Senate Ken and Watto discuss "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind"

What about mental well-being? I'm not sure if degrees of distress can be measured on a scale, but I think that humans more easily accept and process arbitrary hardship and grief caused by nature (predators, natural disasters, drought and so on) than hardship caused by injustice or malice by their fellow man. In short, a human mind will more easily recover from and accept a loss (of a family member, of property, of freedom of movement, of whatever) due to a hurricane than a loss due to the actions of another human. If my assumption is true, it would seem to me that whichever way of life produces more inter-human conflict and exploitation is the one that is most psychologically stressful.

 

Also, a point I meant to make in my previous post. The underlying rate of women dying in childbirth wouldn't have changed much between hunter gatherer societies all the way through the industrial revolution up to the 20th century. Also if large crowed population centers exposed people to more disease and civilizations depending on just a few food crops didn't give people a very balanced diet, exposing large swaths of the population to a lifetime of malnutrition, then maybe "quality of life" took a big dip between the transition to sedentary agricultural cultures, possibly dipping even further at the outset of the industrial revolution, quite possibly not recovering until the green revolution and 20th century medicine started spreading across the globe. We know how ****** peasants under Stalin and Mao had it in the middle of the 20th century. We know that food insecurity and access to modern medicine remains a challenge for the poorest 1-2 billion people in the world today.

Quality of life is probably pretty damn good today for the richest 1-2 billion people who have open access to leisure, art, music, education, modern healthcare and enjoy a relatively decent social safety net when things go south individually and on a wider scale (great recession).

 

This is why I sought your opinion. I go through life merely grasping at the notions you serve for breakfast.

I came as far as "I think the Agricultural Revolution was inevitable once they had had the Cognitive Revolution, and there's little point in discussing the merits of something inevitable". Just this morning. And then you say why.

 

If I were going to write my own book about the rise of homo sapiens, it would be about the role of dogs. They may be responsible for a lot of our early success. They have been breeding humans for a very long time. Maybe four or five times longer than the cow has been domesticated. If a cow were as well adapted to life with humans as a dog, it would slit its own throat and then as it was dying fall apart into the correct cuts of meat.

 

I have not read the book. I just became aware of it via this thread. So, thank you @SuperWatto for creating this thread and bring to light Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. It definitely presents food for thought. At some point, I'll take this book up.

That being said, I gave myself a crash course on the book and the concepts by Harari. I didn't find his concepts all that revolutionary because I've come across his ideals in one form or another, as noted by the Agent Smith quote from The Matrix film, which states humans do not stay in harmony with the environment and manipulate it to our benefit. Additionally, the idea of the "Agricultural Revolution" leading to things like slave labor and luxuries becoming necessities have been highlighted points in films such as Blade Runner 2049 where it states, "The history of civilization has been built by slave labor," and in Fight Club, the human condition to own things, as noted in this Ikea scene.



Basically, Harari says the "Agricultural Revolution" is a fraud because it's not humankind's greatest achievement because it lead to the many ills of society, such as discrimination, inequality, oppression and exploitation. For what I gather, Harari states that farming lead to the extinction of hunters & gatherers (and other homo species like homo erectus and homo Neanderthalnsis), the buildings of villages/cities, society authorities and rules. In order for farms to sustain a gathering and growing population there needed to be some kind of mass cooperation. How to do you get mass cooperation? Harari says by "Imagine Order." Humans create religion, which is the basis for most laws, ethics and values. Imagine Order also creates a hierarchy, which turned into the elite and therefore also creates inequality, oppression, exploitation. You don't have to go to far in human history to see this "agricultural revolution" in effect when you look at American history and the invention of the cotton gin, which caused the need for more slave labor. Thus, creating a wider divide between elite and the poor. And to maintain this hierarchy, society must incorporate a type of systemic discrimination.

Nowadays, the "Agricultural Revolution" could be mirrored as the modern "Technical Revolution" where "First World Countries" are moving away from manufacturing and trending more towards consuming. So, there's more stresses now than there were 30-40 years ago. There's the need for instance gratification, and when that's not met, there's frustration and anger. There's the need to "Keep up with the Jones, errrrr Kardashians," in the sense that most first world societies want to have luxuries, like expensive cars, jewelry, watches, smart phones, etc. Moreover, with social media, everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame on a daily basis. Sometime, to reach these goals, people give up their integrity or humanity or others' integrity and humanity.

So, from a certain point of view, I could see where Harari is coming from.

 

How so ?

