So dose civilization improved the quality of human life?

Great Debates
41

Depends on the definition. Are you saying the civilization is only those societies that have the benefit of modern tech, etc? I’m talking about civilization in the broad definition of a society with fairly complex political and social structures. In other words, feudalist Japan was just as much of a civilization as 21st century America.

Your definition becomes something of a tautology. If the benefits of civilization hasn’t reached someone, they aren’t civilized. Well, under that definition of course civilization is always best for every civilized person. My point is that even within a civilization most people (except for in the last 150 years or so) never got any of the benefits of the civilization, despite being a part of it.

42

Well, I assume that most celts wouldn’t have personnally mined iron ore, but just bought the metal from merchants.

As for the rest, I would easily believe him. There’s a group of people (not quite well-known here) who are in the process of building a medieval castle with only the technology used at the time and while using tools they’re making themselves. They don’t dig for ore, but they forge their tools; and for implements made of wood they go all the way from cutting the trees to making the tools. The project is assumed to last yor a couple dozen years, and they’re now well-known enough to attract a lot of tourists, which allows the funding of the project.

A friend of mine was also familiar (because he was preparing a thesis on a related topic) with another group living in “medieval-like” conditions. Though these ones weren’t making their tools, they would, by choice, live without water faucets or such conveniences. Why they would chose to is beyond me (according to my friend, they’re really weird and dangerous-minded people).

None of this is exactly identical to really living in the medieval era, of course (the first group comes back home and watch TV when they’re finished with their castle-building thing, the second just buy whatever they need in the nearest village, and none grows its own food) but it’s close enough. If they were realy dedicaced, they probably could began to farm too.

43

Isn’t there a big controversy about the Yanomano, or am I mistaking them for another group? (something about an ethnologist whose informations and datas, according to other specialists in the field, had been doctored if not just made up).

44

Clearly the definition of civilization is causing some trouble that needs to be cleared up. So I will try to restate what I meant when I started this thread.

Has agriculture and the subsequent technological and political developments improved the quality of human life?

45

Suppose I told you that you were going to be reincarnated in the year 2000 B.C., and it was your choice–you could be born either as a hunter-gatherer among the North American Indians or as an Egyptian peasant farming the banks of the Nile. Which would you choose?

My first thought, I admit, is to take the Indian life hands-down. You can wander where you please, with no boss, no taxes, and no Pharoah getting in your face and conscripting you to build Pyramids. When you’re hungry, just pick berries instead of doing back-breaking labor to till the soil.

But logically, it couldn’t have been that easy. Hunter-gatherers aren’t immune from the same urge to procreate as farmers. If everything is easy, and you can gather all the food you need in ten hours per week, then you’ll multiply to the point where you can’t gather it in ten hours any more.

Now, I get cranky if my lunch is an hour late. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be hungry and to have all the berries already picked over, and all the game run off, and other bands waiting to chase you off of their territory if you stray too far. Add in whiny children that you can’t feed, and life would get pretty sucky in a hurry. Oh, and if you break a leg, your band has no choice but to leave you behind to die. The alternative is that the entire band would die.

To be sure, farmers faced the same threat of famine. So I imagine that either lifestyle could be equally unpleasant, because both are subject to the same Malthusian pressure.

Except . . . that farming creates a surplus, and allows a few weaselly parasites to pursue lives as artists, writers, sculptors, scientists, inventors . . . and eventually, English professors and insurance actuaries. That’s the difference, and that’s why it has given us a better life.

46

What do you mean by “logically it couldn’t have been that easy.” Whynot gave a cite about the short work week of hunter gathers. Many of these H&G societies had very sophisticated craft skills and even found the time to paint on cave walls as it has been said in this thread this level of artistic development suggests that many of these groups had a fair amount of free time on their hands. And logically free time would suggest that life wasn’t that hard. If you were hungry would paint pictures by torch light on some cave walls?

