"Advanced civilization" - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

pai mei · 06-09-2009, 03:13 AM

How do you define it ?

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* Their work week is short enough to make us drool in envy.
* They enjoy almost unbelievable egalitarianism
* The religious gasp at their high levels of sexual freedom, experimentation, and enjoyment.
* They're damn happy people, laughing freely way more than we do.
* Outside a division of labor, women have total social equality with men.
* They rarely resort to violence or war
* Strong social safety nets in most of their societies support the disabled, old, and in many cases, even the lazy.
* They usually live to be at least as old as we do
* Their health is more robust than ours, and they're frequently immune to diseases ravaging their sedentary neighbors.
* Their social lives are rich, and they have the free time to indulge themselves.
* With a few exceptions, their lifestyle lets them live in harmony with the earth, relying mostly on renewable resources, and keeping their numbers at a sustainable level.
* Their senses appear many times sharper than their own, and many seem curiously immune to extremes of temperature.
* Their strength often seems unbelievable.
* They intelligently use their time to create more productive environments that needs little care.

Hunter Gatherers And The Golden Age Of Man

That article provides sources and information about all of these "wonders". Please read. "Wonders" for us the real savages. Most people say "but they were killing each other". No. Inside one tribe they were much more civilized than we are. And outside they had "war" but not like our wars.

People are not "naturally evil". Look around. Don't know about you but when I was little I thought all grown-ups are friends. Why wouldn't they be ? Remember how at age 5, 6, 7 every other kid of the same age you meet was a potential friend. And if you had the chance you would play with him as if you knew him since forever. That's how I remember. Tribal life - the life among a group of friends is in our nature.
I do not say "let's go back in time". Not possible. Just change our foolish organization. Keep our science and knowledge of stuff - nothing wrong with it in itself.

But we deny this tribal nature and internalize our masters :
The Machine in our Heads--Glenn Parton

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Almost universally, anthropologists remark on how ridiculously happy hunter gatherers seem to be. Laughter is far more common in their societies.

Of the !Kung: "Bursts of laughter accompany the conversations. Sometimes the !Kung laugh mildly with what we would call a sense of humor about people and events; often they shriek and howl as though laughter were an outlet for tension. They laugh at mishaps that happen to other people, like the lions eating up someone else's meat, and shriek over particularly telling and insulting sexual sallies...(15)".

Laurens van der Post expressed wonder at the exuberant San laugh, which rises "sheer from the stomach, a laugh you never hear among civilized people. (17)."

There's little wonder why. With no stressful work and plenty of time to socialize with friends and family, or engage in other pursuits they enjoy, what's not to be happy about?

And a movie for your entertainment

YouTube - homeproject's Channel

pai mei · 06-09-2009, 11:05 AM

Some books :
Daniel Quinn - Ishmael (English) - Fiction, Books, and Daniel

The Story of B, by Daniel Quinn

Daniel Quinn - My Ishmael

Zerzan - Against Civilization - Readings and Reflections (1999)

Howard Zinn - a People's History of United States - 1492-Present

The Machine in our Heads--Glenn Parton

Alone in a Crowd

Online Reader - Project Gutenberg

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Observing a prisoner exchange between the Iroquois and the French in upper New York in 1699, Cadwallader Colden is blunt: “ notwithstanding the French Commissioners took all the Pains possible to carry Home the French, that were Prisoners with the Five Nations, and they had full Liberty from the Indians, few of them could be persuaded to return. “Nor, he has to admit, is this merely a reflection on the quality of French colonial life, “for the English had as much Difficulty” in persuading their redeemed to come home, despite what Colden would claim were the obvious superiority of English ways:

No Arguments, no Intreaties, nor Tears of their Friends and Relations, could persuade many of them to leave their new Indian Friends and Acquaintance; several of them that were by the Caressings of their Relations persuaded to come Home, in a little Time grew tired of our Manner of living, and run away again to the Indians, and ended their Days with them. On the other Hand, Indian Children have been carefully educated among the English, cloathed and taught, yet, I think, there is not one Instance, that any of these, after they had Liberty to go among their own People, and were come to Age, would remain with the English, but returned to their own Nations, and became as fond of the Indian Manner of Life as those that knew nothing of a civilized Manner of Living. And, he concludes, what he says of this particular prisoner exchange “has been found true on many other Occasions.”

Benjamin Franklin was even more pointed: When an Indian child is raised in white civilization, he remarks, the civilizing somehow does not stick, and at the first opportunity he will go back to his red relations, from whence there is no hope whatever of redeeming him. But when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and have lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness toprevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the firstgood Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.

There was always the great woods, and the life to be lived within it was, Crevecoeur admits, “singularly captivating,” perhaps even superior to that so boasted of by the transplanted Europeans. For, as many knew to their rueful amazement, “thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those aborigines having from choice become Europeans!”

"A People's History of the United States"

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The managers of Gulag's islands tell us that the swimmers, crawlers, walkers and fliers spent their lives working in order to eat.

These managers are broadcasting their news too soon. The varied beings haven't all been exterminated yet. You, reader, have only to mingle with them, or just watch them from a distance, to see that their waking lives are filled with dances, games and feasts. Even the hunt, the stalking and feigning and leaping, is not what we call Work, but what we call Fun.
The only beings who work are the inmates of Gulag's islands, the zeks. The zeks ancestors did less work than a corporation owner. They didn't know what work was.
They lived in a condition J.J. Rousseau called the state of nature. Rousseau's term should be brought back into common use. It grates on the nerves of those who, in R. Vaneigem's words, carry cadavers in their mouths. It makes the armor visible. Say the state of nature and you'll see the cadavers peer out.