 

I'm not sure what SuperWatto's answer would be, but I would assume via trades, pests and unsanitary conditions of produce.

 

I was about to say this. And also, they had children because the infant mortality rate was significant and the only viable chance you had of replacing yourself was to try and overwhelm the odds with offspring.

But, they had socialism, so their bellies were full with ideological equity!

 

People became packed into cities and towns, making the spread of disease much easier. Plus some diseases may have evolved because of animal agriculture.

 

Have we worked this through?
Can we say: Harari 0, Ken and Watto: 1?
If so, I'll post a new contentious statement from the book tonight.

 

I don't know. Didn't Ken acknowledge further up that it took until the 20th century for the fruits of this revolution to be a net positive? That's 9900 years of failure. Or 9900 years of trial and error, I guess. You also concluded that it was inevitable, but is Harari denying that?

 

From what I gathered, I agree with Harari's concepts and ideology regarding the "Agricultural Revolution" being the biggest fraud, in that it's not the "Agricultural Revolution" itself but rather ripple effects and side effects it caused in human society.

As I posted earlier, the "Agricultural Revolution" is currently being paralleled by the "Digital Revolution" (is what I meant to say instead of the "Technical Revolution." We are undergoing a "Digital Revolution" which is suppose to make life easier and more enjoyable as it's trying to put life at our fingertips (i.e. "There's an app for that"). We are being sold on the notion that the future and our lives will be better in this Digital Age, as you don't to leave the house to go shopping, pay bills or even interact with others. That we won't even need to drive ourselves anymore if we do need to leave the house with ride shares or auto driving technology on the way. We are being promised faster service and more instant gratification. However, this "Digital Revolution" doesn't often state the side effects and/ripple effects. Things like Identity Theft, maintenance and memorization of numerous passwords, database hacks, cyber attacks, cyber addictions, cyber bulling, cyber spying and so on create new stresses on society. Not to mention lost jobs because online commerce. More and more, brick and mortar stores are struggling to survive. I mean, we've seen the digital revolution wipe out music stores and video rental businesses. There are banks that have no tellers, just ATMs. Bookstores are hard to find. Recently, Toys R Us announced it's end. The digital revolution is also changing the way we communicate and take in information, as acronyms and emojis replace the art of writing; headlines and sound bytes replace journalism and contextual understanding. Additionally, the digital revolution makes people consume more; more storage space, more bandwidth, faster speeds, better resolution and so. Which also creates newer bills like wireless, stream services and whatnot.

With algorithms and profiling, the Digital Age could enact restrictions and limitations on society and thus creating a cyber caste system. A person could be quantified and categorized based on purchases, online habits and subscriptions and other digital footprints/markers. The Digital Revolution could set up more walls and barriers than bridges and gateways. We've seen samples of this already with the ad banners.

The digital revolution has changed consumerism and product shelf life. Via social media and advertising, corporations are selling society on upgrading yearly to get the best and fastest in mostly ever product. Apple has been caught with this business practice by slowing down speeds and performances of their older iPhones to sell you a new one. They try to create a social and cultural event when they launch a new iPhone. The digital revolution is allowing corporations like Apple to manipulate your purchased product to sell you a new one. Moreover, consumerism is more "on demand" creating a society build on instant gratification. I mean, a minute for something to cook in a microwave seems like a very long time.

The digital revolution is making harder to distinguish legitimacy. There are reports that Russians setup fake organizations to influence the 2016 US election. People are "swatting" causing some lost lives.

In my line of work, it has caused more headaches than solutions, as more regulations and laws are needed to be created to keep up with the digital revolutions.

I think the digital revolution has decreased the age of innocence and length of childhood drastically. Kids now have easy access to hardcore pornography, violence and other adult content. They are subject to online predators, as well as other dangers.

I grew up in the 80s, where porn was either a Playboy or Penthouse magazine, which wasn't easy to get and easily taken away. If I was in my home, I couldn't be bullied by the kids at school through social media. I had a safe place. I didn't half to put pressure on my parents to buy me a smartphone and service plan thereto. State of the art technology like TVs, stereos, Walkman, etc had a shelf life for about a decade before people considered them obsolete and upgrading them. ****, upgrade wasn't a household word back then. For me, life in may ways, was easier and happier back then.

 

I earlier this week I saw that the author Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind on the CBS Morning Showing promoting and discussing his new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century and interesting enough, Harari talks about the Digital Age/A.I. Revolution and the mass loss of jobs and personal economic value as a result.

Here's the video: