Is modern civilization a mistake?

Great Debates
242

The author of the HG website also cites a Morris Berman who apparently has some scholarly works of the HG psychology (and comes from notable schools). Although they reference some kind of primal unity with the mother that is torn from us upon birth and that our connection to nature being lost means we get dependency needs.

But I saw a film the other day about different babies growing up in different cultures. It seemed to me that the ones where the child was always near the family (I think it was a village in africa) the child didn’t seem “right”, it was just there, like some kind of object. A different case with some Nomads in Mongolia the child was left alone alot. They learned to cry a bit less and how to do things on their own a lot. For some odd reason they seem happier. It’s weird in a sense looking at the african one (which I assume was close to HG) and thinking how people find it superior.

243

Woo =/= evidence.

Anecdote =/= data.

Also, why would you assume the Africans were (close to) HG, but not the Asians? Based on what do you make that determination?

244

Why the fuck would you assume that?

245

It seemed to fit the description

246

Care to elaborate?

247

Care to cite the film name? If it’sBébé(s), well, it’s slightly problematic. And the Himba are very much not hunter-gatherers.

248

Just in case you don’t understand what the upset here is, Machinaforce - your quote comes across as implying that there’s a greater likelihood of some random tribal group being a H_G one just because the group is African. In fact, the likelihood is probably just as greatif someone was Asian, but that’s not the Asian stereotype, now is it? But for Africa, and Africans who’ve been agriculturalists for millennia, it very much still is.

249

So again, asking for you to bring some actual evidence and reasoned arguments to the discussion, specific support for specific claims.

That means more than stating that some pop site cited someone who has some academic credentials.

Take the next step and try to get closer to the primary source and see what the actual argument that alleged academic was and on what basis. Critically evaluate it.

Morris Berman’s thoughts on HG child rearing are easily googled. The premise is straightforward enough: societies tend to raise kids in ways that produce adults that function well within societies. His thesis is that HG societies (low accumulation) will raise kids function within that more “horizontal” social structure, more assertive and adventuresome, risk-takers, less prone to peer pressure, and that societies that have higher accumulation (since farming) will raise adults who fit in better with more “vertical” social structures, emphasizing responsibility, self-control, and following rules and knowledge over imagination. Another way to parse his points are to claim that HG are more immediate gratification and cultivator/herders are about delayed return and thus learning delayed gratification. He of course places that into his broader thesis that HG societies had a more immediate spirituality and that sedentism brought with it vertical political and religious structures … the different groups produce, through early child-rearing on, individuals with different cognitive and personality traits that function within their different contexts. Mostly he is envious of what he sees as a HG spiritual immediacy.

Now take your critical read to that.

Do HG groups function without peer pressure? No, peer pressure is significant. Peer pressure is how the HG cultural norms are learned and enforced. The braggart is mocked, the person who hits a child is ostracized.

Does he bring any actual evidence of a spiritual experience of immediacy within HG societies? Not that I saw anyway (maybe you can read his whole book and report back). It seems more of a claim without support. And certainly people can and do function well in modern society without participating in vertically oriented organized religions, some finding something akin to that immediacy Berman is envious of with something as simple as a relaxing long run or a few minutes of meditation in a quiet space.

Is it true that learning responsibility and how to delay gratification is a priority in more modern child-rearing? Yes. And the famous marshmallow test was all about how early development of the ability to delay gratification was associated with later positive life outcomes (within the context of our modern world anyway).

Can you engage at these levels of discussion? Can you raise your game beyond the most superficial “but someone says” and “this one video” seems to be an anecdote for?

I’m hoping you can but so far my gratification has been delayed.

250

Modern civilization is the only force on earth that can stop the predation of horse barbarians.

The Huns and Mongols were not civilized, and wreaked bloody havoc on everyone in their path. Medieval civilizations could not stop them, and renaissance Europe only stopped the Turks by a narrow scrape.

Without civilization, not only are you always at the mercy of nature, you’re also always at the (non-existent) mercy of the barbarians from the plains. Once they learn to ride (and milk) horses, that’s the end of freedom for anyone within a thousand miles.

You know Orwell’s thought, “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.” Alas, the same is true for a world without civilization. The Enlightenment – in some form or other – is the only possibility for a world without that kind of boot.

