively high population density. That is not in contradiction with the "foragers nonviolent compared to other pre-state and comparable to earlier state societies" model.
The interesting question is whether there may have been two optima for human organisation - one at very low population density mobile foraging, the other at the point of the modern state. The modern state may be preferable to the first optimum, but the idea that it takes 10,000 of evolutionary search time to find the second hill is fascinating.
Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also a huge mental cost induced by society. Everything, has to have a purpose, a ROI; everything has a price (even free, it takes space). When you live in nature, you just do as you feel. No reference, no efficiency, it's freeing; and that's a feeling you rarely get in society.
Just to be clear: everything in nature also has a ROI of sorts. I would say people who live in nature are also constrained by their environment and have to be very economical. They depend on their tribe, on the cycle of seasons and the weather, have to be prepared for chance meetings with predators, can't fully prepare for other things like trauma, infection and natural disaster etc. The closest you can currently get…
Your view of the welfare state seems extremely skewed. One can certainly not just move here and profit.
Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to be clear: everything in nature also has a ROI of sorts. I would say people who live in nature are also constrained by their environment and have to be very economical. They depend on their tribe, on the cycle of seasons and the weather, have to be prepared for chance meetings with predators, can't fully prepare for other things like trauma, infection and natural disaster etc. The closest you can currently get…
Your view of the welfare state seems extremely skewed. One can certainly not just move here and profit.
Well not sure what country you're in. I did live in the middle of it for many years. This is just my personal impression of the system.
But I don't intend for this to become a political discussion. To me, this is just an effective example of how "doing what you feel like" can be very different from living in nature or in a natural state and being happy.
Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?
#109I somehow think this is an idea popular mainly among people who never had to live that way for real (and no, going for a weekend in woods for fun is not comparable). Yes, they don't have our types of stress, but it's just not true that this is stress free living. Their every single moment is fighting to survive, to collect enough water, to hunt enough meat, not to get hurt, not to get sick or injured. And they're use…
We don't have civilization today. We have a consumption machine that has gone of the rails trapping everyone from CEOs, Generals, Judges, Politicians to Janitors in mindless superficial activity. We have more in common with an ant colony than whatever civilization ideal anyone ever imagined.
This is an interesting point.
I was born in East Europe "behind the iron curtain", but lived in the west for a long time. And then East Asia for even longer. There are huge differences in how people perceive "civilization" and how "trapped" they feel vs actually are.
The west with its rigorous rules, both explicit and implicit. Regulation of every facet of your life, to a degree you don't realize (it's so natural! building permissions! driving permissions! marriage permissions! breath the air permissions! otherwise the world collapses!) until you've lived somewhere else.
South East Asia with its reckless freedom, or downright anarchy (Thailand). The social pressure is applied more on the family level. There are few explicit regulations, and even where they do exist, you're half expected to ignore them.
All of this is changing of course. As Gibson said, "The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed". There is no doubt in which direction the civilization is moving. Individual human ingenuity is an outstanding achievement, but isn't evolution always oh-so-squinting toward larger, more integrated, more efficient structures? The game of entropy.
The naive integration attempts in the 20th century didn't work out so well, but the pressure is building again. Maybe this time.
Re: Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might have picked M&M peanuts randomly, but sugar is a big part of the creeping force of civilization, and hard to fathom its impact on you until you take a break from it for several months.
I made a bet to avoid eating or drinking anything with added sugar for a month. It made me discover how much stuff has added sugar. Things that I would assume would be fine to eat all had added sugar. Most bread was a write off, practically every sauce, and more or less every packaged food contained sugar. To be honest, the sugar cravings weren't hard to work through, I've never really eaten much sugar, but the sheer…
> how much stuff has added sugar
I depends on what is "edible stuff" to you. Carrots, meat, cabage, fish, etc. have no added sugar in them. Why not simply cook your food, like most people in the world do?
From what I read here and there, Americans have completely lost foot with food, for them having a meal means to take some boxed thing out of the fridge and put it in the microwave owen for 10 mn. This is /not/ a normal meal, it's a lazy way to get one's belly filled. The normal meal for normal people is prepared at home from raw ingredients and some spices.