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Was civilization/agriculture even a good thing?

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Climate change is largely a problem because it's a problem for us. There's a lot of biomass out there for which it's a good thing, and there's a lot of biomass for which it's a bad thing. Same with asteroid strikes and ice ages.
 
there is no better or worse

either way the earth won't be able to support life in a few billion years, and eventually the heat death of the universe means that no other planet can either
 
Pete Rock said:
Everyone wants to convince themselves it is because nobody wants to live a lie

However, believing that you own anything is the biggest lie of all

It is the gift of life. You have nothing to defend. You are already alive. You don't need to "earn a living".

Ownership is a result of the need to protect excess stock. Excess stock is only produced through agriculture and permanent settlement.

Fire for the man who build the first fence
And him friend who signed paper as evidence

But but but but the world was a violent place before civilization and all this progress you say. The universe is a cold violent machine of brutal indifferent violence you say!!!

Look around and tell me what you see ??? violence and hatred everywhere

It's like we never learn ...[
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John Kowalski said:
I don't really know what goodness is but i look at humans and i know it isn't there.
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UxRjifT.jpg


We just got pictures of fucking Pluto, up close. Stop being such a Debbie Downer.
 
Kabouter said:
No time in humanity's history was so violent as when we were hunter/gatherers. Civilization was absolutely a good thing.
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With the data we gathered (no pun intended) with recent gatherers and hunters of the past 200 years, I don't think we can say this for sure. Are there clear evidence that the time when we were hunters and gatherers was that violent between tribes?


To answer the topic though, yes, it's a good thing. The human race won't survive with being stuck on the level of hunting and gathering.
 
Yes, I think we'll get a definitive answer in about 30-40 years but I believe we as a species are at a precipice of something truly amazing. We are making so many breakthroughs in many fields right now and I see the future of humanity and this planet being something that's is extremely enjoyable and amazing. We just have to get over the last hump which is poverty, which we currently have the resources to eliminate but the desire is not there. I think automation will change that
 
Uh, of course it's good. And inevitable.

Talk about romanticizing the past. Jesus.
 
Who said:
The Sumerians and Mesopotamians would qualify as civilizations
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I think it is pretty ridiculous that you are claiming that pre-agriculture societies did not have slavery when there is really no way we can find out whether or not they did because the records simply arent there. That isnt proof that they didnt have slavery, but it isnt proof that they did have slavery either.

The oldest civilizations did have slavery, and I don't think it is too big of a stretch to think that they simply expanded a practice that already existed while they were hunter-gatherers. That these hunter-gather tribes attacked other groups, killed some, and captured others to be used as slaves, or at least people at the bottom rung of the tribe hierarchy.

Now is that proof? No, but your claim that there is no record of slavery in pre-agricultural societies, so that means that no slavery existed certainly isnt proof either based on the sources that hunter-gatherer societies leave.
 
Jared Diamond covered this already.

He disagrees:

http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race

While the case for the progressivist view seems overwhelming, it's hard to prove. How do you show that the lives of people 10,000 years ago got better when they abandoned hunting and gathering for farming? Until recently, archaeologists had to resort to indirect tests, whose results (surprisingly) failed to support the progressivist view. Here's one example of an indirect test: Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called primitive people, like the Kalahari bushmen, continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One Bushman, when asked why he hadn't emulated neighboring tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, "Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?"
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Overall, I think it was a good choice when you weight the pros and cons of each.
 
Neo C. said:
With the data we gathered (no pun intended) with recent gatherers and hunters of the past 200 years, I don't think we can say this for sure. Are there clear evidence that the time when we were hunters and gatherers was that violent between tribes?


To answer the topic though, yes, it's a good thing. The human race won't survive with being stuck on the level of hunting and gathering.
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We survived and prospered hundreds of thousands of years before though
 
Who said:
First world luxuries come at the cost of millions of others suffering in slavery though
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Don't see what that has to do with whether sedentary civilisation and agriculture were good things. If you want to complain about an increase in living standards being made off the surplus produced by those responsible for its creation then complain about capitalism, not make some half-baked, vague point about how maybe primitivism is Cool and Good.