Insist that freedom and the state of nature are synonyms, and the cadavers will try to bite you. The tame, the domesticated, try to monopolize the word freedom; they'd like to apply it to their own condition. They apply the word wild to the free. But it is another public secret that the tame, the domesticated, occasionally become wild but are never free so long as they remain in their pens.

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But none of them ever worked. And everyone knows it. The armored Christians who later “discovered” these communities knew that these people did no work, and this knowledge grated on Christian nerves, it rankled, it caused cadavers to peep out. The Christians spoke of women who did “lurid dances” in their fields instead of confining themselves to chores; they said hunters did a lot of devilish “hocus pocus” before actually drawing the bowstring.

These Christians, early time-and-motion engineers, couldn’t tell when play ended and work began. Long familiar with the chores of zeks, the Christians were repelled by the lurid and devilish heathen who pretended that the Curse of Labor had not fallen on them. The Christians put a quick end to the “hocus pocus” and the dances, and saw to it that none could fail to distinguish work from play.

Our ancestors I’ll borrow Turner’s term and call them the Possessed had more important things to do than to struggle to survive.

Fredy Perlman: Against His-story, Against Leviathan! (1983)

I hope some of you get interested and read some of them.. Also see this movie :

YouTube - HOME (English with subtitles)

Just as a small introduction of what is happening to the planet. Even if you feel "life is good" , it is unsustainable.
Research for soil erosion, soil depletion, deforestation, overfishing, overgrazing, desertification, plastic in the ocean, dead zones in the ocean, water pollution because of fertilizers and insecticides, peak oil, and so on.

This thread is about a different way people could organize. Not about renouncing technology. And everything is linked, the destruction of the planet is the reason people should think about this stuff. If we had 1000000 Earths waiting for us somewhere, there would be no reason for me to write this.

More links

The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

The oil we eat: Following the food chain back to Iraq—By Richard Manning (Harper's Magazine)

The Gospel of Consumption | Orion Magazine

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Today “work and more work” is the accepted way of doing things. If anything, improvements to the labor-saving machinery since the 1920s have intensified the trend. Machines can save labor, but only if they go idle when we possess enough of what they can produce. In other words, the machinery offers us an opportunity to work less, an opportunity that as a society we have chosen not to take. Instead, we have allowed the owners of those machines to define their purpose: not reduction of labor, but “higher productivity”—and with it the imperative to consume virtually everything that the machinery can possibly produce.

The fact that there are new houses sitting empty while people lose their own houses, and at the same time people compete against each other, ready to work more and more but they find no work, (because there are too many houses, cars, and so on already) so they can't get a house, should raise some questions about our "advanced civilization". Logic and reason about what "we" do are gone, people would dig holes and fill them up again no questions asked if someone would pay them for that.

Willravel · 06-09-2009, 11:13 AM

There was war, though, whenever two roving bands of hunter gatherers competed over resources or superstitions. Not only that, but infant fatality rates were very high, simple diseases and injuries could lead to death, and education was basically nonexistent (beyond basic language and skills of necessity).

I get what you're saying, in fact I'm probably going to be on your side more than most people even here on TFP, but you have to try and remain objective. Things weren't perfect before the dawn of civilization. Many things were much more difficult. Our goal, as members of this civilization, should be to seek paradise, that place where we get the best of everything. We cannot simply deny tens of thousands of years of scientific, technological, and societal progress (and many of it is positive or constructive progress). We should seek to integrate the positive, constructive, and progressive from all our past and present.

Baraka_Guru · 06-09-2009, 11:25 AM

I'm not sure the aim is to become hunter-gatherers again. To go back to a pre-technological state. That's virtually impossible. (And logistically improbable.) I think the aim is to see what beneficial aspects of their society is lacking from ours.

What is it we're doing wrong? Many things. We are an "advanced" civilization. Why can't we make better use of our good aspects to improve the worst of our wrongs? What are the barriers, what are the challenges?

pai mei · 06-09-2009, 11:46 AM

Willravel, for people to live like in Matrix, protected in those cells and living 10000 years in a perfect world of dreams , I am against that. Yes infant mortality existed. If they escaped that they could live as long as we do now. Their organization was logical and better for their survival and happiness than the one of the first civilized farmer/slaves.

Hospitalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Hospitalism (or anaclitic depression in its sublethal form) was a pediatric diagnosis used in the 1930s to describe infants who wasted away while in hospital. The symptoms could include retarded physical development, and disruption of perceptual-motor skills and language.[1] It is now understood that this wasting disease was mostly caused by a lack of social contact between the infant and its caregivers. Infants in poorer hospitals were less subject to this disease since those hospitals could not afford incubators which meant that the hospital staff regularly held the infants.