I’m not going to say I have more free time than a H&G because I have hell of a lot but when I have large consecutive block of free time I find my self going off some place and trying to live less like civilized man and doing what H&Gs did. I.E. I leave my house go off to some place live in a tent and go fishing. The fact that what I do for fun is what these people did for a livelihood raises some interesting questions…well for me at least it dose. But then again there a many many things that are a lot more fun when one is not forced to do them.

And why the fuck is it such a big deal I heard this idea (which leads me to doubt and question) from an English teacher?

47

Because if it were, the hunter-gatherer population would have grown more than it did. A human population in which most people survive to old age, and in which people make no attempt to practice birth control or limit family size, will grow by 2-3% per year. H/g population growth was much less than that–probably less than 0.1% per year over the 100,000+ years of h/g dominance.

So roughly 3 h/g’s per 100 per year, on the average, were dying premature deaths. That by itself doesn’t necessarily mean life was unpleasant for the other 97. But when I think about the likely causes of death–hunger, injury and abandonment, interpersonal violence, or even predation–and when I think about those events happening to 3% of my compatriots every year, it fills me with apprehension about the quality of life.

Personally, I don’t think it is a big deal. I think it’s a perfectly legitimate question. I’ve often wondered about it myself. I just came to a different conclusion than you did.

48

OK, but now we have to define “quality of human life.” Do you mean a larger percentage of the humans live longer? Or that more of them survive infancy? Do you mean they have more personal possessions, or are free to move about at will? Do you mean they live relatively disease free lives until a sudden violent death? Or live a long life plauged with chronic ills, but little violence? Do you mean they live in peaceful harmony with others? Or that they gain fame and fortune through battle prowess? Do they live a life creating beauty? Or creating labor-saving devices?

Do you see why it’s such a hard question to answer? We all have our different idea of what constitutes a quality life. I, personally, think I would like the h-g lifestyle. I’m not interested in living a long life, but I would like a relatively peaceful, slow-paced one with lots of oppprtunity to travel and a quick death at the end. The idea of lingering on in a hospital setting because my body has worn out terrifies me. I’d rather be eaten by a lion or smashed by a rock. But other people would rather have a longer life, and would willingly put up with chronic aches and pains and medical procedures to keep them alive longer.

I don’t think it’s *that *big a deal, but one wouldn’t expect an English teacher to be very well informed on anthropology. Now, if you had said your Anthropology teacher, or even your History teacher, it might be more compelling. Also, an English teacher should be…well…teaching English. I have trouble figuring out why he would even be talking about topics so unrelated to teaching English. My teachers had enough trouble cramming in the required subjects without wasting time on unrelated lectures.

Finally, it’s damn funny that your English teacher who wasn’t teaching English produced a student with such terrible grammar and writing skills. Yes, I’m talking about you. I think your ideas are interesting, but decoding your grammar and spelling errors makes it much harder to read your posts. I make a fair share of errors myself, especially spelling ones, but yours really do get in the way of communicating your ideas. I strongly recommend a spell checker if your natural spelling isn’t good. This message board is rather unique in that you ARE “graded” on spelling and grammar - sloppy writing is percieved as coming from a sloppy mind, and is looked down on. It’s a bit of snobbery, certainly, but this board has a much larger percentage of academically-minded folks than most message boards.

That being said, your teacher got you thinking, which is a good and admirable quality in a teacher. I like to sit around the campfire and talk about these things, too. Just try not to let it get to you too much when there is no real answer. The discussion is the interesting part.

49

Hunter-gatherers don’t procreate unchecked. A woman can’t have another kid until her first one can walk with the band. This was done in a variety of ways–extended breast feeding, prohibitions on sex until the child was old enough, abortion, and infanticide.

The biggest advantage agriculture had over hunting and gathering was that you got a proportional benefit to the amount of work you put in. If you hunt or gather twice as much as you did in the past, pretty soon you’ll have depleted the herds or wild tubers. However, if you plant twice as many fields as you did the year before, more times than not, you’ll have twice as much food come harvest.

