The Happiness Money Can't Buy

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

As I understand it, HG's tend to be most successful in groups of about 30. - Many less and there is too much work etc. per individual - many more and it becomes too difficult to cater for everyone as resources etc. get stretched.

[FBM]

As I understand it, HG's tend to be most successful in groups of about 30. - Many less and there is too much work etc. per individual - many more and it becomes too difficult to cater for everyone as resources etc. get stretched.

Sounds reasonable. Let's see if we can get 28 other Ratz members to commit to the experiment!

[charlou]

But now that we've learned from our mistake, we don't have to go down the same road again. I say ban collective agriculture, i.e. commercial agriculture, and each family produce for itself. Factories and mass production is out. Make it, hunt/gather it, or barter for it. No commnities larger than a smallish village. (So we know where to find the booze and hookers. ^^^)

Eventually we (humanity) will have no choice when fossil fuels run out ... Won't be pretty during the running out period, though. Much as I dearly love them, that's the main reason I regret having children at all.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Quality of life is a bigger issue, IMO, and civilization is destroying that, as the OP pointed out.

I don't see a lot of quality in never knowing when a bigger, nastier group than yours is going to come over the hill, steal your winter supplies, carry off your women and leave you dead or dying.

To those few hours a day that you spend hunting and gathering, add the many more that you will need to expend making and maintaining shelter, clothing, tools, weapons and anything else that your tiny tribe would need to survive. I think a 40 hour week with weekends, holidays, tea-breaks, would look pretty attractive by comparison.

Sorry but I have a problem with any idealised views of society. You merely replace one set of problems with another.

[FBM]

But now that we've learned from our mistake, we don't have to go down the same road again. I say ban collective agriculture, i.e. commercial agriculture, and each family produce for itself. Factories and mass production is out. Make it, hunt/gather it, or barter for it. No commnities larger than a smallish village. (So we know where to find the booze and hookers. ^^^)

Eventually we (humanity) will have no choice when fossil fuels run out ... Won't be pretty during the running out period, though. Much as I dearly love them, that's the main reason I regret having children at all.

Oh, don't worry too much about that. There are alternative energy sources that will keep it going beyond their lifetimes, but that won't solve the real problem, viz, that this kind of growth can't go on indefinitely on a finite planet with finite space and resources. Every national economy I know of is based on growth, and therefore, guaranteed eventual failure. We need to correct this 'more is better' fallacy. Having more shit does not produce greater quality of life. It's bullshit, and we've been brainwashed into believing it from childhood. Advertisers and filthy-rich CEOs are having a field day with us due to our herd mentality and gullibility. Argumentum ad populum. Just because everybody says it's so doesn't make it so. As the OP shows, the more you have, the more you need. There's a happy median somewhere, and we've left it way behind. Nobody is willing to admit that 'enough is enough'. The obsession for more and more of more and more is closely related to man's desire for heaven and eternal existence, is it not? Humans make up gods/heavens/souls out of a desire for more. An endless supply of more. Our economies are structured on the same basic fallacy-based drive and it's not only futile, it's self-defeating.

[Pappa]

There is a reason the average life-expectancy of HGs is a little lower than you might be used to and why they became increasingly impractical as the population of the Earth grew.

You forget XC that the only remaining hunter gatherers in recent times were already seriously marginalised and pushed onto the less productive areas of the globe. Civilisation stole the decent spots a very long time ago. Recent hunter-gatherers are not necessarily representative of prehistoric hunter-gatherers in all ways.

[FBM]

Quality of life is a bigger issue, IMO, and civilization is destroying that, as the OP pointed out.

I don't see a lot of quality in never knowing when a bigger, nastier group than yours is going to come over the hill, steal your winter supplies, carry off your women and leave you dead or dying.

That's not the current status quo? How many years of the last few centuries has the planet been war-free? The country I'm living in has technically been in a state of war for over 50 years.

To those few hours a day that you spend hunting and gathering, add the many more that you will need to expend making and maintaining shelter, clothing, tools, weapons and anything else that your tiny tribe would need to survive. I think a 40 hour week with weekends, holidays, tea-breaks, would look pretty attractive by comparison.