About education, there is more somewhere else, in the links above, can't find now:
The Machine in our Heads--Glenn Parton

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When the child becomes aware of ideas and impulses that oppose the dictates of civilization, s/he experiences anxiety, which is the signal for danger. It is not the insights and urges themselves that the child fears, but rather the reaction to them on the part of those in charge. Since the child cannot escape from those who control its life, s/he runs away from dangerous thoughts and feelings. In other words, the child institutes repression of its primitive self. Tribal ideas are now isolated, cut off from awareness, and unable to properly influence the future course of events.
The trauma or inescapable terror of civilization is responsible for the derangement of reason. That inner dialogue in the human mind that is the hallmark of self-consciousness has ceased, because the depth-dimension of reflective thought, which is the primitive mind, has been silenced. Modern people no longer hear their own primal voice, and without interaction between new ideas and old ideas, the demands of the individual and the demands of the tribe (and species), there is no deep thinking. On the contrary, when reason is cut off at the roots, it becomes shallow, unable to determine what is of true value in life.

The passage of tribal ideas from the oldest and deepest layer of the mind into individual consciousness is part of the natural, normal functioning of the human mind. Deep thinking is not the result of education; it is innate, our birthright as Homo sapiens. What civilization has done is to disrupt the free flow of ideas in the human mind by shutting down the primitive mind through traumatic socialization. In such a situation, cut off from the time-tested and proven ideas of prehistory, reason becomes one-dimensional, and is unable to solve the problems of modern life. No amount of new information can replace tribal wisdom, which provides the foundation for any good and decent life.

Why being born in the year 2009 on this planet, kids have to fight the ones around them ? Their own nation even. For work. Are we not a great civilization ? To welcome new members and offer them everything we achieved + a chance to work as much as they want. More or less. A mandatory work period of some 3,4, maybe 5 years and they have the basics for free for te rest of their lives. Not looking down on them if they chose to just eat and wait to die. Unlikely.

But being in a great tribe they would naturally desire to prove themselves more and help advance our civilization. Working in the field they chose and like. See the "gift based economy" of tribes. Not look at them as new competitors, but as new potential for progress, and new friends, members. As a tribe would.

More about what I wish for the future here :
Why capitalism can never work - Tilted Forum Project

Willravel · 06-09-2009, 11:54 AM

I agree there isn't an equilibrium between competition and cooperation due to enormous societal and systemic greed, but forcing people to live off the land won't end greed. Greed is ended through the true understanding of contentment. If we were to slowly adopt the societal reality that contentment with what you have isn't a negative, we probably would have less competition and thus wars, inequality, etc.

I think you're moving to far in the right direction in other words. You're overshooting the sweet spot.

Stare At The Sun · 06-09-2009, 01:38 PM

Eh, life is what you make of it.

There is *nothing* stopping you from living like a hunter gatherer.

However, I prefer:

Modern medicine
The internet
Electricity
Guns
Porn
Books
Movies
Cars
Shoes
Clothes
Not having to hunt/gather my food!
Modern plumbing
TP
Clean water at all times
etc

I don't think I'd want to live without those things. Roughing it/living like a native is fine for a weekend, but its not a lifestyle I'd choose.

Social progression is natural. We always try to better oursevles, and modern society is the result, if things get bad enough, we'll fix them.

Seaver · 06-09-2009, 02:59 PM

* Their work week is short enough to make us drool in envy.
Our reliable food supply would make them spontaneously coitus.

* They enjoy almost unbelievable egalitarianism
Except the monarchy of tribal leadership and the occasional raids which would steal any women.

* The religious gasp at their high levels of sexual freedom, experimentation, and enjoyment.
Including a high degree of female genital mutilation and segregation of women during their periods as it made people unclean

* They're damn happy people, laughing freely way more than we do.
Except the constant struggle against famine, raids, disease, and death by a small cut caused by infections.

* Outside a division of labor, women have total social equality with men.
Yep, stay home. Cook, clean, and take care of the kids while dad goes off to work. Sounds advanced.

* They rarely resort to violence or war
Per person, warfare in tribal cultures were many times more prevelant.

* Strong social safety nets in most of their societies support the disabled, old, and in many cases, even the lazy.
You have one there, except the mentally disabled and lazy.

* They usually live to be at least as old as we do
If they lived past 25 they could.

* Their health is more robust than ours, and they're frequently immune to diseases ravaging their sedentary neighbors.
Tell that to the American Natives.

* Their social lives are rich, and they have the free time to indulge themselves.
So do we, only when we do it we don't need to worry about our next meal.

* With a few exceptions, their lifestyle lets them live in harmony with the arth, relying mostly on renewable resources, and keeping their numbers at a sustainable level.
AKA Over half the population dies before being able to reproduce.

* Their senses appear many times sharper than their own, and many seem curiously immune to extremes of temperature.
Um... we have more population living in the poles than ever before. Immunity to extreme temperature is a hoax, the population increase is due to increased reliable food supply.

* Their strength often seems unbelievable.
What we overcome often seems unbelievable.

* They intelligently use their time to create more productive environments that needs little care
We produce more with less effort in less space than they ever could dream. Their inefficiency is not a positive when it causes mass famines.

pai mei · 06-09-2009, 11:20 PM

What is your explanation then for all the suffering in the world ? Look what is happening everywhere. Even in developed countries people accept to be free people just a few hours a day. The rest of the time they wear masks. At work each of us is "the good servant of Mr. Boss". A mask.

A tribe is not about renouncing the knowledge about how to do things easy. It's a social organization. That has worked for millions of years.

