Here’s a ROMA in which I talk about some oddities of backwards greetings in Tanzania, driving in Georgia, the financial realities of world travel in 2022, the conundrum of hydraulic toilets seats (and other luxuries), and what it means (and doesn’t) when you say a woman is “beautiful.”
I’ve had the same questioning regarding our creature comforts and how dependent on them we’ve become...
It’s true they can help with freeing up some of our time, but they do complicate things also.
What do we do with this supposed free time?I’d say we work more to pay off all these things we don’t necessary need!
It leads me to question our future generations lack of motivation, and technological advancement. Primarily around virtual reality and how we will connect as a close-net society?
Great conversation Chris, if you can call it that. Your thoughts on Yuval Harari's quote were interesting. I never found his narrative to be particularly compelling. I feel like he sacrifices a lot of scientific nuance and accuracy for the sake of narrative. I agree with you his framing of the topic was hyperbole. I can't help but feel that he distorted a real process into the quote you read. It's true that we can live without the high-tech, and indeed low-tech, inventions that surround us, but when you substitute technology for cultural values and knowledge it makes more sense.
Reading ethnographies on hunter-gatherers I have always been amazed how fast the soul of a culture is lost. In a single generation a population can go from knowing hundreds of plants, and there location and seasonality, to losing that knowledge. In one generation they are capable of living off the land and in the next they rely on government assistance and prostitution. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas documented this in the !Kung, Don Kulick in the Gapuners of Papua New Guinea (A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea), Daniel Everette documented the start of the process (Don't Sleep There are Snakes, and various lectures) and many others have observed the same pattern.
In one study anthropologist Richard Lee describes a field season that happened to be during a terrible drought. He observed that harvest never arrived and the only reason many of the farmers survived is because they went to the hunter-gatherers (the Hadza if I remember right) who directed them where to search and how to retrieve plant foods.
It's unfortunate that Yuval Harari's 21st century spin distorted this process to the point where it is unrecognizable for the sake of narrative and relatability with the main stream audience. I don't think that humans are being grandiose and snobby and refusing to leave a life of comfort. They are just responding to their always changing environment. The path of least resistance the path that evolution adapted us to follow.
I’ve had the same questioning regarding our creature comforts and how dependent on them we’ve become...
It’s true they can help with freeing up some of our time, but they do complicate things also.
What do we do with this supposed free time?I’d say we work more to pay off all these things we don’t necessary need!
It leads me to question our future generations lack of motivation, and technological advancement. Primarily around virtual reality and how we will connect as a close-net society?
Great conversation Chris, if you can call it that. Your thoughts on Yuval Harari's quote were interesting. I never found his narrative to be particularly compelling. I feel like he sacrifices a lot of scientific nuance and accuracy for the sake of narrative. I agree with you his framing of the topic was hyperbole. I can't help but feel that he distorted a real process into the quote you read. It's true that we can live without the high-tech, and indeed low-tech, inventions that surround us, but when you substitute technology for cultural values and knowledge it makes more sense.
Reading ethnographies on hunter-gatherers I have always been amazed how fast the soul of a culture is lost. In a single generation a population can go from knowing hundreds of plants, and there location and seasonality, to losing that knowledge. In one generation they are capable of living off the land and in the next they rely on government assistance and prostitution. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas documented this in the !Kung, Don Kulick in the Gapuners of Papua New Guinea (A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea), Daniel Everette documented the start of the process (Don't Sleep There are Snakes, and various lectures) and many others have observed the same pattern.
In one study anthropologist Richard Lee describes a field season that happened to be during a terrible drought. He observed that harvest never arrived and the only reason many of the farmers survived is because they went to the hunter-gatherers (the Hadza if I remember right) who directed them where to search and how to retrieve plant foods.
It's unfortunate that Yuval Harari's 21st century spin distorted this process to the point where it is unrecognizable for the sake of narrative and relatability with the main stream audience. I don't think that humans are being grandiose and snobby and refusing to leave a life of comfort. They are just responding to their always changing environment. The path of least resistance the path that evolution adapted us to follow.