Anti-Civilization

The irony is that the civilizations emerged (evolved, developed) gradually, and in a metaphor over time, they once were hunters/gatherers societies. So unless there's some Satanic conspiracy which showed these "innocent" societies the evil apple of civilization, such views seem to miss that civilization (with all its good and bad sides) is a natural evolution of what they preach.

Originally posted by Adalwolf I do not agree that civilization is a logical step after hunter-gatherer societies. Civilization arose in only a few isolated places, under dubious circumstances and spread like a cancer across the globe devouring all life in its path.

And don't forget Adalwolf Civilisation is also linked to Al Qaeda Furtheremore what do you mean by dubius circumstances?

Originally posted by Adalwolf As you can tell, I have become very critical of civilization, and for could reason. Civilization is based upon slavery. Now, before you point out that slavery, actual owning of other people, has been abolished in �civilized� nations for over 100 years, we must look closer at society. People are slaves to money and to those in power for everything necessary for survival. People have to pay to even exist on planet Earth, for water, for food, for everything that comes freely in nature.

Food, water etc do not come freely in nature, the hunter gatherers had to work to get them (well in regards to water it depends where they came from). People are indeed slaves to money and others are slaves to the limitations imposed on them by a closed mind,by the limitations imposed on them by theier envronment and the lack of oppurtunity to truly achieve rather then just try and survive day by day. The hunter gatherers in many regions decided they wanted more and no longer wanted to be slaves to these things. PS. people have always been slaves to something like money, its called materialism but I do agree that this is a far more serius problem with modern western societies then in Hunter Gatherer ones typicaly.

Originally posted by Adalwolf Civilization is not sustainable. It is based on fossil fuels, which unreplinishable. Fossil fuels also pollute, and are destroying the environment around the world, from melting the ice caps to acid rain. Dams are built which kill rivers, and everything in them. Civilization give people the impression that they are not part of the natural, that people are somehow above the rest of life on earth, which is absurd. What gives people the right to kill of entire species? What gives people the right to kill the earth for monetary gain? Nothing. It is shameful and should be stopped, the sooner the better, before more harm is done.

You know about the Fossil fuels I have always been in favour of Nuclear power myeself. secondly the whole man made global warming idea is imho greatly exagerated at the least. Finaly I agree unless the species is causing too much harm to humanity and cannot be controlled we should not kill off other species. However you are disgusted with us for doing this whilist insisting we are no better then animals yet animals are not held accountable in your post for the ruthless ways in which many species wipe out other species. So are the animals just as evil as us but generally more incompetant or are humans held to a higher moral standard then all other organisms? (which may suggest that we are indeed "above" the rest of the life on earth).

Originally posted by Adalwolf Civilization has made great medical advances, true, but civilization caused many of the illnesses it treats by the horribly absurd amounts of pollution it has, and continues to produce. Hunter-Gathering peoples lived long and healthy lives, the only negative being high infant mortality rates. However, hunter-gather societies did not destroy the planet, as civilization. Now, many �civilized� feel that hunter gatherers had hard lives, and modern life is much preferable. However,� if you measure some standards, such as the number automobiles, yes; if you measure others, such as leisure time, sustainability, social equality, and food security�meaning no one goes hungry�hunter-gatherers win hands down�� (Jensen, Endgame Volume I pg 52).

As some people have already said a lot of that is sheer nonsense, social equality? in Nomad societies there is often a chieften with great powers who is far from elected, "state" religion and certainly little equality or forced roles between men and women. Please note that hunter gatherer societies can differ from each other and not all of these apply to all such societies.

Leisure time? the development of agriculture led to greater amounts of leisure time at least initially as no longer did pretty much every member of said society old enough to physicaly do it have to spend the great majority of thier time looking for and/or gathering food and moving about. Greater productivity per man led to the option of occupying oneself with a trade and live in one place permenantly. If the hunter gatherers had more time to spare then thier agricultural counterparts they would have also developed other industries. On a final note what exactly would they do with thier liesure time? not that many options compared to today.
 

Originally posted by Adalwolf One reason why hunter-gatherers had food security and sustainability is because a) the limited their population so they would not outstrip what their land-base could sustain and b) they did not over hunt, over-gather (lol, is that a word?) so their land base wouldn�t be harmed.

So what do you suggest we do? cull most of the population so the rest can live a hunter gatherer existence? secondly ever wonder why there were tribal conflicts existed over territories because resources were scarce or rather thier methods of extracting resources were so inefficient.  hunter gatherers were typicaly Nomads precisly because they did over hunt and over gather, many large species were wiped out including many of Australias mega fauna and the woolly mammoth. There is no food security in being a nomad.