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If you like it so much …

People who dislike what I’m saying will challenge me this way: “If you’re so crazy about the tribal life,why don’t you get a spear and go live in a cave?” The tribal life isn’t about spears and caves or about hunting and gathering. Hunting and gathering is a lifestyle, an occupation, a way of making a living. A tribe isn’t a particular occupation; it’s a social organization that facilitates making a living.
Daniel Quinn - Beyond Civilization

You do not understand what a tribe is. Read all the links I provided. In a tribe there is no chief that can give orders. He can only give advice. No orders like "do that or I and my servant people who let me think for them, will punish you !". The moment such a chief appears and other people give up their thinking and accept orders, and stop behaving like a group of friends, that is no longer a tribe.

For native Americans telling another what to do was something very rude. People were free. But they stayed together as friends and did not disband at the first hard time. Nobody forced them to share , but they did. Knowing that if one day they did not find anything, the others will share with them. Like a group of friends, something like the mafia but without the profit/capitalist side.

Read above about those settlers that were captured by Indians, then they did not want to return to our "civilization", not even for their families ! What kind of sorcery was that ? Are we not the best ? Why would anyone leave "us" ? What did they found there "on the other side" ? Family, friends, a community to be part of, personal freedom, free time.

Because there is no "us". You tell a "Savage" to come join us then you tell him : "no more tribe for you, be alone, work/eat/repeat/die". You will be a free person just a few hours a day . You will compete against all others. Enjoy.

Why isn't our life easier than theirs ? With all our inventions ? We do not need to renounce knowledge about how to do things easy if we chose to behave as a tribe. We should be working 1/10 of the work of today and still there will be enough for all. More important - free time to spend with families and friends. Or do whatever. That is what people really seek, no "work" and "stuff". Less environmental destruction, turning the planet into money - trash. Now people work just to have something to do.

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Crazy Horse, Tashunkewitko of the western Sioux, was born about 1845. Killed at Fort Robinson, Nebraska in 1877, he lived barely 33 years.

As a boy, Crazy Horse seldom saw white men. Sioux parents took pride in teaching their sons and daughters according to tribal customs. Often giving food to the needy, they exemplified self-denial for the general good. They believed in generosity, courage, and self-denial, not a life based upon commerce and gain.

One winter when Crazy Horse was only five, the tribe was short of food. His father, a tireless hunter, finally brought in two antelope. The little boy rode his pony through the camp, telling the old folks to come for meat, without first asking his parents. Later when Crazy Horse asked for food, his mother said, "You must be brave and live up to your generous reputation."

It was customary for young men to spend much time in prayer and solitude, fasting in the wilderness --typical of Sioux spiritual life which has since been lost in the contact with a material civilization.

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Edmund Morgan imagines their mood as he writes in his book American Slavery, American Freedom:

If you were a colonist, you knew that your technology was superior to the Indians'. You knew that you were civilized, and they were savages... . But your superior technology had proved insufficient to extract anything. The Indians, keeping to themselves, laughed at your superior methods and lived from the land more abundantly and with less labor than you did... . And when your own people started deserting in order to live with them, it was too much. ... So you killed the Indians, tortured them, burned their villages, burned their cornfields. It proved your superiority, in spite of your failures. And you gave similar treatment to any of your own people who succumbed to their savage ways of life. But you still did not grow much. Black slaves were the answer.

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Marriage laws are non-existent men and women alike choose their mates and leave them as they please, without offense, jealousy or anger. They multiply in great abundance; pregnant women work to the last minute and give birth almost painlessly; up the next day, they bathe in the river and are as clean and healthy as before giving birth. If they tire of their men, they give themselves abortions with herbs that force stillbirths, covering their shameful parts with leaves or cotton cloth; although on the whole, Indian men and women look upon total nakedness with as much casualness as we look upon a man's head or at his hands.
The Indians, Las Casas says, have no religion, at least no temples. They live in_ large communal bell-shaped buildings, housing up to 600 people at one time ... made of very strong wood and roofed with palm leaves.... They prize bird feathers of various colors, beads made of fishbones, and green and white stones with which they adorn their ears and lips, but they put no value on gold and other precious things. They lack all manner of commerce, neither buying nor selling, and rely exclusively on their natural environment for maintenance. They are extremely generous with their possessions and by the same token covet the possessions of then; friends and expect the same degree of liberality. ...

Total control led to total cruelty. The Spaniards "thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades." Las Casas tells how "two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys."
The Indians' attempts to defend themselves failed. And when they ran off into the hills they were found and killed. So, Las Casas reports, "they suffered and died in the mines and other labors in desperate silence, knowing not a soul in the world to whom they could turn for help." He describes their work in the mines

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While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides ... they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation.... hi this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk . .. and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile ... was depopulated. ... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write. ..

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As Columbus wrote of the Arawak (before murdering and enslaving them),
"They are so ingenuous and free with all they have, that no one would believe it who has not seen it... Of anything they possess, if it be asked of them, they never say no; on the contrary, they invite you to share it and show as much love as if their hearts went with it..."

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Today, the few surviving hunter-gatherers occupy the least “economically interesting” areas of the world where agriculture has not penetrated, such as the snows of the Inuit or desert of the Australian aborigines. And yet the refusal of farming drudgery, even in adverse settings, bears its own rewards. The Hazda of Tanzania, Filipino Tasaday, !Kung of Botswana, or the Kalahari Desert !Kung San-who were seen by Richard Lee as easily surviving a serious, several years’ drought while neighboring farmers starved-also testify to Hole and Flannery’s summary that “No group on earth has more leisure time than hunters and gatherers, who spend it primarily on games, conversation and relaxing.”

