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Naturalism vs Post-naturalism
Topic Started: Apr 11 2016, 11:13 AM (4,214 Views)
HangingThief
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I'm just pissed off that there's so many people, so little space and because things turned out the way they are there's no longer any chance of living differently. And i'll bet that if you went back in time and brought back an ancient hunter- gatherer, educated them, and forced them to live in our 'awesomely civilized' society they'd go insane in a week. They'd never understand how anyone could live that way.
The reason i don't go and live in the woods is because its just not an option. It would almost certainly be illegal one way or another, and i'm just not built for surviving in the wild. I wouldn't last a week. Just like all modern humans i've become accustomed to civilized life, mentally and genetically. For a modern human, running off and trying to live like the stone age is pretending to be something you're not.
Edited by HangingThief, Apr 15 2016, 04:18 PM.
Hey.


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LittleLazyLass
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And i'll bet that if you went back in time and brought back an ancient hunter- gatherer, educated them, and forced them to live in our 'awesomely civilized' society they'd go insane in a week. They'd never understand how anyone could live that way.
But the same applies the other way. Drop someone from the modern day in their society, we'd probably go a little more than insane; we'd probably die.
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lamna
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If it's not something you personally want, why are you moaning about it? It would be pretty good to be able to climb in the trees, see in the dark and survive on insects, but you don't see me moaning about primates becoming diurnal.

Also I'm pretty sure it's possible to do legally if you really want to. Find a state with large areas of wilderness and lifetime hunting licences. Buy one, a trailer or mobile home, and your ready to ease yourself back into the wonderful life free of stress or trouble.

One final point...being a hunter gatherer is just one way humans make a living. While the narrative is often presented as hunter gatherers becoming farmers, farmers sometimes become hunter gathers. For example, the plains people of America. They seemed able to adapt to living off the land pretty well despite being "ruined" by farming until they got their hands on horses.
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Flisch
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HangingThief
Apr 14 2016, 08:49 PM
Kamineigh
Apr 14 2016, 08:28 PM
Look, if you truly believe that system is better, sell all of your belongings, including your clothes, and move to Ethiopia. We'll see which one of us dies in the middle of nowhere from starvation/exposure/thirst/dysentery.
Don't you get it? That's not an option anymore. Farming literally ruined the chances of anyone living happily and independently.

Also, cave men definitely did not die of exposure and dysentery. Unlike us pale, sickly farmers that have bred for ages and ages with little to no natural selection, they were tough. They could survive and thrive like wild animals, which they were. We basically domesticated ourselves into the disgraceful, shriveled shells of humanity we are today.

So this is a funny argument, because you see, the hunter gatherers that survived, survived because there were healthy. Everyone who had genetic defects or other things simply perished. We are not in total more sickly than we used to be. We are more sickly on average but only if you count only living people into the average. If you'd count every member of a hunter gatherer society that died before reaching maturity the average would be the same between both groups.

So essentially, what you are proposing by going back to hunter-gatherer societies, is that we just leave all the "unfit" people to die. Because that will be the consequence of going back. We will NOT become healthier, we will just get rid of all the unhealthy people, thus raising the average again.

You could just as well cut out the middle man and propose that we should euthanize all people with inferior genes. That's actually easier and allows us to keep fun things like the internet and ice cream.

Scrublord
Apr 15 2016, 11:03 AM
You want an answer? Try this one on for size.
Earlier, I compared the Earth in its present state to a garden--an artificial ecosystem, in other words--and humanity in its ability to transform the world around itself to a gardener. But a gardener does not merely stand by idly while his plants are afflicted by blight, or consumed by insects. He weeds, he sprays pesticides, he plants new plants to replace those that die. As the most intelligent species on the planet, capable of shaping its ecosystems to suit our fancy, we feel the need to preserve those species that seem interesting or special to us--not because it is our moral right, but because, just as a gardener would rather have flowers than weeds, we would rather have honeycreepers than mosquitoes.

See, this is an honest answer, rather than the "we have to because we are morally obliged" stuff. (To be honest, this is also the answer that I waited for all the time, but you kept tip-toeing my questions.)
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HangingThief
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lamna
Apr 15 2016, 04:42 PM
If it's not something you personally want, why are you moaning about it? It would be pretty good to be able to climb in the trees, see in the dark and survive on insects, but you don't see me moaning about primates becoming diurnal.
When it comes to humans, the general consensus is that quality of life matters. It's highly subjective, but i believe that our quality of life isn't necessarily better than that of ancient hunter gatherers. Their world and ours both have pros and cons, and i think that ours has more cons even if we have become accustomed to them, just like they were accustomed to theirs.
There is a difference between not wanting something and not really being able to have something.

