Postmodernity and christianity

[zhao]

Zhao, if agriculture is such a maladaptive cultural meme, why do nearly all cultures on Earth practise it today?

many have answers to that question. here is Jarred Diamond's, from the article above:

As population densities of hunter-gatherers slowly rose at the end of the ice ages, bands had to choose between feeding more mouths by taking the first steps toward agriculture, or else finding ways to limit growth. Some bands chose the former solution, unable to anticipate the evils of farming, and seduced by the transient abundance they enjoyed until population growth caught up with increased food production. Such bands outbred and then drove off or killed the bands that chose to remain hunter-gatherers, because a hundred malnourished farmers can still outfight one healthy hunter. It’s not that hunter-gatherers abandoned their life style, but that those sensible enough not to abandon it were forced out of all areas except the ones farmers didn’t want.

and:

The evidence suggests that the Indians at Dickson Mounds, like many other primitive peoples, took up farming not by choice but from necessity in order to feed their constantly growing numbers. “I don’t think most hunter-gatherers farmed until they had to, and when they switched to farming they traded quality for quantity,” says Mark Cohen of the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, co-editor with Armelagos, of one of the seminal books in the field, Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture. “When I first started making that argument ten years ago, not many people agreed with me. Now it’s become a respectable, albeit controversial, side of the debate.”

 

[zhao]

just goes to show that some of the antagonistic individuals who have engaged with this topic, and argued against me, for a long time, have never bothered, and even today refuse to read the scientific material that i bring.

"this Eden shit is all hippie new age non-sense", they seem to have decided from the get go, and will go to any length to avoid considering the possibility that the progressive view of history, which they are obviously emotionally invested in, might be entirely false.

 

[swears]

unable to even remember life before slavery, save for a very few true practitioners within maggot infested religious traditions who still carry with them, through the ravages of history, a shadow of that bond; and a very few transcendent moments in our "art", which are all but pathetic attempts to capture a sliver of that ecstatic original grace which filled us and surrounded us.

OK, so even if we accept that hunter-gatherers had more food and generally easier lives than their agriculture-practicing descendants, how does that equate to "ecstatic original grace which filled us and surrounded us"? Did the berries they ate contain MDMA or something?

 

[zhao]

OK, so even if we accept that hunter-gatherers had more food and generally easier lives than their agriculture-practicing descendants, how does that equate to "ecstatic original grace which filled us and surrounded us"? Did the berries they ate contain MDMA or something?

there are a lot of studies about the lifestyle of currently (2009) surviving gatherer-hunter groups, about the "original affluence" which they still exhibit today, and their decentralized spirituality. there are also a lot of literature which theorizes pre-ritual, pre-heirarchy spiritual practices.

from the data we have, it doesn't take much extrapolation to imagine a pre-centralized spirituality - before "God" went from inside us and all around us to outside and above us, before equal access to "God" became concentrated in a few individuals who had (or claimed to have) more access to the spirit realm than others, before the concept of "God" itself.

consider the role music plays in our lives compared to those in traditional cultures. very, very different:

the minute music and dance were separated out of everyday life and forced into the split between work and leisure, and forced into the weekend, then something changed.

in traditional cultures music is an inextricable part of the fabric of everyday life, you live it, you breath it; it is not spectacle, it is not commodity, it is not entertainment.

in many similar ways this is what happened to spirituality with the advent of first shamens, and then the church -- spirituality became further and further divorced from the experience of everyday life, taken away from "the masses" to concentrate in the elite, and increasingly used as a means of domination and control.

but of course it is difficult or impossible for us to imagine the FEELING of un-alienated and decentralized spirituality...

 

[swears]

from the data we have, it doesn't take much extrapolation to imagine a pre-centralized spirituality

Data from 10000 years ago? Hmmm...

 

[zhao]

Data from 10000 years ago? Hmmm...

no. data from currently (2009, today) functioning, gatherer-hunter groups who miraculously preserved more or less the same pre-hierarchical lifestyle as 10 or 20,000 years ago.

and data from historical accounts and and spiritual teachings of all cultures - from the Australian aboriginals to the Aztecs, from ancient China to Rastafarianism - without exception ALL traditions of the world describe an "original grace" from which we have fallen.

 

[swears]

Religious traditions rely on prelapsarian themes because it's a neat way of selling themselves. People are suckers for ideas of purity and essentialism. Maybe it's a back to the womb thing.

 

[swears]

no. data from currently (2009, today) functioning, gatherer-hunter groups who miraculously preserved more or less the same pre-hierarchical lifestyle as 10 or 20,000 years ago.

Besides, how do we define these people's experience as "ecstatic grace"? It's too wooly.

 

[3 Body No Problem]

and data from historical accounts and and spiritual teachings of all cultures - from the Australian aboriginals to the Aztecs, from ancient China to Rastafarianism - without exception ALL traditions of the world describe an "original grace" from which we have fallen.

They are idealising their childhoods!