Clothing and shelter are durable goods. Spending a few hours on them today will provide months and years of service. When I think back even to my own childhood, my grandparents (farmers, hunters/trappers and moonshiners) in backwoods Mississippi had shitloads more leisure time than the average worker today.

Sorry but I have a problem with any idealised views of society. You merely replace one set of problems with another.

That I can't really argue with. No matter what you do, you're trading one set of problems for another. It's largely a matter of preference, really, and I'm championing the cause of the slower, simpler life. Maybe it's old age. But that's still support for the argument that the whole concept of 'progress' is bullshit, isn't it? OK, you have an iPod and hi-speed Internet access and so forth, but you have to submit to virtual enslavement in order to have them. I'm just saying that I don't think that's a fair trade.

[Clinton Huxley]

There's a whole lot of "noble savage" thinking going on here. You can't re-set the clock. There was nothing noble about scrapping with the wildlife for every calorie and dying a brutal death before you were 30. You can have my Ipod when you use your flint-knife to prise it out of my cold, dead hand....

I'm with Arthur C. Clarke on this one - civilization is humanity's attempt to get as far away from nature as possible. And quite right too.

I think if anyone here tried the HG lifestyle they'd last maybe a week before begging to be re-admitted to the 21st century....

[Xamonas Chegwé]

There is a reason the average life-expectancy of HGs is a little lower than you might be used to and why they became increasingly impractical as the population of the Earth grew.

You forget XC that the only remaining hunter gatherers in recent times were already seriously marginalised and pushed onto the less productive areas of the globe. Civilisation stole the decent spots a very long time ago. Recent hunter-gatherers are not necessarily representative of prehistoric hunter-gatherers in all ways.

I didn't forget that at all. Read the second part of my statement above. HG is not viable unless we lose 90%+ of the world's population - simple as that. Agriculture can support far more people (the estimate quoted on wikipedia is 60-100 times more, but not sourced.)

And I see that Clinton (ever the voice of 19th century sense in a topsy-turvy world) has pretty much said what I was going to add to that. It is idealism every bit as delusional as dreaming of a communist utopia or a truly free-market.

[FBM]

There's a whole lot of "noble savage" thinking going on here. You can't re-set the clock. There was nothing noble about scrapping with the wildlife for every calorie and dying a brutal death before you were 30. You can have my Ipod when you use your flint-knife to prise it out of my cold, dead hand....

I'm with Arthur C. Clarke on this one - civilization is humanity's attempt to get as far away from nature as possible. And quite right too.

I think if anyone here tried the HG lifestyle they'd last maybe a week before begging to be re-admitted to the 21st century....

While I appreciate the humour in your post, "good Sir Clinton" , I'm not talking about re-setting the clock. I'm talking about moving forward in a rational, sustainable manner, guided by our collective experience and wisdom. There's no reason why, given what we've learned about nutrition and the like, we should expect the average life expectancy to drop to anything near 30 in the situation I've described.

FWIW, I've lived for months at a time as a solitary HG, and those were some of the best times of my life. Except, y'know, my first sexual encounter (with someone else present) and that sort of thing.

The whole Hobbesian "nasty, brutish and short" bullshit is based on the Christian idealism and fantasy prevalent at the time. (Not to slight Hobbes himself.)

[FBM]

I didn't forget that at all. Read the second part of my statement above. HG is not viable unless we lose 90%+ of the world's population - simple as that. Agriculture can support far more people (the estimate quoted on wikipedia is 60-100 times more, but not sourced.)

And I see that Clinton (ever the voice of 19th century sense in a topsy-turvy world) has pretty much said what I was going to add to that. It is idealism every bit as delusional as dreaming of a communist utopia or a truly free-market.

Subsistence farming was included in my imaginary scheme, as was all the health and sanitation knowledge we've accumulated to date. It's not delusional. H. sapiens not only survived, but thrived for most of its existence on less.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I didn't forget that at all. Read the second part of my statement above. HG is not viable unless we lose 90%+ of the world's population - simple as that. Agriculture can support far more people (the estimate quoted on wikipedia is 60-100 times more, but not sourced.)