Shouldn't the fact that farmers sometimes became hunter gatherers go to show that one lifestyle is not inherently superior to another?
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Kamidio
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Well duh, ours has more cons! ComiCon, OtaCon, YoumaCon, Bronycon, MomoCon, et cetera.
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HangingThief
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Apr 15 2016, 04:52 PM


So essentially, what you are proposing by going back to hunter-gatherer societies, is that we just leave all the "unfit" people to die. Because that will be the consequence of going back. We will NOT become healthier, we will just get rid of all the unhealthy people, thus raising the average again.

You could just as well cut out the middle man and propose that we should euthanize all people with inferior genes. That's actually easier and allows us to keep fun things like the internet and ice cream.
You're forgetting that the unhealthy people have to breed to pass on their genes. Far more people are born unhealthy today. Also, I don't mean sick or deformed people. I mean people who have just bred and bred and bred with no quality control. AKA pretty much everyone alive today. We're not unhealthy, we're just fragile. We all have the inferior genes.

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LittleLazyLass
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So? Having such a negative outlook on life isn't making it any better. It's not changing anything. So why not just appreciate it?
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Dragon
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And what exactly do you mean by "inferior" genes? That's incredibly vague, and the superiority/inferiority of genes is very situational. Take sickle cell anemia. If you're homozygous for the gene that causes it, you suffer from elongated red blood cells that can't carry oxygen as efficiently as regular blood cells. However, if you're heterozygous for it, you become quite resistant to malaria. Saying all 7 billion people have inferior genes because of how shitty modern society is is completely ridiculous.

Also, why do you have wake up sheeple under your avatar?
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Paleo_Specs
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Kamineigh
Apr 15 2016, 05:18 PM
Well duh, ours has more cons! ComiCon, OtaCon, YoumaCon, Bronycon, MomoCon, et cetera.
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a species of canid that's always male because the females are in Hell, that commits blood rituals on unborn souls, and assimilates others into its flesh belongs in a competition meant to foster a sensible and mature discussion of evolution.
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Holben
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HangingThief, I think you have some good ideas (a lot of researchers are currently overturning our old pop culture ideas about hunter-gatherer life, from the original affluent society onwards [and I know that has its issues but it is a useful work and we shouldn't counterjerk the other way]), but I think you need to consider more deeply how you got to them. Right now your explanations are not very persuasive, and sometimes you are being roped into really bad arguments, like this nonsense about inferior genes. You also chose a very bad forum to fight this battle on :P
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

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Kamidio
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Dragon
Apr 15 2016, 05:48 PM
And what exactly do you mean by "inferior" genes?
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HangingThief
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Dragon
Apr 15 2016, 05:48 PM
And what exactly do you mean by "inferior" genes? That's incredibly vague, and the superiority/inferiority of genes is very situational. Take sickle cell anemia. If you're homozygous for the gene that causes it, you suffer from elongated red blood cells that can't carry oxygen as efficiently as regular blood cells. However, if you're heterozygous for it, you become quite resistant to malaria. Saying all 7 billion people have inferior genes because of how shitty modern society is is completely ridiculous.

Also, why do you have wake up sheeple under your avatar?
I mean less able to survive in the wild. Generation after generation of no natural selection has dulled our resistance to disease, injury etc. It may not matter anymore, but it's not as though lacking the ability to survive without modern medicine and technology is advantageous in any situation I know of.

The "wake up sheeple" is a joke.
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HangingThief
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Holben
Apr 15 2016, 05:53 PM
HangingThief, I think you have some good ideas (a lot of researchers are currently overturning our old pop culture ideas about hunter-gatherer life, from the original affluent society onwards [and I know that has its issues but it is a useful work and we shouldn't counterjerk the other way]), but I think you need to consider more deeply how you got to them. Right now your explanations are not very persuasive, and sometimes you are being roped into really bad arguments, like this nonsense about inferior genes. You also chose a very bad forum to fight this battle on :P
I wasn't the one who used the term "inferior genes" first. Any time someone hears something like that, they think hitler but its just a fact that if there's no selection, things break down. Use it or lose it. Don't you guys know the trope of the alien/ future human with the giant brain and tiny, weak body?
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Niedfaru
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There's no such thing as no selection. That's literally impossible. Even if you could eradicate all the external influences on a species (which you can't, all you can do is replace them with new ones), you still have sexual selection. You might not like where that leads the species, but that's as much an aesthetic judgement as anything else.
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