Elitist westernized ignorance?
Oh boy here we go again.....
Look ok its hard to say who was happier on the average because well we aren't alive 1000 years ago we are alive now.
Oh by here we go again......? I thought you were more respectful than that. If you are reverting to sarcasm, I will just respectfully withdraw. I mean what are you expecting? If you are tired of this topic, you don't need to post.
First of all, I am not trying to compare happiness, second of all, the example is not 1000 years old. I was just quoting James Woodburn in which his studies in the 1960s with the Hadza and Ju/hoansi tribes has shown a prosperous and happy people.
But there is no doubt that we now have 1. more stable food supplies (at least societies who developed do)
No doubt? You are simply restating the old ethnocentric viewpoint with each post. I give evidence, examples to the contrary. When you have taken university level anthropology, you learn a thing or two about current field studies and as a model; those studies are what we have to go by. Granted there are less sample groups now thanks to industrialized societies integration, genocide, encroachment, it remains the best model we have to go by. Unless you are going to sit there and tell me that what they teach in University Anthropology is all wrong. Liberal hippies. I also compare those early studies and show those lessons that they teach today are drastically different than what was taught back then. Progress? I have given you multiple examples on the ample abundance of food when you are a foraging society, studies done and that are being done today. Also I have shown how dramatically inefficient the united states food industry is. Finally I touched on how much damage the agricultural industry is doing worldwide.
2. we are less likely to die from infectious disease (because of antibiotics and vaccines)
You want to bring happiness into the discussion? How about the number of people living with obesity and diabetes in the United States, the consequence of food processing and the extremely unhealthy amount of sugar that the food industry laces in our food supply. How’s that for quality of life? No worries for them since we have developed television and antidepressants?
The consequences of our actions are that we CREATED more diseases by herding agriculture. If that wasn’t enough, our genetic susceptibilities are perpetuated with constant widespread breeding as we pass on these genetic predispositions to our off spring and further taint our gene pool. Oh sure, create a thousand more diseases, spread them to millions of people, as long as we can get enough insulin, who doesn’t mind taking a shot a day, whoever can afford it. Who knows, maybe one day we will finally cure it as well, oh look, H1n1 just popped up.
3. longer life expectancy
Since people die at different rates depending on age, this is harder to measure. Infant mortality rate was the major problem in foraging society. This is just one example: Foragers had long lives compared to people in the industrial societies of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Richard Lee discovered that 10% of the San were over 60 years of age and the elderly, blind, senile, and crippled were supported by their families. In the United States today, 10-15% of the people are over 60 and life expectancy is in the low to mid 70's. However, living to an advanced age in the Western World is a very recent trend primarily resulting from modern medicine. In 1900, the average life expectancy in the United States was only 50. At the time of the American Revolution, it was 35. By comparison, the San lived relatively long, healthy lives.
4. the development of agriculture and the division of labor is directly responsible for the development of human culture which I hate to break it you but most people actually like (art music games wide variety of food all that SHIT YOU ENJOY!)
Directly responsible? Are you seriously suggesting that culture did not exist pre-agriculture? Or are you implying that pre-agricultural society’s culture was somewhat inferior? Or that it wasn’t human? Right. They are just cavemen. You can debate me on the arbitrary use of the term culture, a word spread by roman conquest, (Custom’s a better way to describe a peoples shared ways and traits, you know, all that art and ritual) and what makes a specific society's culture better than another.
5. we are now less ignorant as a whole (meaning we don't have to depend on religious bullshit explanations for the world around us anymore we have science, at least some of us do).
I knew you had an agenda, but I don’t care to get involved in religious debate with you. It’s just not relevant. Just realise you can’t pigeonhole an entire way of life, THE way of life in which we all have to thank for being here, and hold any grievance to those who respect and acknowledge that it just may be a way of life that works a little better than we would like to admit, simply because the people who practice that way of life's worship of the sun some how insults and demeans your belief system. Ignorance is the word you use to describe those who depend on religious bullshit? Well here’s the hard scientific data disproving your misconceptions on foraging societies.
However my point is that NOW right now not 200 years ago we do have it better for reasons 1-5.
"Jared Diamond suggests that the status of women declined with the adoption of agriculture because women in farming societies typically have more pregnancies and are expected to do more demanding work than women in hunter-gatherer societies."
"The ethnographer Richard Lee discovered that adult San spent only about 2½ days of 6 hours each week hunting and gathering. Young people did not fully join the work force until around 20 years old. The 60% of the society that were healthy adults, provided the food for everyone by working only 15 hours a week. Foragers have rightly been referred to by Richard Lee as the most leisured people. In the United States today, less than 1% of the population produces all of the food for the entire society. Given this remarkable efficiency, it is worth asking why the rest of us work 40-50 hours a week, often with considerable psychological stress."
"advocates of the paleodiet state that while Paleolithic hunter-gatherers did have a short average life expectancy, modern human populations with lifestyles resembling that of our preagricultural ancestors have little or no diseases of affluence, despite sufficient numbers of elderly."
"Ethnographic research carried out over the last half century has largely demolished this myth that foragers in the past had to struggle for existence. In fact, they usually had a food supply that was adequate and reliable. Most of them only had to expend minimal labor to provide for their basic needs. What is particularly surprising to people in industrialized nations is that foragers often lived well into old age with few signs of anxiety and insecurity."
Well, I never argued that we have it worse, or that they have it better. You do that all by yourself. Is it perfect? Of course not. Small-scale opposing tribal conflict, harsh weather conditions, carnivorous cats, cannibalism, all of that. However, given the information taught today, I am trying to correct the misconceptions spread by westernized ethnocentric ignorance, which is the official term used in Anthropology. (with a little added pepper.) So what do they have to live for? Well, foraging societies can celebrate less deaths from famine and disease, less stress related work, more leisure time, a closer connection to the earth and its people, and no damn stock market crash! As I said before, "Sophisticated societies" thanks to agriculture and technology were/are the number one reason for the demise of the foraging way of life, through encroachment, integration, war and genocide. It's all in the TED lecture.
Sure, we have it better in some areas. We have technology. We have our own medicine, our own poetry, television, flamboyant promiscuity, cars, skyscrapers, banks, armies, airplanes, spaceships, conquest. You and I may find a personal sense of self satisfaction by owning a shiny new car, why would a "cave man" even want one?
. You seem to get pretty emotionally and personally involved here, why is that? It's just a discussion, and a very good one by the way. But when you start posting like this you seriously ruin the friendly, informative and mature tone this discussion had. You see that, don't you? "Fucking liberal hippies" used as an invective against others in a discussion is poor debate-technique, c'mon you are better than that. It must be possible to have a mature discussion without having to use personal attacks and getting way outta line. 