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Primitive small-scale agriculturalists enjoyed a similar unhurried pace of life. Consider Helena Norberg-Hodge's description of pre-modern Ladakh, a region in the Indian portion of the Tibetan Plateau.iii Despite a growing season only four months long, Ladakh enjoyed regular food surpluses, long and frequent festivals and celebrations, and ample leisure time (especially in winter when there was little field work to do). This, despite the harsh climate and the (proportionately) enormous population of non-working Buddhist monks in that country's numerous monasteries! More powerfully than any statistic, Norberg-Hodge's video documentary Ancient Futures conveys a sense of the leisurely pace of life there: villagers chat or sing as they work, taking plenty of long breaks even at the busiest time of the year. As the narrator says, "work and leisure are one."

Seaver · 06-10-2009, 10:42 AM

I grew up admiring the Native Cultures, so understand I don't have blinders on. The whole "they're free and brotherly" is completely false. They were not told "you do this or you die", they were effectively told "you do this or you're out of the tribe" ... which was the exact same thing. It was the same social control the Europeans had in America using Expulsion. It was effectively a death sentence.

Yes, women who were taken captive would often run back to the tribes after rescue. However, that doesn't change the fact that it proves the point that constant raids and stealing of your family members was a constant and real threat to your "peaceful" existence. I don't know about you, but I feel pretty damn safe from the threat of my neighbor stealing my wife at gunpoint and forcing her to bear his children.

Willravel · 06-10-2009, 10:56 AM

IIRC, raids of that kind didn't become common until about 15,000 years ago, a few thousand years before the Neolithic agricultural revolution. Tribal warfare doesn't date back to the dawn of modern man, which is closer to 45,000 years ago. There weren't enough humans to necessitate that level of competition because one could simply spread out to find more resources. Once real competition began, humans tried to adapt for survival, and one of those attempted methods of adaptation was a rather direct and violent form of competition.

The real threats going back well before civilization were starvation, illness, the elements, and predators. Assuming this return to our dawn thing could include steps to deal with each of these (which would make this incredibly complex), it might make more sense.

Seaver · 06-10-2009, 03:45 PM

There's no evidence to support that Will. Matter of fact, there's direct evidence against it. There has been video evidence of war-banding Chimps during times where food was plentiful. Their warbands often go on for weeks until it finally stops.

Willravel · 06-10-2009, 04:03 PM

I've seen the "war-banding" chimps but I don't recall anything about resources being plentiful.

pai mei · 06-18-2009, 01:11 AM

Look at Wikipedia. Search "Gift Economy". See how all those people that write those articles do it because they like it. Nobody pays them for it. The same way you can look at this forum. They want to contribute to something , to be part of something, to be appreciated by others from that community. At the same time they are totally free. But they obey the rules of that community, and they stay there because they like it. That was how a tribe was like. Now it can be the same for a country for example. That is what people really seek, what I underlined above.

Nobody wants to destroy the planet mining for oil in the tar sands. People who like to destroy the land as a hobby - haven't seen yet. They don't do it because they like to, they don't do it for "the progress of civilization". They only do it for money. No money - they don't care if you have gas or not for your car. The only thing they are allowed to obtain in this capitalist economy. And with money they try to obtain all the things I said above.

People can be like that again -as a country or as a planet. And there is no need to renounce what we know and the things that make life easy. It's about a way of life not about technology. No more money. Make people cooperate to obtain the basic things like food and clothes. That is very little work for all, including maintaining and building the machines that do the work, people work in turns. Say you work for 4 years then you are replaced and then you have food and clothes for free for the rest of your life. Today 0.6% work in farming in USA. 0.6% of the workforce not population.

Then people will be free to create a gift economy. Free to do what they like and gather with others that like the same. Let's say some like science. They gather in a science group. Anybody is welcome to join, not like today. Any help is appreciated. The entire world can join that society if they like. The basics are taken care of trough that 4 year period of work, then people are free. Also anyone is free to leave such a society if he gets bored. Not like the jobs of today. He does not depend on them for survival.

These societies share their results - knowledge, stuff they build with others, also because they want to contribute to something and be appreciated. Nobody forces them to share or not tho share. I see such a world as a true free world. "Free time" means real freedom. "Freedom to vote" is a joke. This is how I imagine advanced alien civilizations to be, if they exist. Also the environmental damage would be at 10% of today. Nobody would take from nature more than he needs because there is no way to sell it. Anyway in time people would look with disgust at such things as "selling" or making another work for you. Having the basics nobody would be willing to work with you for something unless he wants to, and does it for pleasure or to obtain the thing he works for, so he can only be a partner. No way to force him.
In a tribe of Sioux nobody told another what to do, that was very rude.

Imagine someone telling you what to post here, in this "forum gift economy"...And paying you for it and conditioning your survival on writing what he wants. No longer fun, no longer doing it because you like to..Not how life should be.
I want to show here that people are not "lazy" or "bad" by nature they just need a different organization to behave as complete humans.
http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/chapter6-4.php

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To most of the roles society offers, I say, "You are made for more than that." We inhabit, in the words of Ivan Illich, "a world into which nobody fits who has not been crushed and molded by sixteen years of formal education." The very idea of having to be at a job "on time" was appalling to early industrial laborers, who also refused the numbing repetitiveness of industrial work until the specter of starvation compelled them. What truly self-respecting person would spend a life marketing soda pop or chewing gum unless they were somehow broken by repeated threats to survival?