*doesn't spend all day hunting for food before dying at 36 from bad teeth*
 
CHEEZMO™;179357576 said:
Don't see what that has to do with whether sedentary civilisation and agriculture were good things. If you want to complain about an increase in living standards being made off the surplus produced by those responsible for its creation then complain about capitalism, not make some half-baked, vague point about how maybe primitivism is Cool and Good.

*doesn't spend all day hunting for food before dying at 36 from bad teeth*
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http://www.npr.org/sections/health-...806/ancient-chompers-were-healthier-than-ours
 
Who said:
Not in peace no, but the scale of human suffering has most certainly increased since then.
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if more people didnt exist, there wouldnt be that huge scale of human suffering you are perceiving

hell, if the population of the earth were 500 million people instead of 8 billion, global warming wouldnt be an issue either.



the doesn't mean the solution to global warming is genocide
 
commedieu said:
Yes there is, the worlds oldest society -- Sumerians, had slavery.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu

Your problems are with Capitalism/Greed. Agriculture comes naturally when you get enough people that don't want to keep traveling long distances to eat.
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Why would you bring up slavery in early civilizations in a thread talking about pre-civilization human times? Slaves in a hunter-gatherer society make absolutely no sense where you are using all the food you get from hunting and gathering to feed your tribe before moving on to find more food. Slavery came about when we decided to stay in one place and currency and land became important. You need people to work the land that feeds more than just your family. You get slaves. They would be a hinderance in pre-civilizaton humanity.
 
ChouGoku said:
People tend to do this a lot, people don't realize that the past was a hellhole.
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How can modern times be described as anything else than a hellhole? Unless your focusing on first world civilization only which makes up only a small segment of the entire human populace
 
Who said:
How can modern times be described as anything else than a hellhole? Unless your focusing on first world civilization only which makes up only a small segment of the entire human populace
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Have you actually lived in a economically developing nation and talked to and interacted with the people living there? Or is this just some ivory tower BS that because they aren't materially well off as first world nations then it must be a hell hole?
 
Who said:
We survived and prospered hundreds of thousands of years before though
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Only because there hasn't been a really grave meteor strike since then though. In order to survive, we absolutely need to go to space.

And to be fair, the hunter/gatherer lifestyle is good only with enough space and available food. The territory of the !Kung is really big for so few people.
 
I could maybe see a benefit to the stronger social ties you'd expect to see in more pre-agrarian societies, but I think the only thing that would make those social groups hospitable or not horribly clannish would be if everyone was extremely educated, like even more than we are now, and that only seems possible in a post-industrial society.
 
I don't want to meet anybody who thinks it wasn't. That kind of person can fuck off and die as far as I am concerned.
 
Piecake said:
I think it is pretty ridiculous that you are claiming that pre-agriculture societies did not have slavery when there is really no way we can find out whether or not they did because the records simply arent there. That isnt proof that they didnt have slavery, but it isnt proof that they did have slavery either.

The oldest civilizations did have slavery, and I don't think it is too big of a stretch to think that they simply expanded a practice that already existed while they were hunter-gatherers. That these hunter-gather tribes attacked other groups, killed some, and captured others to be used as slaves, or at least people at the bottom rung of the tribe hierarchy.

Now is that proof? No, but your claim that there is no record of slavery in pre-agricultural societies, so that means that no slavery existed certainly isnt proof either based on the sources that hunter-gatherer societies leave.
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This is the point I was going to clarify. Thanks for that.

Most early evidence of conflict are from the Mesolithic time period. Even before agriculture we were developing food stores, which lead to increased sedentism, staying in one place for a much longer time. This also lead to much more prosperity and population numbers grew. With that comes more social stratification and inequality.

We are also still unclear of the conflicts or relationships between early humans and neanderthals, but we have underestimated how early migration to Europe was.
 
Inebriated said:
Why would you bring up slavery in early civilizations in a thread talking about pre-civilization human times? Slaves in a hunter-gatherer society make absolutely no sense where you are using all the food you get from hunting and gathering to feed your tribe before moving on to find more food. Slavery came about when we decided to stay in one place and currency and land became important. You need people to work the land that feeds more than just your family. You get slaves. They would be a hinderance in pre-civilizaton humanity.
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than what are trophy Wifes? Warring tribes would kill the men and marry/rape the woman.
 
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