Yeah, but that was just for about 15-20 hours a week. And besides, we are evolutionarily optimised for a lot of movement. I, at least, feel that the more exercise I get, the happier I am.
The diseases part I can get, but overall our lifestyles were a lot better for us since that was what we evolved for, so overall we were a lot healthier while we were alive (additionally, because we weren’t stationary and moved the whole time and because the groups were small, diseases were less prevalent). I think a short, happy life is way better than a long, miserable one.
Not much stopping you from hunting and gathering, though. There’s some reason you haven’t, and a lot of the unhappiness that would just be part of life for someone raised that way would still be unhappiness. They’d just accept it as unchanging.
That and, what was that one woman that tried to go off the grid earlier this year with her son, and the whole family died in a couple months when the winter hit? Shit’s not easy, and if you fuck up, you’ve done fucked up in a way that’s quite possibly permanent. Even the thing that got Chris McCandless was theorized to have been just eating the wrong seeds. He starved because he inadvertently paralyzed himself and couldn’t hunt.
I don’t enjoy tons of things about today’s society, but I haven’t forgotten how fun it is to scrounge and come up empty. I was about to say I’d definitely take the implied social belonging of a small tribe, but even that’s not guaranteed. I’m gonna stick close to whatever shit semblance of a safety net I have.
Hunting-gathering in the modern world is very different from doing so before industrialisation. Before, you were in a group of people who had all done hunting-gathering for their entire lives, and had learned the practices that had seen the earlier generations thrive.
In my country, about a fifth of people have been diagnosed with depression. You must realise that evolution would never have allowed this in the natural state, since the motivationlessness would lower the chances of survival significantly. I think only this high risk of depression is already worse than this comparatively low risk of death.
In all fairness, the hunter-gatherer days seem pretty dang sweet (except for the miscarriages part)
That’s because you’re forgetting the part where all you do is look for food so you don’t starve.
Every. Single. Day.
Plus the hurting and dying from diseases we can prevent with OTC medicine.
Yeah, but that was just for about 15-20 hours a week. And besides, we are evolutionarily optimised for a lot of movement. I, at least, feel that the more exercise I get, the happier I am.
The diseases part I can get, but overall our lifestyles were a lot better for us since that was what we evolved for, so overall we were a lot healthier while we were alive (additionally, because we weren’t stationary and moved the whole time and because the groups were small, diseases were less prevalent). I think a short, happy life is way better than a long, miserable one.
Edit: There’s this book by the anthropologist James Suzman which deals with just this subject called Affluence Without Abundance. I can recommend it, but here’s a short NPR article in which he is interviewed and the key points are summarised: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/551018759/are-hunter-gatherers-the-happiest-humans-to-inhabit-earth
Not much stopping you from hunting and gathering, though. There’s some reason you haven’t, and a lot of the unhappiness that would just be part of life for someone raised that way would still be unhappiness. They’d just accept it as unchanging.
That and, what was that one woman that tried to go off the grid earlier this year with her son, and the whole family died in a couple months when the winter hit? Shit’s not easy, and if you fuck up, you’ve done fucked up in a way that’s quite possibly permanent. Even the thing that got Chris McCandless was theorized to have been just eating the wrong seeds. He starved because he inadvertently paralyzed himself and couldn’t hunt.
I don’t enjoy tons of things about today’s society, but I haven’t forgotten how fun it is to scrounge and come up empty. I was about to say I’d definitely take the implied social belonging of a small tribe, but even that’s not guaranteed. I’m gonna stick close to whatever shit semblance of a safety net I have.
Hunting-gathering in the modern world is very different from doing so before industrialisation. Before, you were in a group of people who had all done hunting-gathering for their entire lives, and had learned the practices that had seen the earlier generations thrive.
If you have the time, I can recommend you read Affluence Without Abundance by James Suzman, otherwise here’s a brief article in which he’s interviewed: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/551018759/are-hunter-gatherers-the-happiest-humans-to-inhabit-earth
Edit: typo
Not when you realise that you would be completely without the aid of modern medicine. A simple infection could kill you in a matter of days.
Yes, and I think that’s outweighed by an overall much happier life.
In my country, about a fifth of people have been diagnosed with depression. You must realise that evolution would never have allowed this in the natural state, since the motivationlessness would lower the chances of survival significantly. I think only this high risk of depression is already worse than this comparatively low risk of death.
Edit: typo