Human history in the very long run (2021)
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Human history in the very long run (2021)
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Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)
#2No Work, No Food
Hyakujo, the Chinese Zen master, used to labor with his pupils even at the age of eighty, trimming the gardens, cleaning the grounds, and pruning the trees.
The pupils felt sorry to see the old teacher working so hard, but they knew he would not listen to their advice to stop, so they hid away his tools.
That day the master did not eat. The next day he did not eat, nor the next. "He may be angry because we have hidden his tools," the pupils surmised. "We had better put them back."
The day they did, the teacher worked and ate the same as before. In the evening he instructed them: "No work, no food."
Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)
#3The downside of using modern metrics to estimate the happiness of past people is that you won't ever measure the stuff that we've lost. We'll never really know, and you should look at all such comparisons with deep suspicion (especially eyeballing you, Steven Pinker)
Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)
#4Is there any writer who criticizes Marx on his own terms?
Marx agreed that quality of life can improve under capitalism. The whole point was a ethical/social critique of mismatched incentives and power imbalances of such an arrangement.
It doesn't matter if life improves if the only choices one has in life is either live under the power imbalance of wage labor or extract value from those who do.
If folks can be blamed for commenting completely off-base takes on an article they didn't read, the author should also take heat for critiquing on a work they never read.
Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)
#5Is there any writer who criticizes Marx on his own terms? Marx agreed that quality of life can improve under capitalism. The whole point was a ethical/social critique of mismatched incentives and power imbalances of such an arrangement. It doesn't matter if life improves if the only choices one has in life is either live under the power imbalance of wage labor or extract value from those who do. If folks can be blame…
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Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)
#6The downside of using modern metrics to estimate the happiness of past people is that you won't ever measure the stuff that we've lost. We'll never really know, and you should look at all such comparisons with deep suspicion (especially eyeballing you, Steven Pinker)
What did we lose that you think would make us happier? I can only think of things certain people lost that would make them happier at the expense of making others as miserable as possible.
Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)
#7The downside of using modern metrics to estimate the happiness of past people is that you won't ever measure the stuff that we've lost. We'll never really know, and you should look at all such comparisons with deep suspicion (especially eyeballing you, Steven Pinker)
I wouldn't mind Steven Pinker so much if it wasn't for the blatant cherry picking. Always trying to make today look a good as possible and the past as terrible as possible. It just produces bias on both sides when like usual - it is full of greys.
We are doing some cool things nowadays, yes there is some blow back to account for. The past had a lot of awful things, but there were something things we did that we should consider integrating with modern techniques. And so on.
Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)
#8The downside of using modern metrics to estimate the happiness of past people is that you won't ever measure the stuff that we've lost. We'll never really know, and you should look at all such comparisons with deep suspicion (especially eyeballing you, Steven Pinker)
What did we lose that you think would make us happier? I can only think of things certain people lost that would make them happier at the expense of making others as miserable as possible.
> What did we lose that you think would make us happier?
I strongly suspect any example I provide will be attacked, so I recommend to use your imagination. I think you can do better than this.
If you really want an example I recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Shaman, who can write better than I can, who is thoughtful in his choice in how he uses research versus poetic license, who has already responded to critique on the novel. There's plenty worth critiquing but it's better than assuming the absolute lack of any loss. And I'd like to emphasize I don't believe in past utopia (I think anarcho-primitivism is equally lacking in imagination, perhaps even more so)—just that the idea of one-dimensional progress is moronic.
EDIT: To add on to this, Graeber points out that there's a wide span of time in between the invention of agriculture (~12kya) and the beginning of what we collectively agree is civilization (~8kya). Why this delay, if sedentary farming and market-oriented distribution offers such obvious benefits?
EDIT2: spelling
EDIT3: KSR context
Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)
#9No Work, No Food Hyakujo, the Chinese Zen master, used to labor with his pupils even at the age of eighty, trimming the gardens, cleaning the grounds, and pruning the trees. The pupils felt sorry to see the old teacher working so hard, but they knew he would not listen to their advice to stop, so they hid away his tools. That day the master did not eat. The next day he did not eat, nor the next. "He may be angry beca…
What a brutal philosophy.
Re: Human history in the very long run (2021)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
What did we lose that you think would make us happier? I can only think of things certain people lost that would make them happier at the expense of making others as miserable as possible.
> What did we lose that you think would make us happier? I strongly suspect any example I provide will be attacked, so I recommend to use your imagination. I think you can do better than this. If you really want an example I recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Shaman , who can write better than I can, who is thoughtful in his choice in how he uses research versus poetic license, who has already responded to critique on…
I assume that it is nothing if you can't provide any examples. Slaves, blood sports, women traded for power and sex are all the things that first came to mind
Edit: It's also bad form to edit your comment after it's been replied to without indicating you edited it.