I've held my toungue until it has almost bled....

[Doc]

Blusliver

don't forget...
Technology allows quick and easy access...
To porn.

Doc

[bluesilver]

I have no complaints there. Technology also gave us .... damnit alcohol has been around a longtime. Hydroponics?

[bluesilver]

and we would have never known that the Olson twins turned 18 without technology... but that's not as important to me as some. Those kids ...

[Spent]

since the beginning of civilization....

Which more and more people are understanding is the root of the sh*t we're in. Why did we take that turn into agriculture, domestication and all that resulted from it, that is now killing us and the planet? We spent 99% of our time as a species quite well without it. Time to dismantle. And we can start with decentralization of power and authority.

Are you familiar with the way civilizations were before agriculture, domestication and medical advances? It was not pretty and we were not really doing all that well. Not to mention the scientific studies that have shown us how the previous ways of doing things were killing us? Lead poisoning (cups were often made from lead), Polio, Ebola, Black Death, (to name a few of the diseases we have made scarce especially in industrialized nations, but come back readily when vaccines are not administered), better & healthier living conditions, technological advances that allow us to disperse food and medicine where it is scarce (though some argue these are pointless)... the list goes on.

I would never say anyone was better off that long ago except for people with money, just like today.

I do agree on humans becoming more self-sufficient and relying less on mass produced items, this should be just common sense, but Americans like a lot of other countries citizens have become feircely dependent on the government and the ability to go to the supermarket for food and goods and expect that these luxuries will always be there. Lazyness is part of the problem. Another might be that workers in the USA work more hours than most other industrialized nations in the world. This can definitely aid to the want for fast, easily obtainable goods. Who wants to work 8 or 12 hours and then go gardening, tend the cattle, mow the property etc..? I would, but most probably would not.

I don't think it's the way civilization has evolved to provide, it might be the way we have collectively asked for these provisions so that we can do other things. Can't blame the government for that one.

You missed my point entirely. I was talking PRE-civilization. why did we become civilized? no one really has a convincing answer to it. but more and more anthropological evidence- (take some time to research this stuff, its fascinating) is suggesting that we arranged ourselves in a far more egalitarian manner, worked less and obviously live more sustainable before civilization ie before agriculture and domestication, in other words as gatherer-hunters... check out the Hazda tribe for a glimpse of what we were for most of our existence. civilization is very very new to our species but the devastation its caused is scary. it will be our end. with civilization came hierarchy, organized religion, more conflict, more susceptibility to disease (look at small pox's role on wiping out this country's native population when the colonialists arrived). since then most scientific and technological advances have been ways to combat the ills of civilization. each new 'advance' causes us more grief... virtual reality/ communication, isolation from nature and the subsequent rise in mental illness for one.

horrible diseases such as cancer might be cured by science and technology but we conveniently forget they were proliferated by them in the first place.

[Ceedog]

I completely understand your points Spent. Seems like advancement leads us towards a series disconnects which require more advancements to compensate, just stacking shite on top of shite. Over medicating with Pyscho-tropics and SSRIs is a great example of that. People get depressed cause they withdrawl and abuse their bodies, instead of sunshine and exercise people think that a pill is the answer.

[Spent]

exactly.

i remember in class, age 12, we were discussing 'the future' and the teacher convinced us that technological and scientific development would ensure, we'd all be working four hour days with three day weekends by the time we were of working age. instead we're working longer. the potential is there but of course its never going to happen as long as we arrange ourselves in such a way. ie an unsustainable system and wildly complicated arrangement of buying and selling. its ludicrous. if we were working just feed, clothe and shelter ourselves its been posited that we'd only need 2-4 hours of graft a day. and we'd probably be saner.

here's a link to the Hazda story. this was in Natl Geographic not some Radical Anarcho-Primitivist Journal

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/12/hadza/finkel-text

Obviously they are not totally untainted by civilization but it gives us a sense of what we were before we started storing surplus food, began trading for profit, established hierarchies, governments, 'culture,' religion and so on.

For more than 99 percent of the time since the genus Homo arose two million years ago, everyone lived as hunter-gatherers. Then, once plants and animals were domesticated, the discovery sparked a complete reorganization of the globe. Food production marched in lockstep with greater population densities, which allowed farm-based societies to displace or destroy hunter-gatherer groups. Villages were formed, then cities, then nations. And in a relatively brief period, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was all but extinguished. Today only a handful of scattered peoples—some in the Amazon, a couple in the Arctic, a few in Papua New Guinea, and a tiny number of African groups—maintain a primarily hunter-gatherer existence. Agriculture's sudden rise, however, came with a price. It introduced infectious-disease epidemics, social stratification, intermittent famines, and large-scale war. Jared Diamond, the UCLA professor and writer, has called the adoption of agriculture nothing less than "the worst mistake in human history"—a mistake, he suggests, from which we have never recovered.

[bluesilver]

Spent - good info for sure. National Geographic gets much more respect in it's journalism from me than any of the hundreds or thousands of small print materials out there I've seen by random authors.

My thought was mainly focused on man's (all animals) instinctual desire to not only succeed, but find ways to 'make life easier'. Trade and agriculture probably got it's start when one farmer wanted what another farmer had, so they would make a trade straight across the board for something the other farmer wanted. If someone see's that they have something that other people want, they are going to capitalize on it and grow more, thus offering them to opportunity to receive things they want or need in lieu of cash. You can imagine the appeal. The problem might be more of how large scale agriculture has become whereas it would have been beneficial to smaller societies to keep their agriculture to themselves.

A lot of smaller tribes or whatever you want to call small indiginous societal groups then could probably sustain the groups agricultural needs, but it was bound to change.

What is your definition of agriculture? I've been thinking you mean more massively produced goods for sale or trade to anyone rather than small scale trading? You're talking pre-civilization, but even the Mayans were considered a civilization.

[bluesilver]

Spent your teacher sounds like they smoked too much pot and had their hopes set on doing nothing and getting paid.
Wouldn't it be great if technologies did everything for us? I think they made a movie about it: Terminator

[Doc]

I like where this thread has gone...
I like electricity and magnets...
Even if I don't understand how they work...
Artificial light is cool.

Doc

[Doc]

I like where this thread has gone...
I like electricity and magnets...
Even if I don't understand how they work...
Artificial light is cool.

Doc

[Spent]

S You're talking pre-civilization, but even the Mayans were considered a civilization.

yes. and Mayan history is relatively recent in the scheme of things. when i refer to pre-civilization- it basically means gatherer-hunter existence. Mayan civilization was only 4,000 years ago according to wikipedia.

Civilization appeared about 9 or 10,000 years ago. 2 million years ago humans were cooking fibrous veggies and 800,000 years ago humans were navigating the oceans and had an intelligence equal to ours. These humans were not civilized but, it seems, they were far from savaged beasts. (Those stats were from 'Twilight of The Machines' By John Zerzan)

I'm sorry for derailing this thread but I feel an examination of human nature and history is essential to establishing a political viewpoint. Not just surrendering to democrat/ republican or conservative/ liberal.

[Wilbur Kookmeyer]

You missed my point entirely.

He often does...

He missed my point in this thread completely.

[bluesilver]

You missed my point entirely.

He often does...

He missed my point in this thread completely.

I have a suspicion that people typically do when it's convenient for you

[Wilbur Kookmeyer]

You missed my point entirely.

He often does...

He missed my point in this thread completely.

I have a suspicion that people typically do when it's convenient for you

Yer an idiot.

[Doc]

Pre-civilization was stupid...
Awesome, but stupid.

Doc