-----------------

Young people know it most certainly; we call that knowledge idealism. They know that there is a way the world is supposed to be, and a magnificent role for themselves in that more beautiful world. Broken to the lesser lives we offer them, they react with hostility, rage, cynicism, depression, escapism, or self-destruction—all the defining qualities of modern adolescence. Then we blame them for not bringing these qualities under control, and when they finally have given up their idealism we call them mature. Having given up their idealism, they can get on with the business of survival: practicality and security, comfort and safety, which is what we are left with in the absence of purpose. So we suggest they major in something practical, stay out of trouble, don't take risks, build a résumé. We think we are practical and wise in the ways of the world. Really we are just broken and afraid. We are afraid on their behalf, and, less nobly, we are afraid of what their idealism shows us: the plunder and betrayal of our own youthful possibilities. The recovery of purpose, the acceptance of teleology into the language of science, promises whether directly or metaphorically to undo all of that.

Tribal organizations similar to what I said above :
Sitting Bull - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quote:

Sitting Bull also knew techniques of healing and carried medicinal herbs, though he was not a medicine man.

Because of his status as a wichasha wakan, Sitting Bull was a member of the Buffalo Society, a dream society for those who dreamt of buffalo. He also was a member of the Heyoka, a society for those who dreamed of thunderbirds.[10]

Gift economy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Halanna · 06-18-2009, 12:45 PM

I think the hunter gatherer concept works when you have much less people on the planet then we have now.

I don't think it's feasible to try and institute basically secular small groups of people working in tandem for the common good.

No one needs others now for the "common good". We just need ourselves as we try to reach mostly unobtainable goals and buy the next new car.

There are so many humans now that all governments are struggling to with how to govern. Governments have so many people under them that they can never please them all and the assumption that the majority is happy with how they govern is an illusion.

Are we advanced? Medically, sanitation, scientifically etc. we are advanced for our time. In 100 years we will be seen as backward or cavemen.

The more people there are on the planet the less advanced we will become at human to human interaction.

pai mei · 06-18-2009, 10:35 PM

No small groups working as tribes. I am trying to describe a giant group - a country working as a tribe. Sharing the small amount of work for those basic things. Free to sit and do nothing or gather in groups with the same hobbys and do and obtain what they like.
Yes there will be no more modern comforts - unless you want to work for them.

But once people taste the personal freedom, and friendship among people - that way of life offers, they will never want to return to what we have now :

Quote:

Observing a prisoner exchange between the Iroquois and the French in upper New York in 1699, Cadwallader Colden is blunt: “ notwithstanding the French Commissioners took all the Pains possible to carry Home the French, that were Prisoners with the Five Nations, and they had full Liberty from the Indians, few of them could be persuaded to return. “Nor, he has to admit, is this merely a reflection on the quality of French colonial life, “for the English had as much Difficulty” in persuading their redeemed to come home, despite what Colden would claim were the obvious superiority of English ways:

No Arguments, no Intreaties, nor Tears of their Friends and Relations, could persuade many of them to leave their new Indian Friends and Acquaintance; several of them that were by the Caressings of their Relations persuaded to come Home, in a little Time grew tired of our Manner of living, and run away again to the Indians, and ended their Days with them. On the other Hand, Indian Children have been carefully educated among the English, cloathed and taught, yet, I think, there is not one Instance, that any of these, after they had Liberty to go among their own People, and were come to Age, would remain with the English, but returned to their own Nations, and became as fond of the Indian Manner of Life as those that knew nothing of a civilized Manner of Living. And, he concludes, what he says of this particular prisoner exchange “has been found true on many other Occasions.”

Benjamin Franklin was even more pointed: When an Indian child is raised in white civilization, he remarks, the civilizing somehow does not stick, and at the first opportunity he will go back to his red relations, from whence there is no hope whatever of redeeming him. But when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and have lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness toprevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the firstgood Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.

There was always the great woods, and the life to be lived within it was, Crevecoeur admits, “singularly captivating,” perhaps even superior to that so boasted of by the transplanted Europeans. For, as many knew to their rueful amazement, “thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those aborigines having from choice become Europeans!”

"A People's History of the United States"

In 100 years we will be seen as "barbarians" not because of our technology but because of the way we behave among us. There is no "us" now.
I do not use the word "cavemen". Some people living in caves behave better among themselves than "us".

Crack · 06-19-2009, 01:06 AM

Quote:

Tyler Durden: In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.

Plan9 · 06-19-2009, 01:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pai mei

In 100 years we will be seen as "barbarians" not because of our technology but because of the way we behave among us. There is no "us" now.
I do not use the word "cavemen". Some people living in caves behave better among themselves than "us".

Instead of "us" or "we," you're referring to the real issue underlying the downfall of humanity despite technological advancement: me me me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crack

... FC ...

Every time you quote that film you have to punch yourself in the ear.

pai mei · 07-21-2009, 12:40 AM

I can find some photos of children playing and being happy in the garbage fields where they live in some third world country.

"Suffering" is not in their mind.