Regards, Praetor.

Originally posted by Praetor Originally posted by Adalwolf I do not agree that civilization is a logical step after hunter-gatherer societies. Civilization arose in only a few isolated places, under dubious circumstances and spread like a cancer across the globe devouring all life in its path. And don't forget Adalwolf Civilisation is also linked to Al Qaeda Furtheremore what do you mean by dubius circumstances? Originally posted by Adalwolf As you can tell, I have become very critical of civilization, and for could reason. Civilization is based upon slavery. Now, before you point out that slavery, actual owning of other people, has been abolished in �civilized� nations for over 100 years, we must look closer at society. People are slaves to money and to those in power for everything necessary for survival. People have to pay to even exist on planet Earth, for water, for food, for everything that comes freely in nature. Food, water etc do not come freely in nature, the hunter gatherers had to work to get them (well in regards to water it depends where they came from). People are indeed slaves to money and others are slaves to the limitations imposed on them by a closed mind,by the limitations imposed on them by theier envronment and the lack of oppurtunity to truly achieve rather then just try and survive day by day. The hunter gatherers in many regions decided they wanted more and no longer wanted to be slaves to these things. PS. people have always been slaves to something like money, its called materialism but I do agree that this is a far more serius problem with modern western societies then in Hunter Gatherer ones typicaly. Originally posted by Adalwolf Civilization is not sustainable. It is based on fossil fuels, which unreplinishable. Fossil fuels also pollute, and are destroying the environment around the world, from melting the ice caps to acid rain. Dams are built which kill rivers, and everything in them. Civilization give people the impression that they are not part of the natural, that people are somehow above the rest of life on earth, which is absurd. What gives people the right to kill of entire species? What gives people the right to kill the earth for monetary gain? Nothing. It is shameful and should be stopped, the sooner the better, before more harm is done. You know about the Fossil fuels I have always been in favour of Nuclear power myeself. secondly the whole man made global warming idea is imho greatly exagerated at the least. Finaly I agree unless the species is causing too much harm to humanity and cannot be controlled we should not kill off other species. However you are disgusted with us for doing this whilist insisting we are no better then animals yet animals are not held accountable in your post for the ruthless ways in which many species wipe out other species. So are the animals just as evil as us but generally more incompetant or are humans held to a higher moral standard then all other organisms? (which may suggest that we are indeed "above" the rest of the life on earth). Originally posted by Adalwolf Civilization has made great medical advances, true, but civilization caused many of the illnesses it treats by the horribly absurd amounts of pollution it has, and continues to produce. Hunter-Gathering peoples lived long and healthy lives, the only negative being high infant mortality rates. However, hunter-gather societies did not destroy the planet, as civilization. Now, many �civilized� feel that hunter gatherers had hard lives, and modern life is much preferable. However,� if you measure some standards, such as the number automobiles, yes; if you measure others, such as leisure time, sustainability, social equality, and food security�meaning no one goes hungry�hunter-gatherers win hands down�� (Jensen, Endgame Volume I pg 52). As some people have already said a lot of that is sheer nonsense, social equality? in Nomad societies there is often a chieften with great powers who is far from elected, "state" religion and certainly little equality or forced roles between men and women. Please note that hunter gatherer societies can differ from each other and not all of these apply to all such societies. Leisure time? the development of agriculture led to greater amounts of leisure time at least initially as no longer did pretty much every member of said society old enough to physicaly do it have to spend the great majority of thier time looking for and/or gathering food and moving about. Greater productivity per man led to the option of occupying oneself with a trade and live in one place permenantly. If the hunter gatherers had more time to spare then thier agricultural counterparts they would have also developed other industries. On a final note what exactly would they do with thier liesure time? not that many options compared to today.   Originally posted by Adalwolf One reason why hunter-gatherers had food security and sustainability is because a) the limited their population so they would not outstrip what their land-base could sustain and b) they did not over hunt, over-gather (lol, is that a word?) so their land base wouldn�t be harmed. So what do you suggest we do? cull most of the population so the rest can live a hunter gatherer existence? secondly ever wonder why there were tribal conflicts existed over territories because resources were scarce or rather thier methods of extracting resources were so inefficient.  hunter gatherers were typicaly Nomads precisly because they did over hunt and over gather, many large species were wiped out including many of Australias mega fauna and the woolly mammoth. There is no food security in being a nomad. Regards, Praetor.

By dubius circumstances I mean people were forced. Natural disasters allowed leaders to concentrate more power in the name of security and survival. These leaders came to control the food supply and thus have power to control people, instead of advising them.

