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Tue, 10 Jun 1997 21:47:43 -0400 |
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Amazingly, most hunter/gatherers, when afforded the opportunity, eagerly
take advantage of the benefits and entertainments and luxuries and culture
and art forms of modern civilization. Just as amazingly, almost no one who
advocates a primitive hunter/gatherer existence as the happiest and
healthiest for humans ever makes a serious effort to give up technology,
form a tribe, and actually live that way. Even the anthropologists who go
to live among hunter/gatherers for an extended period of time almost always
come back home.
From my perspective the benefit of examining paleolithic nutrition is not
so we can sit around pining for the good old days when we slept in dirt,
thought that a drum and chants were the height of artistic expression, and
that folk tales were the apotheosis of literature. I'll take my bed, my
house, my air conditioner, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and a good book any day of
the week.
To me the benefit of studying pre-agricultural peoples is to learn what
wisdom we can that can be applied to our modern life. In terms of
evolution and physical fitness it makes a good deal of sense to examine
these things because these are direct physical, biochemical things that can
affect our health. It also may make some sense to look at child raising
and other social patterns to see what wisdom we might glean there as well,
but that does not mean we have to take leave of our senses or simply
abandon all that is good and wise and noble in modern life.
As for class struggle and poverty: I saw no one, including me, say or imply
that democracy and freedom equate to eliminating class; all I said was that
viewed from the perspective of the natural state of humanity, much that is
called class struggle in the West is merely people who are quite well off
who are envious of those who are better off. And that it's difficult for
many people to appreciate the tremendous levelling effect that democracy
and freedom and technological civilization has had on that.
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