Ok Nen I took your suggestion.
Nen said:
I said:
Nen replied:
Finally, my post, which prompted this thread, was:
And so I have. What say you Nen? Anyone else thinking farming is bad?
PeeQueue
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That’s an odd interpretation of a system that’s worked for over 10,000 years. Yes we change the environment to suit our needs. But that’s ok. And I challenge your claim that the agricultural system is inherently unstable. It is so unstable that we’ve been able to have a reliable food supply for all these years.
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Nope. The increase in population is directly tied to agriculture. Hunter/gatherer tribes and groups don’t grow very large because they only take advantage of food that can be found or killed. Look at the population boom in the middle ages when they discovered the three field method of crop rotation. (Uh, it might not have been called three field crop rotation.)
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And so I have. What say you Nen? Anyone else thinking farming is bad?
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Farming has always been good for humans. Because of farming we’ve made strides in science, philosophy, and art. Everything we have today wouldn’t exist without agriculture. No television, no air conditioning, no literacy, and a pretty crummy standard of living. You wouldn’t even be sure when, where, or what your next meal would be.
To all those who dislike farming, fine. Move to Alaska, Canada, or some of the remote areas of the continential United States. Live off the fat of the land for one year without the aid of anyhing made possible by agriculture. After you’ve lived a year in the stone age come and let me know how crummy agriculture really is.
Marc
-It cuts down on space available for strip malls and McDonald’s franchises.
-Farming is a dangerous occupation resulting in countless injuries, so it outta be outlawed.
-All those genetically engineered crops can mutate and then it’s “The Day of The Trifids” all over again.
-Tractors cause pollution.
-Cow farts are destroying the atmosphere.
-Once we stop eating meat and become vegetarians we can stop eating vegetables and become “Breatharians” and deive our sustenance directly from the sun and air. On that day farms will be obsolete and we can stop oppressing the vegetables. But, we need to start now! If we stop making food people will be forced to becom breatharians and everyone will benefit. Destroy the oppresive farms!
-manual labor is demeaning.
-Farming of commodities can only lead to surplusses and shortfalls of those commodities which is detrimental to the economy by causing market instabilities.
-Lots of farmers chew tobacco which can cause cancer.
-Farmers where baseball caps and overralls which those with any sense of fashion find offensive.
-It has been found in several scientific studies that there is a direct link between proximity to farm animals and sexual relations with those animals. This bestiality is against the Bible and any God-fearing society will put a stop to it by wiping out farms and farm animals.
-Farming leads to more food which leads to more healthy and happy people which leads to more farming. It’s a vicious circle and we need to stop it now.
-50,000 years ago there were no farms. Today there are millions. If we don’t do something now, by 2075 the whole world will be covered in farms! Stop it now. For our children.
The good thing about living in the stone age is you could go and rape the women from the tribe next door and there were no lawyers to harass you later on technicalities that they did not consent.
Another good thing is you didn’t need to earn money to make a living. You just lived.
Another good thing is that you didn’t have to watch “Survivor”. You were the survivor.
MGibson wrote:
There is some evidence of early permanent settlements (i.e. towns) with populations close to 100 that pre-date agriculture.
The going theory is that 12,000 years ago, the ice age ended and the Earth warmed up enough so that there was a huge boom of herd animals roaming the plains. There were so many herd animals, in fact, that human hunters could hunt year round without having to wander around nomadically. It was a time of plenty. Then, around 10,000 years ago, the ice-dam holding back this big huge gigantic enormous freshwater lake, which covered most of Canada, finally burst, and dumped ungodly amounts of ice-cold water straight into the North Atlantic Ocean current stream. This set off a long cold-spell in its wake, a miniature ice age if you will. The supply of herd animals dwindled. The established human settlements had to quickly invent some other way of getting food or starve to death. And what they invented to save themselves was agriculture.
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To all those who dislike farming, fine. Move to Alaska, Canada, or some of the remote areas of the continential United States.
Marc **
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This can be translated as a yahoo comment if I have ever heard one: “Modern agriculture, Love it or leave”. Our movement does not work this way. We are not for individuals opting out of modern agriculture. That would not do much good. What our society advocates is for EVERYBODY to abandon agriculture and destroy the technology. After a few rounds of mass starvtion, we would be left with a small group of hearty survivors suitable for the hunter-gatherer life. Mother earth can then begin to heal from the blight called “modern humans” that has nearly destroyed her.
Might I suggest you start with the one “modern human” you have control over?
This person is actually suggesting that we starve to death some 99.99% of the world population. Pol Pot, Stalin & Hitler- you’ve got some serious competition in the genocide category!