True, we are slaves to the need to eat and drink, but that is all we should be slaves to, money, governments, everything else are unnecessary and harmful to individuals, and the environment, as the greed for more leads to decisions being made on what generates the most money.

Other species do wipe out others, that is the way of the world. They do so, however, because they out-compete them. Humans, on the other hand are wiping out countless species through habitat destruction, perceived threat, and pollution. There is a huge difference.

The 'chiefs' in many societies did not become over-arching figures. In most they were considered wise, and people followed what the chief thought if they agreed with it, and if not, the ignored it or left the group. (amazon tribes, native americans, aborigines, to name a few)

Agriculture led to leisure time for a few, the elite. Today, we enjoy much leisure time, but we also have to work 8+ hours a day to actually enjoy it. Also, hunter-gatherers were content, and the surviving groups are among the happiest people in the world, with no need for change. (why change when what you have works, and everyone is happy?) Hunter-gatherers used their leisure time relaxing with their tribe/band/group or whatever you want to call it. They spent their time increases bonds between the group. Their wealth was in relationships, not things.

Cull the population? No. It is going to fall, hard. The earth is way past carrying capacity, and our agricultural practices cannot last. The energy required is enourmous, they are using too much water. My state of Kansas has some of the best soil in the world, but much of it is being lost every year, and water drawn from aquafers is being used faster than it is replaced. It cannot last. Plus, much of the worlds arable land will be lost within 50 years do to climate change. You may not believe it is happening, but it is, whether human caused or accelerated. Once this giant mistake called civilization collapses, the population will be at a sustainable level.

About hunter-gatherers killing of large game. I believe you are referring to the Pleistocene overkill theory. It is just that, a theory, and one that has fallen out of favor. Here is a quote from Eugene S. Hunn, President of the Society of Ethnobiology on the subject:

    "Pleistocene Overkill. This beast, like Dracula, will not die, despite a broad consensus of archaeologists knowledgeable with respect to the evidence, or lack of evidence, to support the hypotheses, that it is a just-so story with no empirical support. The apparent coincidence of the arrival of the first proficient hunters on the New World scene and the demise of some 35 general of charismatic megafauna is not sufficient grounds to convict Clovis Man of their atrocity. The temporal priority of Clovis is now widely dismissed, on the strength of finds in southern Chile that date to teh late Pleistocene at least 14,000+ BP. Furthermore, the association of Paleo-Indian kill sites with the extinct megafauna is scant. More telling, in my opinion, are the theoretical and empirical reasons to reject the clever computer simulation devised to show how it could have happened.
    Martin's 1972 simulation reported in Science is not the only such attempt at a virtual reenactment of the crime nor the most sophisticated, but is clear from the simulation that i requires assumptions about human behavior thar are improbable. For example, Martin's model assumed that: 1) the Paleo-Indian population would double every 20 years; 2) ...a relatively innocent prey was suddenly exposed to a new and thoroughly superior predater, a hunter who preferred killing and persisted in killing animals as long as they were available...;3) Not until the prey populations were extinct would the hunters be forced, by necessity, to learn more botany;4) on the front one person in four destroy one animal unit (450 kilograms) per week, or 26 percent of the biomass of an average section in 1 year in any one region. Extinction woudl occur within a decade...Are these reasonable assumptions?
    Demographic studies of Kalahari San hunters demonstrate that average birth interval for this group of nomadic hunters is four years, which with expected child mortality results in stable or very gradual ly increasing populations over millennia. Population growth is limited not by the availability of food but by the difficulty of carrying infants.
    Hunters who prefer killing and persist in killing until the last animal is gone exist only in the tortured imaginations of misanthropic scholars. While it is questionable to what extent Native American hunters harvested their prey in accord with contemporary principles of maximum sustained yield, the ethnographic evidence affirms that subsistence hunting is an activeity demanding not bloodlust but sophisticated knowledge of animal behavior and local landscape, subtle logic to decipher signs, great patience, and typically an attidtude of humility and reverance toward the prey animal as an animate being and moral person. Martin would have us believe that it could be adaptive for every adult male in a community to kill one 450kg animal unit per week, which comes to 16kg per person per day, or perhaps half that dressed meat, which comes to some 30,000 calories per person per day, 15 times daily requirements. If even 1- percent were consumed, and nothing else, the Paleo-Indians would ahve been too fat to have waddled to Tierra del Fuego in the time allowed. So we are to believe instead they wasted over 90 percent of this meat. This requires that we assume that it is extraordinarily easy to dispatch a 450kg animal unit, so much so that one disdains to preserve the meat.
    Such profligacy is perhaps characteristic of economies of scale associated with recent industrial production, but bears no resemblance to the practical realities of a hunter-gatherer way of life. Rather, we should expect the economies associated with the domestic mode of production to operate in subsistence hunting-gathering communities. One works only as hard as is needed to feed one's family and contribute in addition to the reproduction of one's community. Furthermore, the ethnographic evidence is overwhelming that hunter-gatherer communities are based on a division of labor between men and women, and that in all but the arctic and sub-arctic extremes, women contribute very substantially to the diet by collection edible plant foods. Learning botany is not a measure of last resort for the starving hunter, as Martin would have it, but in every case is an integral element of a hunting-gathering subsistence strategy.
    Finally, just how stupid were the American Pleistocene megafauna that they would fail to recognize a new superpredator and learn to avoid him before it was too late? Continental megafauna evolved in the presence of fierce predators, such as saber-toothed cats and short-faced bears, and thus are hardly to be compared with the naive predator-innocent animals of isolated islands such as the Galapagos.
    Thus, not only is the there no credible archaeological evidence to support the Pleistocene Overkill scenario--at least as a major factor in the extinction of more than a few of the species lost, but also it flies in the face of all that anthropologists have learned about teh actual practice of hunting-gathering by contemporary and historic hunting-gathering societies. "


