Thursday, September 17, 2015
Kyle's take on Jared Diamond
Jared Diamond makes several strong points about why the adoption of agriculture was the worst mistake made by humans, but the most compelling point for me is the point he makes about the current hunter gatherers. Though I knew people still hunted and gathered for food, I had no idea how much food they actually ate. An average day for them amounts to around 2,100 calories. These people are eating well for their size, which I never would have thought to be true. Diamond follows this point up by saying sure, the hunter gatherer life may not be as good as the American life, but the American life is the life of the elite. We eat the surplus of food which comes from poorer farming nations. Our viewpoint is so skewed because we are accustomed to seeing a McDonalds on every corner, and though there are hungry people in America, they still have access to food as opposed to a poor Ethiopian farmer who has to grow his own food. Diamond poses the question: would you rather live the life of the hunter gatherers who eat well or the poor farmer who has to grow all his own food? In this case context is everything, and Diamond poses several viewpoints different from my own which caused me to think about how farming really has divided the human race, and how we may have been better off staying as hunter gatherers.
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Going off of the last point you made about how farming really divided the human race, I find it incredibly interesting that the development of agriculture was the cause of "deep class divides," according to Diamond, as well as inequality among the genders. Women, typically viewed as the ones at homing doing minimal manual labor, in some cases, do more of the heavy lifting than men. Diamond also notes that women were more likely to die of diseases, which I imagine is from leading a more sedentary lifestyle to raise children. The Economist article further emphasizes this point of division of genders when talking about the use of the plough. Isn't it fascinating that use of the plough in early agricultural societies has had lasting impacts on gender roles? The plough, as the article argues, is essentially responsible for the development of patriarchy. Additionally, it affects views on gender equality today. Going back to Diamond's argument, as a hunter-gather, there was not enough food or other resources to develop classes or to create such large gender inequalities. So I have the same question as you: Did hunter-gathers lead a better life?
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