This ability to reap increasing gains is what allowed people to have more than 2-3 kids per family. In fact, more children were necessary in order to help work the increasing plots. Since farmers didn’t wander around as much, the prohibition on not having additional children until the first one could walk wasn’t needed.

I’ve also read that although HG’s did wander their territories, they couldn’t wander too far. In order to be a successful HG, you need to be able to read the land–this is where the birds nest, the antelope always stop at that waterhole during their migration, here are where the nut trees are, good tubers can be found over there. Farming requires a lot less knowledge of the countryside. Because of their higher birth rate, and because intensive agriculture depletes the soils, farmers had to move quite a bit.

50

There’s some pretty good evidence the peasants in the 12th and 13th century England didn’t have it as bad as we thought. From excavations it would appear that peasants did not live in one room hovels with parents, grandparents, children, aunts, uncles, and nieces all packed in like sardines. Many of them have multiple rooms and there was probably some expectation of privacy as evidenced by hedges or ditches surrounding the homes as well as locked doors.

Why lock their doors? They had valuables such as pewter items, glazed pots, games such as chess, musical instruments, and even had chests to lock these things up. They had beer to drink, some drank wine imported from France, and pork, lamb, beef, as well as fruits & vegetables were part of their diet. Those who lived far from shore could even include fish as part of their diet. You even had a system in place where those hit by famine could rely on the church for charity.

I’m not volunteering to live like a cottager in the 13th century but then I wouldn’t want to live like the King during that time either. However I’d rather live in that system then the H&G society in Britian.

Marc

51

Here’s a little experiment. Get up from where you’re sitting right now. Go outside. Keep walking until you’re in the middle of nowhere. Now, try and live for 30 days.

When you come back (assuming you make it back) you’ll be happy to lick the soles of civilization’s feet.

You know what the number one cause of adult death was in pre-civilized societies? Murder. Pre-civilized societies basically existed in a constant state of warfare. If you were seperated from your tribe and another tribe caught you, it was pretty standard to kill you. Anyone outside of the tribe, afterall, was competition for scarce resources. Of course, you had to go out on your own to look for food, so the long-term odds were against you.

Of course, murder wasn’t the number one cause of death overall. That was “the baby died” - which was pretty much all that was understood about the hundreds of different ways a child could die before it reached its first birthday.

But death probably didn’t have the sting it does to modern man. Mostly because life sucked so much that death might have seemed like a welcome change. Here’s a day in the life: get up, go out and eat some grass, wonder around looking for a dead animal to eat, eat some bugs and worms, go back and hang out with the same couple of dozen people you’ve been hanging out with your entire life, listen to them tell the same stories again, be mildly relieved that nothing interesting happened that day because pretty much everything that’s interesting in your world will kill you, go to sleep. Repeat until you die.

52

It’s a pretty reasonable guess that I’d die. Of course I don’t come from a culture that taught me how to make my own tools from stone, wood, or bone, didn’t teach me how to find water and edible plants, and certainly never taught me how to catch a rabbit or kill a deer with those tools I can’t make. I’d be just as likely to survive in the wilds of Arkansas as an African Bushman would in the wilds of Alaska. You can have culture without civilization.

I’d need a cite for that. I certainly don’t hold any illusions that our H&G ancestors were noble savages who never knew violence until big bad civilization came into the picture. It may have even been true in some parts of the world but I’m not so sure it was true in all of them.

Some Neaderthals and other Homo Sapiens went through a lot of trouble taking care of people with serious injuries so I’m not so sure about your assertion. They’ve found human remains that had serious disabilities, mostly resulting from trauma, that would have prevented them from being effective at hunting or even gathering food. Off the top of my head I can remember crippled limbs, missing eye, and advanced old age. I think death stung quite a bit and when someone died they mourned. They certainly went through a lot of trouble with burial.