So, as you can see the Pleistocene Overkill theory has been debunked and discredited. Hunter-gatherers were careful of their environments, and moved as to not overuse their land base, thus their is food security because the land-base is taken care of!

Civilization will always be destined to happen so long as there is enough people to congregate to areas. We are a tribal species, we look to one another. What makes us different from other tribal species is we are far more intelligent and always better ourselves through technology and knowledge. If you don't want civilization, then you have to lobotomize the world, because even if current civilizations fall, others will just arise again so long as we remain intelligent.

Originally posted by Crystall Originally posted by Adalwolf    Hunter-Gathering peoples lived long and healthy lives, the only negative being high infant mortality rates.         Where did you get this from? Hunter gatherers had a much lower lifespan, more comparable to third world african nations today.   Your telling me the average hunter gatherer could live 80+ years like many do in industrialized nations?

I think he is questioning more why civilization arises and whether its an abnormality for the original state of man. But since man is still part of nature no matter what, then civilization itself is a natural progression, even if it enslaves nature for its builder's needs.

If I read what you said correctly, I think you just simplified what I said.

Originally posted by Adalwolf Originally posted by pekau Originally posted by Adalwolf I do not agree that civilization is a logical step after hunter-gatherer societies. Civilization arose in only a few isolated places, under dubious circumstances and spread like a cancer across the globe devouring all life in its path.   I think that is the case for people living in isolated areas where food and raw materials are not plentiful, and hence... they are still busy trying to survive. People can't emerge or advance to more complex culture (Civilization) unless they secure their food, clothing and shelter needs.   As such, I wouldn't really call these hunter-gatherers innocent. I mean, some may believe seriously about living with nature with harmony... but even these societies have some kind of class difference. They may fight over a food or marriage issues, and they may lie occaisionally for their own advantages. Civilization don't necessary make people evil. Evil is our nature that should be overcome by the wisdom and knowledge from elders, or by faith. Of course hunter-gatherers were not perfect, they were people. They had conflicts and setbacks, but their methods of survival were sustainable!

I do not agree that civilization is a logical step after hunter-gatherer societies. Civilization arose in only a few isolated places, under dubious circumstances and spread like a cancer across the globe devouring all life in its path.

I do not find at all isolated the seeds of what we call civilization (human societies reaching a certain complexity, sometimes the threshold is the urban level, sometimes it is just a certain degree of complexity), nor occuring in dubious circumstances. Most (if not all) of the "civilization features" occured as solutions, which otherwise on Earth is a natural phenomenon called adaptation.

I am a bit shocked really to learn that people could be anti-civilizational in all seriousness and want us all to revert to a life to hunter gatherers. Although i can write a whole book on the absurdity of such a notion i will just request the anti-civlizational people to just use their common sense and look around themselves. See the vast disparity between in the quality of life of nations high up on the civilizational ladder and those not so high even in the most basic aspects of human life (such as average age or child mortality). The civilizational centres throughout history like mesopotamia and egypt have been the envy of hunter gatherers rather than the other way round. I may seems like an intolerant fool criticizing some one for not sharing my point but if these people actually take what they say seriously (like Pol Pot did) then it is indeed something that which i should react to strongly.

There is a more simply argument in favor of civilization these days. Without mechanization, chemistry and modern medicine, this planet couldn't stand the 6 billion people it has right now.