6 ms·

Dystopia started when we invented farming 10 000 years ago.

by xornox 5y ago

X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
Yuval is that you? I have some sympathy for this view, but there's also the fact that at this point we've basically solved hunger from a societal point of view. Deprivation of calories from a population now happens because of war or intentional. At the current time we no longer are at the whim of natural causes of hunger.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  But the reasonably reliable provision of calories via agriculture is what allows the size of stable societies to grow, and also what more closely tethers them to particular places. As I^HYuval would say, those are the things that help start the long journey to the mess we're today.
  - X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
    While I totally agree that it is necessary for the problems we have today, I disagree that it's obviously bad or necessarily creates many of these problems.
    - thendrill 5y ago
      Depends what you use as "life metric"... Is working 30 years in a tooth paste factory more fulfilling than living on the savanna and hunting then dying at the age of 36 from a broken leg? I guess we will never know. Yet we keep making things and automating. Yes, we have solved hunger. Yes we have solved boredom. We only have to solve sexual needs. Then basically we have automated ourselves out of the "human condition".... But why. What is the point?
- int_19h 5y ago
  Well, it's not quite the same as saying that the invention of agriculture made the current state of affairs inevitable. There's a middle ground between historical determinism, and "anything goes" - some paths become more or less likely depending on how things go, but it's never a railroad. So, I would agree with OP in that it started with invention of agriculture, in a sense that that gave rise to rigidly hierarchical societies, and centralized states that could extract surplus from their citizens and spend it on warfare and other forms of oppression. But we didn't have to take that route, and it doesn't mean that agriculture per se is bad.
mastax 5y ago
I, too, hate not dying of intestinal parasites at 24.

Dystopia started when we invented farming 10 000 years ago.

by xornox 5y ago

Dystopia started when we invented farming 10 000 years ago.

Yuval is that you? I have some sympathy for this view, but there's also the fact that at this point we've basically solved hunger from a societal point of view. Deprivation of calories from a population now happens because of war or intentional. At the current time we no longer are at the whim of natural causes of hunger.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
But the reasonably reliable provision of calories via agriculture is what allows the size of stable societies to grow, and also what more closely tethers them to particular places. As I^HYuval would say, those are the things that help start the long journey to the mess we're today.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
  While I totally agree that it is necessary for the problems we have today, I disagree that it's obviously bad or necessarily creates many of these problems.
  - thendrill 5y ago
    Depends what you use as "life metric"... Is working 30 years in a tooth paste factory more fulfilling than living on the savanna and hunting then dying at the age of 36 from a broken leg? I guess we will never know. Yet we keep making things and automating. Yes, we have solved hunger. Yes we have solved boredom. We only have to solve sexual needs. Then basically we have automated ourselves out of the "human condition".... But why. What is the point?
int_19h 5y ago
Well, it's not quite the same as saying that the invention of agriculture made the current state of affairs inevitable. There's a middle ground between historical determinism, and "anything goes" - some paths become more or less likely depending on how things go, but it's never a railroad. So, I would agree with OP in that it started with invention of agriculture, in a sense that that gave rise to rigidly hierarchical societies, and centralized states that could extract surplus from their citizens and spend it on warfare and other forms of oppression. But we didn't have to take that route, and it doesn't mean that agriculture per se is bad.

mastax 5y ago

I, too, hate not dying of intestinal parasites at 24.