I guess at the end of the day it’s not an easy answer. What might have applied to paleolithic England might not have applied to those living in parts of Africa, China, or Australia during that same time. Likewise we’ve got 5,000+ years of human history and what applies in one place at a specific time might not apply in another. The lot of peasants in England certainly changed quite a lot from 1066 until 1250.

Marc

53

When I said that life would be so boring nobody would fear death, I was attempting sarcasm. Sorry if I missed.

But I was trying to make a serious point. People often forget the value of culture itself. Primitive people might go for months without hearing anything as interesting as a knock-knock joke. Imagine a group of people with no literature, no current affairs, no popular entertainment, no sports, no news, no celebrities, etc - what did they talk about all day? The weather? Considering they all lived outdoors that must have been pretty obvious and got kind of old after the first few hours.

As for the murder cite; unfortunately the best I can offer is that I remember reading it somewhere (maybe it was something Jared Diamond wrote?). The point the author was making was that many “experts” had talked about how peaceful pre-civilized societies were. But then somebody went out and did some actual counting of how people died over the course of several years and realized there was this horrendous murder rate that was far higher than anything in civilized society.

54

So you admit that the previous 5000 years of civilization were a wash?

Y’know, you could look at it another way: Parents with fewer children value each one more, & are more hurt when one accidentally dies, or goes bad.

Again, the previous 5000 years of civilization were entirely about enslaving all available populace to the “big apes,” & producing greater pools of labor to that purpose. Indians won’t work? Bring in Africans who will! etc.

If you think present law & civilization are freeing you, read up on libertarian socialism. Present regimes are based on a theory of property that keeps the “haves” having & the “have-nots” slaving.

Ah, but you’re thinking of hunting-gathering in terms of the present human population & depleted resource base.

(While I have serious reservations about the philosophy of Daniel Quinn, I should credit that this post owes much to the Ishmael books.)

55

Alessan, Alessan, Alessan. Don’t worry. You’re one of the 99.9% who must die.

heh.

56

I think it went like this:
“Grodd commands you! Work for Grodd!”

Civilization exists so an upper class can exist.
“The future is a boot crushing a human face, forever.” Eric Blair.

57

Ah, but this demonstrates that H/G culture is*** sustainable*** in a way that agricultural economies aren’t!

58

Wow, Little Nemo, you seem to know an awful lot about “pre-civilized” society. I love the statistics you dug up (from before statistics were invented) about death rates. And the way you describe daily life, you must have been there! You must be really old!

Do you know Vandal Savage?

59

Or make up jokes, like people do today.

Such a society as you describe would not be mankind as we know it:
No literature? Try oral tradition & representational art.
No current affairs? Um, everybody’s got current affairs, even if it’s the lion in the woods.
No popular entertainment? Yeah, they probably made their own entertainment, like most people in history, instead of being “entertained” while sitting on your couch.
Ditto for sports.
No news? See current affairs.
No celebrities–who cares? They had history, they had legends, they had the current important members of their social group–all of which celebrities are a useless variation on.

60

There are plusses and minusses everywhere. But given the choice, I would live in the present.

Fine, then we can roll a dice every time a baby is born and if it’s not a 1, then we kill the baby. I’m sure we could come up with a faster and cheaper method to dispose of the babies who would otherwise be stealing their parent’s love than a natural death would.

And this was different in hunter gatherer days?

If you want to convince me of something, you’re going to have to make your points here.

This was different in hunter-gatherer days? If anything, it was probably more extreme.

Not really. Outside of Hawaii and some other such islands which had bountiful food where you could live your life simply by reaching out a hand and grabbing a coconut, for most hunter-gatherers everywhere food gathering was most probably a day-long task and there were probably many hungry days. And in times of bad weather, famine would have been prevalent.

I don’t know who he is. You seem to be saying “Communism is good, hence hunter gatherer societies are #1!” But you’re going to have to do a lot better to prove either of those before I’ll think much of the statement, and then you’re still going to have to tell me what the heck hunter gatherers have to do with an idealised libertarian communist lifestyle.