What's the problem then ? Our slave, each for himself "organization". When they grow up they realize that. Yes you are human like us, no we are not here "together". It would not matter even if the entire planet was a garbage dump - if we would behave as a tribe. As we do when we are children. Before we get "Educated" , masks glued to our faces, behaving like machines, maintaining this lie. Knowing "there must be something wrong" somewhere, but we cannot see the glued mask. It's too close. Most identify with it.

The natural way people behave when they are little, they form groups of friends-incipient tribes. These would last for millions of years if "education", "economy", "slave culture" , the ZEKS would not interfere. Separation of life into work and play. Instead of just life.

Some tribes do not know the meaning of the word "unhappy" or "depressed". They live in the moment and are as happy as they can be. Natural Zen masters.

Quote:

The managers of Gulag's islands tell us that the swimmers, crawlers, walkers and fliers spent their lives working in order to eat.

These managers are broadcasting their news too soon. The varied beings haven't all been exterminated yet. You, reader, have only to mingle with them, or just watch them from a distance, to see that their waking lives are filled with dances, games and feasts. Even the hunt, the stalking and feigning and leaping, is not what we call Work, but what we call Fun. The only beings who work are the inmates of Gulag's islands, the zeks.

The zek's ancestors did less work than a corporation owner. They didn't know what work was. They lived in a condition J.J. Rousseau called "the state of nature." Rousseau's term should be brought back into common use. It grates on the nerves of those who, in R. Vaneigem's words, carry cadavers in their mouths. It makes the armor visible. Say "the state of nature" and you'll see the cadavers peer out.

Insist that "freedom" and "the state of nature" are synonyms, and the cadavers will try to bite you. The tame, the domesticated, try to monopolize the word freedom; they'd like to apply it to their own condition. They apply the word "wild" to the free. But it is another public secret that the tame, the domesticated, occasionally become wild but are never free so long as they remain in their pens.

http://www.primitivism.com/leviathan.htm

Quote:

The False Self

We have internalized our masters, which is a well-known psychological response to trauma.

http://www.primitivism.com/machine-heads.htm

YouTube - She Who Measures

Clark Kent · 07-25-2009, 07:16 PM

An advanced civilization would be one that follows the teachings of George Carlin.

Zeraph · 07-25-2009, 07:50 PM

Good thread. I think the simplest way to define advanced civilization is the standard of education. If every single person can do X (like read->calculus->special relativity->etc depending on advancedness).

Xerxys · 07-25-2009, 08:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stare At The Sun

Eh, life is what you make of it.

There is *nothing* stopping you from living like a hunter gatherer.

However, I prefer:

Modern medicine
The internet
Electricity
Guns
Porn
Books
Movies
Cars
Shoes
Clothes
Not having to hunt/gather my food!
Modern plumbing
TP
Clean water at all times
etc

I don't think I'd want to live without those things. Roughing it/living like a native is fine for a weekend, but its not a lifestyle I'd choose.

Social progression is natural. We always try to better oursevles, and modern society is the result, if things get bad enough, we'll fix them.

This.

pai mei · 09-01-2009, 12:30 AM

A story :

From here :
The Sioux: life and customs of a ... - Google C?r?i

Xephani · 04-15-2011, 09:15 PM

So has anyone come up with any good ideas about how we can live more sustainably in our culture? How we can evolve to be more happy - how we can develop more of a support economy rather than this product / service economy that we all have to pay for - that means that we have hoardable assets that leads to 20% of the population gaining 80% of the products every time...

06-09-2009, 11:25 AM	#4 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	I'm not sure the aim is to become hunter-gatherers again. To go back to a pre-technological state. That's virtually impossible. (And logistically improbable.) I think the aim is to see what beneficial aspects of their society is lacking from ours. What is it we're doing wrong? Many things. We are an "advanced" civilization. Why can't we make better use of our good aspects to improve the worst of our wrongs? What are the barriers, what are the challenges? __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

06-09-2009, 02:59 PM	#8 (permalink)
Seaver Junkie Location: Fort Worth, TX	* Their work week is short enough to make us drool in envy. Our reliable food supply would make them spontaneously coitus. * They enjoy almost unbelievable egalitarianism Except the monarchy of tribal leadership and the occasional raids which would steal any women. * The religious gasp at their high levels of sexual freedom, experimentation, and enjoyment. Including a high degree of female genital mutilation and segregation of women during their periods as it made people unclean * They're damn happy people, laughing freely way more than we do. Except the constant struggle against famine, raids, disease, and death by a small cut caused by infections. * Outside a division of labor, women have total social equality with men. Yep, stay home. Cook, clean, and take care of the kids while dad goes off to work. Sounds advanced. * They rarely resort to violence or war Per person, warfare in tribal cultures were many times more prevelant. * Strong social safety nets in most of their societies support the disabled, old, and in many cases, even the lazy. You have one there, except the mentally disabled and lazy. * They usually live to be at least as old as we do If they lived past 25 they could. * Their health is more robust than ours, and they're frequently immune to diseases ravaging their sedentary neighbors. Tell that to the American Natives. * Their social lives are rich, and they have the free time to indulge themselves. So do we, only when we do it we don't need to worry about our next meal. * With a few exceptions, their lifestyle lets them live in harmony with the arth, relying mostly on renewable resources, and keeping their numbers at a sustainable level. AKA Over half the population dies before being able to reproduce. * Their senses appear many times sharper than their own, and many seem curiously immune to extremes of temperature. Um... we have more population living in the poles than ever before. Immunity to extreme temperature is a hoax, the population increase is due to increased reliable food supply. * Their strength often seems unbelievable. What we overcome often seems unbelievable. * They intelligently use their time to create more productive environments that needs little care We produce more with less effort in less space than they ever could dream. Their inefficiency is not a positive when it causes mass famines. __________________ "Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

