[sjtindell]

Anthropologists before and in our lifetimes have gone and lived with tribes of hunter gatherers. We don’t need to romanticize or use cliches. Lots of them weren’t living as you describe. In fact their eyesight, teeth/gums, mental health, general physical health, sex lives, and life satisfaction seemed pretty great sometimes, and there’s interesting points to be made about why modernity might not have all the answers.

Let’s take your poop example. The average American, depressed and overweight according to the stats (both conditions rarely recorded in interactions with tribal hunter gatherers), poops in a toilet, they don’t “practice open defecation” (what funny phrasing). And that’s bad for you. We know now that if you don’t squat, it makes you strain (people literally die on toilets straining to poop) and you can’t get it all out. So we’ve invented poop stools. You should get one, it’s fantastic by the way, you’ll never poop the same again. This is just one of the many ways supposedly superior modern living has essentially played us, and our inventions solve problems that progress creates in the first place!

You’re right in some ways. I’m not a believer in “noble savages“. Modern sanitation is responsible probably more than anything for humanities success so far. But it’s a subtle topic.

[andrei_says_]

Thumbs up for poop stools :)