The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
mountain lions?

Mountain lions?! No match for a skilled hunter gatherer armed with a pair of underpants, let alone a fruit-knife!!!

Originally posted by Proper Knob
Mountain lions?! No match for a skilled hunter gatherer armed with a pair of underpants, let alone a fruit-knife!!!

hehe , he should be able to make a sling with his underpants to repel all hostile creatures 🙂

Originally posted by Proper Knob
Mankind may not be able to give up agriculture, but you can. What's to stop you selling everything you own, donating the money to charity and then marching off into the American mountains armed only with a fruit-knife and a spare pair of underpants to live out the rest of your days as a hunter-gatherer?

I just went camping last weekend. I spent three days in a tent with no shower and no electricity. I chased an overly inquisitive raccoon from my campsite. Does that count?

Originally posted by rwingett
So it's a race to see if your vaunted technology liberates you before it destroys you. Well, I say that's a race you'll lose. You'll destroy the biosphere long before you've liberated yourselves from any terrestrial confines. Your 'space colony' is a pipe dream that relieves you from having to deal with the problem of biosphere destruction in a serious mann ...[text shortened]... ain, googlefudge, before it's too late. One way or another it's going to derail.

You are making assumptions about what and how I think, and how other 'technologists' think that are unfounded and plainly not true.

You also make assertions that more advanced technology always lead to more consumption...

This is not true and I say justify that.

You also claim we need to reduce the total number of people (and their consumption) to be sustainable.
With high tech farming, we can just about support the 10 bill expected stabilised world population.
without it, the number is much much lower.
So of the at least 1 in 2 people we can't support do you want to kill?

Levels of consumption are an issue only if they are unsustainable.
I would disagree that a space faring society would by definition consume more than our earthbound
society, but if they did this isn't an issue because the resources they consume are much much vaster and
not from the earth.

In space you get huge amounts of solar power, and you can mine materiel from lifeless barren asteroids
so you have no environmental impact.

Also for reasons for going into space I give you "(29075) 1950 DA"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2829075%29_1950_DA

I wonder how your agrarian farming society deals with that? Or the next one... or the one after that.
Or how about the next time the planet decides to have a super eruption, or basalt flood.


Your arguments are self contradictory, If the Amish can decide what technology to use or not, then so can everyone else.
If no one can chose the neither could the Amish, make your mind up.

I read the Hutterites use mechanised farming technology.... pray tell where and from whom they purchase this technology...

Also I don't believe in trying to save the biosphere 'by going into space', that is the long term final solution as it were.
short term we have to turn our civilisation around to living sustainably.
This can only be done with high technology, or by killing off the vast majority of the world population.
I ask again, which 5+ billion people would you have us kill?

In many ways, you are right.

People in hunter-gatherer societies tend to be more content.
They tend to have more leisure time.
They have a smaller impact on the environment.

The invention of agriculture certainly changed all that.

However...

Hunter-gatherer societies have the same level of control over their environment as any other animal species.

The vast majority of species that have ever lived on this planet are now extinct. Most of those species have not left descendants. They are evolutionary dead ends. As are the vast majority of species alive today.

If we remained hunter-gatherers, we would be just one more of those species, no more notable than any other. If we wipe ourselves out through anthropological global warming, or get wiped out through an asteroid strike, we could still be said to be no more notable than any other animal. The biosphere will recover and in a few million years there would be little evidence that we ever existed, footprints on the moon and the Voyager probes notwithstanding.

The attributes of intelligence, self awareness and problem-solving though have the potential to make us notable. There is the potential that our descendants could become independent of our home planet, solar system and even galaxy. This possibility is largely due to farming.

Basically, farming enables us to be different from all the other species (and was essential for that). Yes we are in trouble, but we were even more doomed (in the long term) before farming. At least now there is the possibility of saving ourselves.

--- Penguin.

Originally posted by Penguin
In many ways, you are right.

People in hunter-gatherer societies tend to be more content.
They tend to have more leisure time.
They have a smaller impact on the environment.

The invention of agriculture certainly changed all that.

However...

Hunter-gatherer societies have the same level of control over their environment as any other animal spec ...[text shortened]... term) before farming. At least now there is the possibility of saving ourselves.

--- Penguin.

I disagree about the quality of life argument, but broadly yes I agree.

If we were simply hunter gatherers and never used our intellect for anything other than thinking up
better ways of hunting mammoth [which hunter gatherers quite possibly made extinct], then we
would have utterly wasted our potential to do so much more.


As for other life on the planet...
We should try to limit our impact as much as possible,
but this planet inflicts, mass extinctions on the life inhabiting it all on its own.
Between volcanic eruptions, climate shifts, and asteroid impacts, the earth regularly wipes out
huge numbers of species, and will at some time do the same to us.

We have the ability to think, and not just dumbly follow the laws of physics.
So we can make choices about how we interact with and influence the biosphere.
And should do our utmost to limit our damage to it and preserve it as much as possible.

But to treat the biosphere like some holy thing that we should never touch, better we all
shoot ourselves in the head rather than harm it belies what looks like a deep seated self hatred.

Like every other life form we want to survive, and to make the environment we live in as nice for ourselves
as possible.

What is wrong with that?

Originally posted by rwingett
http://anthropology.lbcc.edu/handoutsdocs/mistake.pdf

This is a five page article by Jared Diamond, author of books such as [b]Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, which some of you may be familiar with. In it he puts forward the theory that agriculture was the worst mistake in the history of th ...[text shortened]... to hear it from someone a little more conversant with the facts than I. Anyway, I recommend it.[/b]

Interesting points he brought out.

Originally posted by rwingett
A hypocrite? Please! My dear twhitehead, it is no longer possible for mankind to give up agriculture. For better or for worse, we are stuck with the 'fruits' of the worst mistake in the history of the human race. We have been expelled from Eden and can never, ever re-enter it. We can't unlearn what we gained from the tree of knowledge. But we can try to re- ...[text shortened]... e damage that has been wrought before its too late. Therein lies our only hope for salvation.

Our only hope of salvation is accepting Jesus the Christ as our Lord
and Savior.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Our only hope of salvation is accepting Jesus the Christ as our Lord
and Savior.

So when the population reaches 10 billion and we can only support 3 and 7 starve to death, that is when your lord will come down and save the rest of the foolish humans?

Originally posted by sonhouse
So when the population reaches 10 billion and we can only support 3 and 7 starve to death, that is when your lord will come down and save the rest of the foolish humans?

Or maybe they could pray for rain...
I hear Governor Rick Perry is good at that....

Originally posted by googlefudge
Excellent, so we can live as a hunter gatherer society until the big volcanic eruption, plague, climate shift,
or asteroid impact wipes us out.

Meanwhile we live short, hard lives, with no modern medicine, hygiene, dental care, or deodorant.

No opera, theatre, cinema, books, maths, science, astronomy, great music, or collective exteligence of any
kind.

Consider me Utterly unpersuaded.

"or deodorant". lol

Originally posted by karoly aczel
"or deodorant". lol

Ah, the shame of it, not being able to live without deodorant! People have killed for less🙂

Originally posted by sonhouse
So when the population reaches 10 billion and we can only support 3 and 7 starve to death, that is when your lord will come down and save the rest of the foolish humans?

Pray tell, why are the seven billion starving, when there is food for all, food for more?

Originally posted by sonhouse
So when the population reaches 10 billion and we can only support 3 and 7 starve to death, that is when your lord will come down and save the rest of the foolish humans?

I don't see a link between the 2 scenarios. RJHind is speaking of the salvation of the soul.

Your 3 live/7 starve scenario is about overpopulation and food.