 

[scottdisco]

well, nevermind that the version of the story i endorse fits the accounts of every ancient culture on earth, but let us see what science tells us, from Jarred Diamond, Professor of Geography and Physiology at UCLA:

complete article here

this is only one paper from one scientist... there are lots of other studies which have reached the same conclusions.

Zhao could you post some more of these sorts of studies please? i am asking you as i wouldn't know where to begin looking but you seem to have your finger on the pulse of this sort of thing.
thanks.

 

[nomadthethird]

I actually agree with Zhao that it might be prudent if impracticable for humans to return to a sustainable pre-agrarian lifestyle, but I don't understand what hunter-gatherer lifestyles have to do with a spiritual utopia, necessarily.

 

[nomadthethird]

To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image... Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.

But who thinks history has anything to do with "progress"? Certainly no present-day scientist does. Scientists don't really deal in "history" as such, more in "evolution", which is about change over time, but not necessarily progress.

The notion that human history was a tale of progress was more of a German Idealist ur-modernist belief. There were politically fabricated psuedosciences that touted "proof" for this, and some of the earliest evolutionary theorists seemed to support this notion, but mostly because they were appeasing the Christians who would have burned them at the stake for being heretics if they didn't cloak their theories in the language of God's perfect "plan" for nature.

 

[nomadthethird]

Zhao, if agriculture is such a maladaptive cultural meme, why do nearly all cultures on Earth practise it today? Consider a hypothetical group of people, Tribe A, that have started farming in the neolithic Middle East. Imagine yourself a member of a neighbouring group, Tribe B, which still subsists on herding domesticated animals, hunting game and foraging for fruit, seeds, tubers, birds' eggs and so on. Would you look at Tribe A, with their oppressive centralised authority, hierarchical religion, ingrained sexism and days filled with back-breaking labour instead of endless leisure time, and think to yourself "Sounds great, sign me up!"?

Or is the argument that Tribe A would have invaded Tribe B's territory and either killed them off or enslaved them and gradually assimilated them? But it seems to me that the fit, strong, well-fed B-ites would have delivered a righteous arse-kicking to the malnourished, diseased, demoralised A-ites - wouldn't they?

This is a good point, but it's a point about how one tribe turning agricultural would have necessitated widescale transition... I've heard it explained that agriculture developed alongside certain 'maladaptive' (my choice of word) traits in humans like bigger frontal lobes and enhanced cognitive capacity for certain types of abstract thinking. So middle eastern tribes came up with the idea of how to irrigate and such accidentally, but it happened to be at a good time because the river basins had just flooded and ruined our hunting grounds. Just one of those things: a couple of things happened in one place at one time and caused a chain reaction.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Not just one place, but several. Even if you count the Levant, the Nile valley and Mesopotamia as one 'region', there are several other spots in the world where agriculture arose spontaneously: the Indus valley, China and at least one place, possibly several places, in the Americas. Indigenous people even practise agri/horticulture in Papua New Guinea, independently (AFAIK) of its having been introduced by any outside group.

Zhao has mentioned several times that the problem of a lack of food - which is really the most basic problem any animal can face, other than predation and disease - has two possible solutions: either find (or make) more food, or limit the size of the population. Agriculture allowed a big increase in available food supplies, at the expense (or so the theory goes) of the many freedoms enjoyed by pre-agricultural societies. Among groups that didn't go down this route, the options are fairly stark: infanticide, dangerous natural abortificants or voluntary celibacy (the latter being particularly tricky, given the well-known tendency of humans to enjoy fucking).

But the thing is, technology has - in the very recent past - enabled people to control their own fertility without having to strangle newborns, risk their own lives or avoid sex altogether. Hence the population of the developed world is more or less stable, even declining in some countries. Almost all of the global population increase is occurring in developing countries, where increases in infant survival rates and overall life expectancy are coupled with traditional large families. Of course you can't blame any one couple for having lots of kids because in countries with no welfare state this is necessary to ensure there's someone around to look after you when you're too old to work. But there is now a humane and workable solution to the food/population dilemma. The problem remains how to implement it in parts of the world that are still plagued by severe poverty, oppressive governments, war and a rapidly changing climate.

 

[nomadthethird]

Not just one place, but several. Even if you count the Levant, the Nile valley and Mesopotamia as one 'region', there are several other spots in the world where agriculture arose spontaneously: the Indus valley, China and at least one place, possibly several places, in the Americas. Indigenous people even practise agri/horticulture in Papua New Guinea, independently (AFAIK) of its having been introduced by any outside group.

Cool...I wonder why...

Zhao has mentioned several times that the problem of a lack of food - which is really the most basic problem any animal can face, other than predation and disease - has two possible solutions: either find (or make) more food, or limit the size of the population. Agriculture allowed a big increase in available food supplies, at the expense (or so the theory goes) of the many freedoms enjoyed by pre-agricultural societies. Among groups that didn't go down this route, the options are fairly stark: infanticide, dangerous natural abortificants or voluntary celibacy (the latter being particularly tricky, given the well-known tendency of humans to enjoy fucking).