And I see that Clinton (ever the voice of 19th century sense in a topsy-turvy world) has pretty much said what I was going to add to that. It is idealism every bit as delusional as dreaming of a communist utopia or a truly free-market.

Subsistence farming was included in my imaginary scheme, as was all the health and sanitation knowledge we've accumulated to date. It's not delusional. H. sapiens not only survived, but thrived for most of its existence on less.

With life-expectancy in the teens and twenties for the most part.

There is no way in the world that subsistence farming and HG can support the number of people on the planet today. How many are you planning to get rid of?

[lordpasternack]

Purportedly, in Medieval times, the peasants paid a tiny, tiny fraction of their wages in rent, and worked about 2-3 days a week. Of course, there were plenty of other potential sources of misery for these peasants living at the time that they were, and they didn't get to experience a lot of what we get to experience today, and whatnot...

... But I think there's a lot to be said of the farce that gets us locked into a system that eats up most of our freedom for most of the year, that's stuck to with the almost sole purpose of having a roof over our heads and a place to sleep at night.

There are a few solutions - mind. Two of which involve getting wealthy. The easy way to do that is to stick a job here until you have a fair amount in the bank, then move to a country where that money is worth several times more. Or batter your way through finding a way to try to make money here.

And speaking of prostitution... high-end prostitutes can make a fair amount for some easy work... Shame about the risk that they're still exposed to...

Besides that - there's always following Mark Twain's advice and finding a job you like and never working a day in your life.

[FBM]

With life-expectancy in the teens and twenties for the most part.

I still think you're working off the model of marginalized HG societies, displaced by modern industrial society. That's not what I'm describing. Again, I'm not talking about turning the clock back. I'm talking about advancing in a sustainable, reasonable way with the knowledge and wisdom we've gained.

There is no way in the world that subsistence farming and HG can support the number of people on the planet today. How many are you planning to get rid of?

The very reason the planet's population is so absurdly large is the success of the proponents of the 'more is better' bullshit. Industrial societies marginalized and slaughtered previously sustainable HG/subsistence agriculture populations in order to acquire their natural resources, in a vain attempt to satisfy their desire for a heavenly existence of comfort and leisure. That's why the aboriginals have such short life-spans, not because the natural life is inherently "nasty, brutish and short".

Population will self-regulate to a point where it is sustainable, once we outlaw bullshit-artists like advertisers and politicians who greedily take advantage of human gullibility and tendency towards basic trust in each other. Shit, we've got how many billions on the planet and how many millions are starving now? The whole assumption that we're making progress is nonsense. With larger human population, we're still just increasing the number of poor and hungry.

Let's imagine that we manage to solve all our energy and food demands. What's going to happen next? In a nutrient-rich environment, organisms will multiply. Populations will increase. There is nothing we can do about the size of the planet, so eventually every square inch will be covered in apartment complexes and Wal-marts. Long before that, global climate change resulting from the environmental destruction required to facilitate such a population will make the planet uninhabitable, anyway. It's a dead end, and we can avoid it by learning from our mistakes and making sensible choices now.

[FBM]

Purportedly, in Medieval times, the peasants paid a tiny, tiny fraction of their wages in rent, and worked about 2-3 days a week. Of course, there were plenty of other potential sources of misery for these peasants living at the time that they were, and they didn't get to experience a lot of what we get to experience today, and whatnot...

... But I think there's a lot to be said of the farce that gets us locked into a system that eats up most of our freedom for most of the year, that's stuck to with the almost sole purpose of having a roof over our heads and a place to sleep at night.

There are a few solutions - mind. Two of which involve getting wealthy. The easy way to do that is to stick a job here until you have a fair amount in the bank, then move to a country where that money is worth several times more. Or batter your way through finding a way to try to make money here.

And speaking of prostitution... high-end prostitutes can make a fair amount for some easy work... Shame about the risk that they're still exposed to...

Besides that - there's always following Mark Twain's advice and finding a job you like and never working a day in your life.

I just don't see the sense of spending 40~50 years of our lives working so that we can squeeze the equivalent of 20~25 years of enjoyment out if it all. I can come up with a better hedonistic calculus than that.