@Asme251 Said 
I just finished reading the novel
Ishmael and I've been thinking about this question: Was the world better off with humans as hunter-gatherers? Also, would humans survive longer if they had stayed as hunter-gatherers?
I think that the answer is yes, to both questions. First of all, there is the obvious environmental damage that humans have imparted upon the world through their industrial expansion.
However, the future of "green" energy and technology promises to stop the environmental damage. However, I believe that the problem is more fundamental than just environmental damage. The problem, as stated in Ishmael, started when humans decided to settle down and become agriculturalists. Now some might wonder, why is that bad? Well, as hunter gatherers, humans had to
live and
adapt to the environment. That's how humans came to evolve. They needed to survive and thus needed to evolve. More importantly, humans also had to limit their growth (like every other animal) in order to survive as hunter gathereres. If there are too many humans, then resources will run out, the population will decrease, food will be available again and the cycle repeats.
This practically happened to every Animal in the world .
When humans settled down after the first Agricultural Revolution (also called the
Neolithic Revolution ) , they decided to step out of their hunter gatherer lives. In doing so, they tried to exempt themselves from the laws that limited the growth of other Animals. When you grow your own food, when you have surplus food available, you no longer depend on the availability of prey or plant life. You can simply harvest the food and live as you wish. More importantly, you can live
without having to limit your growth . Why is this bad? Well think about it. If you grow a lot, what do you need? Food. How do you obtain the food? You settle on new areas, drive out the competiton (Animals who eat your prey) and obtain enough food to feed your population. But now you have more food than your population needs. So what happens? The cycle repeats, and you have what we have today! A poupulation expanding with unchecked growth.
Obviously, this means that we have successfully exempted ourselves from the laws that govern the growth of other Animals right? No. And I think most people everywhere know it. Eventually, we'll suck the resources out of the earth and we will have to reduce our population, drastically. What's different this time is that we won't be able to recover. As hunter gatherers, our prey would repopulate as our population declined. Judging by the way things are going now, we won't have the same prey in the future. We will have killed off all of our competition, reducing the diversity of nature, and we have domesticted and homogenized our prey. So by the time humans start dying off, most other animals will have died out. This is inevitable.
Some might argue that we're trying to keep our population under control through birth control, condoms...etc but of course, that's not taken seriously by anyone. Most people don't want to get pregnant because it will ruin their future, not because it will contribute to population increase. So in the end, we have to question our way of life. Is it the best way to survive in the long term? I mean, sure we have all these comforts but what use are they if we only destry ourselves in the end? Are we better off as hunter gatherers?
Now, of course no one is willing to go back to living as nomads. However, it is the only way to ensure our long term survival. Ishmael had a good theory about why humans are reluctant to live as nomads.As hunter gatherers, Humans were the best adapted species in the world. They had few to none natural predators and, as omnivores, they could eat a wide vareity of food. So why did humans detest living in the mercy of nature? Quinn argues that once humans discovered agriculture, they hated going back to the mercy of nature. He states that humans wanted a guaranteed food source. They did not want to rely on the weather or on the availability of prey. So they decided to take themselves "out" of nature's grip and live as settled communities. Quinn says that humans did not escape nature's grasp. We are still constrained by food resources. We will eventually die off. And it's not going to be a gradual process either. So, ironically, our attempt to escape the grasp of nature will drive us to extinction.
So, I have to ask,
With Gorilla gone Is there any hope for man?
Criticisms and other points of view are welcome!
I don't believe that this is a complicated matter.
My belief is that the human race are definately up for a very hard time in the future. The way that I see it is that the human race are actually divided into two sepperate spieces, givers & takers. The givers are responsible and have few children, and will give back to our fellow humans and to our environment. The takers are no different to a virus. Viruses eat and multiply which is exactly what the takers do. We have wars, Plagues, famines, which all help to keep the population down, although modern vaccines fight against this natural proccess. The west funds the third world, supplying life saving medicines and vaccines, as well as suplementing their food supply. What will happen when the west has a food supply problem, which it will have at some point in the future?. Many people believe that science will solve the problem although I believe that it is making the problem worse. Thats my case.
Jun 24, 2009 @ 04:35:49