But the thing is, technology has - in the very recent past - enabled people to control their own fertility without having to strangle newborns, risk their own lives or avoid sex altogether. Hence the population of the developed world is more or less stable, even declining in some countries. Almost all of the global population increase is occurring in developing countries, where increases in infant survival rates and overall life expectancy are coupled with traditional large families. Of course you can't blame any one couple for having lots of kids because in countries with no welfare state this is necessary to ensure there's someone around to look after you when you're too old to work. But there is now a humane and workable solution to the food/population dilemma. The problem remains how to implement it in parts of the world that are still plagued by severe poverty, oppressive governments, war and a rapidly changing climate.

Good points.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Indigenous people even practise agri/horticulture in Papua New Guinea, independently (AFAIK) of its having been introduced by any outside group.

point of process - it's a kind of selective, slash & burn that is more akin to hunting/gathering than traditional agriculture. or a mix of the two - I think the main point is that the way they live, or lived, was much closer to h/g. the larger point & other examples still hold.

But there is now a humane and workable solution to the food/population dilemma. The problem remains how to implement it in parts of the world that are still plagued by severe poverty, oppressive governments, war and a rapidly changing climate.

easier said than done, for one, tho that goes w/o saying I guess.

there's 2 larger issues tho, one clearer than the other. first - those same technologies are built on a way of life that is, if not certainly, then very likely unsustainable. I don't just mean those birth control technologies themselves, but the entire infrastructure - transport, production, fuel, etc etc - they are a part of. so that adaptation, from agriculture onward, is only a "good" one if it works out in the long run. which is very much up in the air obv.

the less clearer one is standard of living. I think it's pretty well established that h/g generally don't live an awful, "red in tooth & claw" life as might be imagined by modern people, tho I'm also wary of the tendency to over-romanticize them, which some strands of thinking (i.e., big chunks of primitivism) tend to do pretty badly. still, it seems they did considerably less work & had correspondingly more leisure time. obv the amt of work one does isn't the only measure of standard of living, which is why this point isn't clear, it depends what you define as a "better life".

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I actually agree with Zhao that it might be prudent if impracticable for humans to return to a sustainable pre-agrarian lifestyle, but I don't understand what hunter-gatherer lifestyles have to do with a spiritual utopia, necessarily.

oh & this, definitely. certainly I imagine that people viewed the world in much different spiritual terms prior to agriculture & civilization tho I think it's fairly ridiculous to make it out as a utopia. which is a civilized concept anyway.

also re: impracticability - well, very vaguely, what I & most people whose thinking on this I know envision more of a fusion of more sustainable things w/what we have now. have to build on what you have, take the good, toss out the bad (which is also evolution in a nutshell, right?). which will happen naturally anyway, I think the idea is to make the transition as painless as possible. unfortunately I very much doubt that will happen & it will be more like one day suburbanites & retirees in Phoenix wake up to find there's no more electricity for AC & no more water.

 

[zhao]

i never said "utopia". what i said is a sense of connectedness which was lost. of course even defining it, giving it a name: "spirituality", as one aspect of life separate from other compartments, is a modern concept, invented after the drastic transformation of human life on earth.

look at the lifestyle of the surviving gatherer-hunters, it is an egalitarian, communal existence without private property or permanent leadership, equality between the sexes, more leisure time than us, zero starvation, etc, etc, etc. and it is accepted in anthropology that this is how us humans have lived for most, 90% or more, of our time spent on earth, until recently division of labor, the invention of slavery, centralized power, permanent leadership, ritual, religion etc, etc -- when "spirituality" and "art" were TAKEN OUT of the context of everyday life, and became specialized spheres of experience governed and controlled by the elite.

and during this process the original connection to each other, to one self, to the world, to a nameless divinity which was inside us and all around us, the original grace, was lost.

 

[vimothy]

Apropos Malthus and human development (from Clark's A Farewell to Alms):

The Sixteen-Page Economic History of the World -- Greg Clark

 

[Mr. Tea]

look at the lifestyle of the surviving gatherer-hunters, it is an egalitarian, communal existence without private property or permanent leadership, equality between the sexes...

Again, a very selective reading of 'surviving hunter-gatherers': you've taken the Dobe to be representative of all pre-agricultural people still existing, and extrapolated back to assume that this was the norm throughout all societies in the distant past.

Have you heard of these guys? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanomami

and in particular: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanomami#Violence

OK, so they practice a kind of transient cultivation, but padraig argues that this is in practice closer to a pure h/g lifestyle than to traditional Old World agriculture. And I've mention before now the abundant evidence for violence and even cannibalism in Europe dating back to the Palaeolithic. Which may have been a response to a deteriorating climate, of course - different climates and terrain types lead to different cultures living in them, of course. A place where there's ample food for the taking all year round is going to lead to the development of a very different culture from one where starvation is a constant threat.