06-10-2009, 10:42 AM	#10 (permalink)
Seaver Junkie Location: Fort Worth, TX	I grew up admiring the Native Cultures, so understand I don't have blinders on. The whole "they're free and brotherly" is completely false. They were not told "you do this or you die", they were effectively told "you do this or you're out of the tribe" ... which was the exact same thing. It was the same social control the Europeans had in America using Expulsion. It was effectively a death sentence. Yes, women who were taken captive would often run back to the tribes after rescue. However, that doesn't change the fact that it proves the point that constant raids and stealing of your family members was a constant and real threat to your "peaceful" existence. I don't know about you, but I feel pretty damn safe from the threat of my neighbor stealing my wife at gunpoint and forcing her to bear his children. __________________ "Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

06-10-2009, 03:45 PM	#12 (permalink)
Seaver Junkie Location: Fort Worth, TX	There's no evidence to support that Will. Matter of fact, there's direct evidence against it. There has been video evidence of war-banding Chimps during times where food was plentiful. Their warbands often go on for weeks until it finally stops. __________________ "Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

06-09-2009, 11:13 AM	#3 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	There was war, though, whenever two roving bands of hunter gatherers competed over resources or superstitions. Not only that, but infant fatality rates were very high, simple diseases and injuries could lead to death, and education was basically nonexistent (beyond basic language and skills of necessity). I get what you're saying, in fact I'm probably going to be on your side more than most people even here on TFP, but you have to try and remain objective. Things weren't perfect before the dawn of civilization. Many things were much more difficult. Our goal, as members of this civilization, should be to seek paradise, that place where we get the best of everything. We cannot simply deny tens of thousands of years of scientific, technological, and societal progress (and many of it is positive or constructive progress). We should seek to integrate the positive, constructive, and progressive from all our past and present.

06-09-2009, 11:54 AM	#6 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	I agree there isn't an equilibrium between competition and cooperation due to enormous societal and systemic greed, but forcing people to live off the land won't end greed. Greed is ended through the true understanding of contentment. If we were to slowly adopt the societal reality that contentment with what you have isn't a negative, we probably would have less competition and thus wars, inequality, etc. I think you're moving to far in the right direction in other words. You're overshooting the sweet spot.

06-09-2009, 01:38 PM	#7 (permalink)
Stare At The Sun Eh? Location: Somewhere over the rainbow	Eh, life is what you make of it. There is nothing stopping you from living like a hunter gatherer. However, I prefer: Modern medicine The internet Electricity Guns Porn Books Movies Cars Shoes Clothes Not having to hunt/gather my food! Modern plumbing TP Clean water at all times etc I don't think I'd want to live without those things. Roughing it/living like a native is fine for a weekend, but its not a lifestyle I'd choose. Social progression is natural. We always try to better oursevles, and modern society is the result, if things get bad enough, we'll fix them.

06-10-2009, 10:56 AM	#11 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	IIRC, raids of that kind didn't become common until about 15,000 years ago, a few thousand years before the Neolithic agricultural revolution. Tribal warfare doesn't date back to the dawn of modern man, which is closer to 45,000 years ago. There weren't enough humans to necessitate that level of competition because one could simply spread out to find more resources. Once real competition began, humans tried to adapt for survival, and one of those attempted methods of adaptation was a rather direct and violent form of competition. The real threats going back well before civilization were starvation, illness, the elements, and predators. Assuming this return to our dawn thing could include steps to deal with each of these (which would make this incredibly complex), it might make more sense.

06-10-2009, 04:03 PM	#13 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	I've seen the "war-banding" chimps but I don't recall anything about resources being plentiful.

06-18-2009, 12:45 PM	#15 (permalink)
Halanna Insane Location: Over the rainbow . .	I think the hunter gatherer concept works when you have much less people on the planet then we have now. I don't think it's feasible to try and institute basically secular small groups of people working in tandem for the common good. No one needs others now for the "common good". We just need ourselves as we try to reach mostly unobtainable goals and buy the next new car. There are so many humans now that all governments are struggling to with how to govern. Governments have so many people under them that they can never please them all and the assumption that the majority is happy with how they govern is an illusion. Are we advanced? Medically, sanitation, scientifically etc. we are advanced for our time. In 100 years we will be seen as backward or cavemen. The more people there are on the planet the less advanced we will become at human to human interaction.

07-25-2009, 07:16 PM	#20 (permalink)
Clark Kent Upright Location: Dublin, Ireland	An advanced civilization would be one that follows the teachings of George Carlin.

07-25-2009, 07:50 PM	#21 (permalink)
Zeraph Banned Location: The Cosmos	Good thread. I think the simplest way to define advanced civilization is the standard of education. If every single person can do X (like read->calculus->special relativity->etc depending on advancedness).

04-15-2011, 09:15 PM	#24 (permalink)
Xephani Upright Location: Melbourne, Australia	So has anyone come up with any good ideas about how we can live more sustainably in our culture? How we can evolve to be more happy - how we can develop more of a support economy rather than this product / service economy that we all have to pay for - that means that we have hoardable assets that leads to 20% of the population gaining 80% of the products every time...