Nen would like to be hear to answer this thread, but he/she is busy out tending to his/her small, personal crop field and mini-livestock herd for his/her tribe.
hear = here.
Sorry, I was distracted by the wolf at my door.
I say going back to being hunter-gatherers isn’t going nearly far enough. We should go back to living in the trees like our great-ape ancestors. They subsisted on the fruit of their respective trees, plus the occasional gathered food plant and the small animals they could kill with their bare hands or thrown rocks. Look at what terrible things have happened to humanity and the Earth since we came down from the trees!
To all those who dislike farming, fine. Move to Alaska, Canada, or some of the remote areas of the continential United States.
Marc **
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This can be translated as a yahoo comment if I have ever heard one: “Modern agriculture, Love it or leave”. Our movement does not work this way. We are not for individuals opting out of modern agriculture. That would not do much good. What our society advocates is for EVERYBODY to abandon agriculture and destroy the technology. After a few rounds of mass starvtion, we would be left with a small group of hearty survivors suitable for the hunter-gatherer life. Mother earth can then begin to heal from the blight called “modern humans” that has nearly destroyed her. **
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Yahoo comment. You advocate the death of billions of human beings and you accuse me of yahoo comments? What your society advocates is famine, pestilence, and death. Only a lunatic would choose these things as a way of life. My comment stands. You and your “society” will simply remain in the lunatic fringe where it belongs.
Marc
PeeQueue, thanks very much for starting this. I found Nen’s “anti-agriculturism” statement…odd, to say the least.
Nen, dear, if you complain about farmers would you be so kind as to stop eating with your mouth full? It kind of blows your whole theory of life out of the water.
I don’t particularly care for farmers… but their daughters… now that’s something else alltogether 
Living in the trees!?!
Have you modern humans no respect for our Mother Earth? How would you like it if a bunch of yahoos were clambering all over you? And munching your leaves? And stripping your bark? I don’t think you’d like it one bit.
Obviously, this blight can only be cured by all of humanity returning to the ocean.
-ellis
Now, while I find the idea that somehow farming is “bad” silly, the above statement is not quite right. It lacks historical context.
It all depends on what you mean by “good” – it’s fairly clear from the archaeological record that farming entailed the following: increase in carrying capacity (vis a vis number of humans) of a given area, subsequent increase in population. However it did not entail an increase in the standard of living, the opposite. Rather it seems that hunter gathers lived better than early farmers, all things being equal (which they’re not of course) in terms of liesure time and diet. We can see this from the decrease in stature among farming populations compared to hunter-gatherer/pastoralists (I blend the terms on purpose here) along with strong indications of increased dietary health problems etc. However, demographically, farmers overwhelmed hunters. As the process of transition was slow, this was not a “choice” – agriculture probably usually began as a part time thing, but as pops increased, they reached a point of no return, it was either farming or nothing to support the population level arrived at. They also could create surpluses to tide over populations in time of famine and eventually feed idle elites who could spend time on things like writing etc.
Now, a couple thousand years down the line we’ve pretty much gotten beyond the problems of early farming and for the industrialized world, live pretty comfortably. Anyone who thinks with some 6 billions in the world that we can do away with agriculture is smoking crack and/or condoning the condemning of billions to mass starvation.
As for the silly, in fact idiotic idea that humans are detroying Mother Earth, well that’s just not so. Destroying the conditions which we can live comfortablely in? Yes. However, if we go to far and tip our ecosystems into mass extinctions we just do away with ourselves and everything goes back to pre-human state. Life has recovered from much worse than humanity (giant meteors for instance) so its really a peculiar form of human naval gazing to think we’re the worst disaster ever.
Marc and Daniel? Come over here a minute. ::puts arms around fellows and whispers:: Dudes? I think Mavpace was being sarcastic.
At least, I hope so!
First and foremost, I would like to apologize for my tardiness to a thread primarily directed at me. I had departed from my computer prior to the opening of this thread and have just now returned. In the interest of not having an eight page post, I will respond to the posts and then follow-up with another post giving an overview of my beliefs so that this discussion may be more productive.
PeeQueue:
In regards to your questions:
What we should have done is moot. The present scenario is the issue at hand. I don’t believe that we should completely revert back to hunting and gathering as such a means of economic production would not be adequate for the size of our population.
I believe MGibson answered that fairly well. Hunting and gathering only works in small populations. Nomadic or semi-nomadic bands and tribes move with the resources.
Population size is a determining factor in our economic production. Due to the current size, hunting and gathering is not a viable solution. I do believe that a reduction in size would be favorable.
We would not require government in such a system. A small population in an egalitarian society would have little or no stratification based power, prestige or wealth; moreover, centralization of power would be unnecessary.
