Schizophrenia in less developed nations not as much of a problem and An article by the author whose book, guns, germs, and steel,
Since I’m about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through Collapse, by Jared Diamond (the aforementioned author); it was interesting to read the summary article up above.
Note, I’m not denying the frequency of infant mortality among hunters and gatherers, or their other medical deficits. I’m not saying that modern technology does not directly enhance quality of life. I’m asking about the costs.
We’re working longer hours than hunters and gatherers did. We’re less socially connected, and only recently (say, past 100 years?) have any but the absolute most advantaged in the world had a more varied diet, and even that is debatable, given the vast numbers of species humans have destroyed or displaced over the millenia.
And just what do you think quality of life is for the median human on the planet? Consider India, Africa, and Asia. Think about the folks ekeing out a living on pennies per day so that we can have cheap clothes. If I had a choice between being a median hunter-gatherer (who made it to 20) and a median human alive today (in terms of quality of life), I’d probably go with the h-g. This is not a choice I have.
Despite this, I am an optimist. While I don’t believe we’re currently in a situation where the average or median individual is better off, I do believe it is possible for us to produce such a situation, but we can’t trust in universal forces, like “the invisible hand of the market” to take us there. It requires great effort and care to improve QoL on an aggregate basis. I only hope we consciously adopt that goal at some point, and hopefully some point soon.
Regardless, I find Diamond’s closing point with the article very interesting:
ooo.. collapse is definitely on my reading list.. thanks for reminding me
No problemo, I take it you’ve read GG&S already?
no, i haven’t, actually. i’m reading the summary now..
yet…
note.. you would, in all likelihood, not exist if hunter-gatherer’s still ruled… Taking Diamond’s own numbers–about 1 h-g for every 10 square miles–we’re looking at about 300,000 people living in the continental US total.. Thus.. figure that only about 1/1000 of us would actually exist….
Now.. I’m not wholly unsympathetic to Diamond’s argument–I’m reading Guns, Germs and Steel right now.. but I think that the validity of his argument really has to depend on what framework you choose to use for evaluation…
Taking relative numbers.. then perhaps if the earth only actually had a few million hunter gatherers on it total.. the vast majority of them might be reasonably well off…
But if, instead, we take absolute numbers.. then I’d be willing to bet that there a couple orders of magnitude more people living today–and living in far better conditions overall then in this ideal h-g situation.. Think of it.. take only the top 1% of the American population–and you already have nearly 10 times the number of total hunter-gatherers that would be wandering around.. and I’m sure the top 1% of America lives better than the h-g’s would..
In fact.. I’m willing to bet that even the top 10% of our population lives better than the h-g’s ever did.. and that makes it 100 times as many people–in absolute numbers.. (and that’s not even taking into account the fact that there would be a spread of better and worse off h-g’s amongst their 300,000….)
So.. what do we choose? Personally.. my own private history tells me that I am lucky to be alive now rather than back then.. I was born with the cord wrapped around my neck and had a kind of pneumonia when I was born.. (even though i was otherwise a huge healthy baby..)
In H-G society.. I’d be dead.. Today.. I’m not..
Re: yet…
I was born baby blue, I might well not be around today either. I was pretty careful in my phrasing to account for the possibility of early death. 😉
I was deliberate in my choice of metrics, as well. I’m not saying we should kill off 99.9% of the population, or stop breeding and allow the population to reach that level, so that we can enjoy a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. I reiterate my progessivist views that technology has brought us many benefits. But I think that we ought to focus our society on sustainable quality of life, rather than, well, every man for himself, anything goes.
Re: yet…
but isn’t hunter-gatherer much closer (in the larger sense) to every man for himself than today’s society?
i mean in the sense that we couldn’t exist without people we don’t know about.
of course, what you’re really going for here (i think) is an anti-objectivist (ayn rand) thing, right? in which case i am in total agreement.
Re: yet…
Not nearly so close to every man for himself as modern american society, in terms of attitudes towards resource sharing and competition. Perhaps pretty close to every tribe for themselves. I don’t know enough about china or india to make such judgements for those large population centers.
In terms of dependence, though, yes, we are highly specialized parts of a much larger economy, and they are/were not.
I plan to finish Collapse tonight or tomorrow afternoon (so I don’t have to bring it on the plane with me to Australia). I’m definitely a big fan of Diamond. I actually saw an exhibit based on the book at the LA Natural History Museum, though the exhibit was fairly disappointing (nothing at all on Easter Island or Greenland, and some very fake rabbits and foxes hanging out with taxidermied kangaroos and kookaburras for Australia).
I’m going to read the article you linked to soon.
Anyway, it really is fascinating how agriculture has made population boom so tremendously that every habitable scrap of land has been colonized (including the barely marginally habitable, like Henderson island and Greenland – which was colonized four times!) and also how the population booms are generally unsustainable, and have sometimes depleted the land so much that even the small population it started with could no longer survive there.
Like you, I’m an optimist about being able to get much of this stuff under control. However, I’m not convinced that the median hunter-gatherer enjoyed a higher standard of living than the median person alive today. And like the other commenter, I find it very plausible that the median isn’t really the relevant figure anyway. I imagine that the lives of a large majority of the current population are good enough to be better than not existing at all, and the fact that some people have a much much higher standard of living is itself a good thing as well.
I just read the article – the one other thing it (and Guns Germs and Steel) brings to mind is the idea that agriculture spread through an evolutionary process. Societies that developed agriculture naturally underwent a population explosion and displaced hunter-gatherer societies, either just by walking onto the land, militarily, or by disease. This means that agriculture could easily have become the dominant lifestyle on the planet while a majority of people faced with the choice decided to reject it. The few that embraced it quickly destroyed those that rejected it, even though they might have worse off lives. (Though I think it’s unclear even from the evidence he cites that they did.)
Right, which is part of why I say quality of life won’t improve unless we focus on it. Evolution favors survival, not happiness.
Don’t forget too that preliterate cultures tend to have more equality between the sexes, revere Goddesses as well as Gods (usually in favor of), don’t have slavery, patriarchy, etc. That’s the cost of literacy/agriculture/left-brain dominance.
Though, with slavery at the very least, we’ve adjusted our ways.
It’s a pity that technological/economic development really does raise quality of life across the board as long as those in power stop trying to squeeze every last penny out of the common folk, see: Enron, politicians hostile to transportation, health care, etc.
Also, nice cedilla on façade. =)
Well, a rising tide lifts all boats, but you do have to have a boat. An updraft might be a better example, because it shows how the response varies dramatically with the characteristics of the entity in question. It might ruffle the fur on a bunny and lift a vulture up to whole new heights. =) If you strap a glider on everyone, sure, an updraft lifts everybody. 😉
Thanks, the cedilla and the typos are all products of the amazing technology known as cut & paste.