251

Late to the party with this one,

A large amount of resources concentrated within a small area leads to intense competition, and leading to how modern western societies are structured - an intense amount of resources pumped into small geographical spaces. Any grand idea entered into at any stratigraphical layer within this hierarchy will become warped beyond recognition when spat out at the top (if indeed it makes it to the top). This happens to tech as well, what starts as a nice idea on giving people the ability to search the Internet (application) becomes ad-clicking after traversing the machinations of a ultra-competitive hierarchical resource driven population (IMO). Anthropogenic climate change becomes an Emission Trading Scheme, Globalisation becomes the abuse of foreign workers. Ironically (as with any good positive feedback loop) it is only through the industrial and technological shift that allows the intense concentration of resources and people. So, yeah.

252

You are right about that, my mistake.

253

Based on that he makes it sound like hunter gatherers were the better versions of humanity. Those are the qualities you hear being championed nowadays. But those are only viable in small groups of people. The greater the population the more of a need there is for rules and regulations. Having people do whatever is disastrous for everyone else.

That being said, the way they are described makes it sound like they were better off as individuals than we are.

I’m still not sure about that whole primal unity between mother and child, and how the fracture of that results in dependency needs as we look to fill that hole. He seems to draw heavily from Freud psychology.

254

Now you are engaging in some critical thinking!

Yes, first there is the bit that what he claims is mostly his speculations stated as if they were factual, and parsed in a way to make those characteristics seem “better.” But even if one accepts his speculations as facts and somehow idealizes having little ability to delay gratification (thinks of such as “better”) and diminishes the value of accumulated knowledge, your objection is very valid. Perhaps those are desirable for a small band of HGs (and in fact I doubt so) but they are clearly not desirable for individuals within a larger group working together

255

I’m just saying that based on his phrasing he makes it seem like they are better, but I don’t know for sure.

As for spirituality it seems like it was made up based on the cultural norms. In a horizontal time it’s “immediate” in a vertical it gives rise to gods and spirits and the like. But it does not make it any more real now than it does back then.

Then again the argument can be made that because of modernity we have competition with each other which causes suffering plus the pursuit of material goods and currency for status. But on the other hand equality and egalitarianism only works in small groups like HG. Once your group gets large enough you can’t have so many people running around doing what they want. But it makes me wonder that if that’s the case then maybe the expansion of the human population isn’t for our own good if it results in such inequality. Sure we have many modern creations that trivialize some problems of the past, but I can’t help but wonder if the trade off is worth it. I would like to think so, but I don’t know for certain.

256

Personally I’d phrase that with a bit more qualifications but with those qualifications I find some to agree with.

Modernity has minimally increased the level of competition and of inequity/status seeking overall. Different modern societies can have different values placed on preventing relatively more extreme levels of inequity and have had some success in doing so. The Nordic countries (Norway, Denmark, Iceland) rate highest on various “happiness indices”; policies to limit inequity may have something to do with it.

Note: Norway still has wealth inequalities even with those policy commitments. And there is not a direct correlation between less economic and social inequality and happiness. It is a contributing factor only.

As for the requirement of vertically organized god-based religion as part and parcel of civilization: more Norwegians do not believein God than do. Civilization does not require belief or vertically organized spirituality.

To keep the point simple: to the degree that it is true (whatever degree that is) that individuals within HG societies relative to those in more modern ones felt more secure, less fearful of losing what they had, less worried about the future, more sure that they had others to rely on and more willing to give, it is a problem that civilization can solve as much as it can contribute to it.

My position is that civilizations’ emergence was inevitable. What happens as the result of its existence is up to us collectively. It has not been and is not all positives and includes creating the circumstances that are causing one of the planet’s great extinction events and the circumstances that have created significant social and economic inequities. But it also gives us the opportunity to use its tools to solve those issues.

Individual happiness seems to be more tied to a lack of insecurity and to social connectivity. Of course insecurity about the basics of survival (food, shelter, health, safety) are most impactful, but more stuff does not completely protect from a sense of insecurity. Instead people can end up feeling insecure about keeping their stuff and their status positions. They can end up with stuff but without the social networks of people they trust to have their backs. The existence of those issues is not the fault of civilization per se and the answer to those circumstances can be found within civilization.

257

So there isn’t any “natural” methods of raising humans like that lady mentioned?

258

What do you think? And why?

259

Well, a *hoof *stamping…:slight_smile:

260

I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you. It seems like she makes a generalization about what humans should do based on her interactions with one tribe. I don’t even think she has a degree in anything, but they reference "instinct’ and “natural” a lot, which is fishy.

261

Of course there is. If you are an American you would raise your kids ‘natural’(ly) to integrate into the culture. If you are French, same thing. If you are Chinese, same thing. Etc etc. If you live as a HG then that would be the ‘natural’ way to raise your kids, as raising them to be an American and live in New York wouldn’t work very well…or vice versa.