Yes.
MGibson:
I believe you have misunderstood the nature of my argument.
The system which is inherently unstable would be that of the state, industrialized or non-industrialized. Agriculture is simply a component of the state; i.e., a means of economic production which helps perpetuate the system. Also, bear in mind that bands and tribes have around for a couple of hundred of thousand years within our species.
Would you care to back up these statements?
Scylla:
I think I ought to change my defense to the statement below.
Although I don’t usually find such remarks constructive in a debate, this one made me spew coffee from my nostrils. By the way, how are the evil Nazi groundhogs these days?
sandyr:
I really don’t catch your drift, would you rephrase, please?
Collounsbury:
I appreciate the clarification you have offered in my absence.
This statement and ensuing deductions are point I would have made.
I am aware of the consequences, which is why I haven’t proposed such a ridiculous thing.
I never implied that we were destroying the earth, but I sense you agree that we do have the capacity do annihilate many species and ecosystems. I deem such acts reprehensible.
Milosarrian:
Do you have anything to contribute other that insults and sarcasm? I’ve had encounters with you before and not been the recipient of such venemous attitudes. I have presented by thoughts in a rational and concise manner, yet you continue to berate me. I understand that you may disagree, but why must you do so in such a fashion?
The follow-up is on the way.
As I very briefly alluded to in the hunting thread, but perhaps misrepresented, I am against agriculture. In fact, I am not specifically against agriculture, but the sociocultural system known as the state. In terms of sociocultural evolution, the state, specifically the industrialized state, is the “pinnacle” we have reached as a species. The emergence of the state can be depicted through the following model.
Given an ecological trigger, such as a population increase, an intensification of economic production must ensue to handle the increase. In the case of agriculture, irrigation and fertilization may be implemented. This intensification yields a greater increase in population. The increase in population necessitates diversification of labor, nucleation of the population, stratification based on wealth, power and prestige, as well as a centralization of power. As the population continues to increase the limits of growth are reached and circumscription comes into play. One population must expand into the lands of another, thereby feeding into the loop of diversification, nucleation, stratification and centralization. In turn, intensification of economic production is required and thus, the population continues to increase. This system serves only to perpetuate itself.
I find this system to be distasteful. I believe in egalitarianism. I believe in anarchism. I believe in establishing a harmonious equilibrium with the environment. This system possesses none of these attributes; moreover, it is in direct opposition to them. The key factors which perpetuate this system are agriculturalism and pastoralism; ergo, I am against that which enables the system to continue.
I don’t believe in “banning” agriculture as adverse ramifications would indubitably ensue; however, I do believe there is a need for our sociocultural system to evolve to the next (and as of now undefined) type. Does this post clarify my position?
Nen, you say you believe in egalitarianism and anarchy. What is your method for solving disputes?
Do you agree that eliminating (I assume from your explanation it would be done over several generations) what you refer to as agriculturism would inevitably lead to each member of your society being responsible for their own food gathering?
Would you also agree that food gathering would then comprise a major part of everyone’s day?
Without a differentiated labor structure, who then would make clothes, build shelter, care for the sick, etc. This is the primary reason society evolved in the first place.
You say that there is “need for our sociocultural system to evolve to the next (and as of now undefined) type.” Since you are unable to define what type of system would support six billion people with even a minimal standard of existence, your position is untenable.
No, Nen, it actually doesn’t answer the question.
I can understand how you can be against what’s going on today, but you can’t make the blanket claim that this is bad if you don’t have a reasonable alternative.
When my friends and I are trying to find something to do at night, anyone can give a suggestion. The rule is that if you don’t want to do what was suggested, you must be the one to supply an alternate reasonable suggestion. We’re just talking about bars and movies here, not the total revamping of all aspects of mankind. You can’t just say “the system is bad,” if you don’t have a suggestion on how to fix it.
And anarchy is not an alternate reasonable suggestion. Anarchy leads to violence, pure and simple. The only possible way anarchy wouldn’t lead to mass chaos, raping, looting, vandalism, and murders is if we get rid of all evil thoughts within the human mind. Got news for you, agriculture wasn’t what put those evil thoughts in our heads.
I know that you don’t want to get rid of ALL agriculture. But you do want us to become more harmonious with our environment and stop destroying it and the creatures within it. But let’s say we gave up say 50% of our agriculture tomorrow. Where will our food come from? The only reasonable solution is for most of our population to pick up bows and arrows and hunt down animals for their food. You can pretty much kiss Bambi and Thumper good-bye.
The main question is: if you don’t know what the next step is, how can you possibly believe it’s better than what we have now?