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by AprilArcus 978 days ago
From about 3000 BC (the fall of the Cucuteni–Trypillia farming culture to the Yamnaya nomads) to about AD 895 (the conquest of the Carpathian basin by the Hungarians), each nomad community that settled down could count on eventually being conquered by one or another of their distant cousins who stayed on horseback.

I question whether the agricultural lifestyle is a better lifestyle for humanity than pastoralism in some kind of utilitarian or consequentialist sense, provided the conquest of and parasitism upon agricultural peoples could be factored out. Pastoralists had generally taller stature and better dentition than agriculturalists until the industrial revolution. Pastoralists maintained smaller populations, and avoided the negative externalities of settled agriculture, e.g. soil exhaustion under intensive irrigation, pests and disease from close-quarters living.
1 comments
thriftwy 978 days ago
Agricultural lifestyle isn't great per se, but once you create a centralized state and industrialize it becomes no-brainer. We do not know other way to put stuff in space and make computers than agriculture followed by industrialization.

And I don't see how you can ever factor out conquests and taking peasants as slaves.

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fodkodrasz 978 days ago
Not that settled agricultural societies didn't take/use slaves, from Greece to Rome, to the USA...

Also: do we need to put things in space, and to have computers? Are our lives fuller from that?

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thriftwy 978 days ago
Yes, we do absolutely need to put things in space and have computers, because it is the way to progress and see what's next possible in this setting, and then decide what to do while having even more opportunities and options.

If we are not doing that we are not sentient species but a kind of animal that happens to speak and use some rudimentary tools.

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fodkodrasz 978 days ago
It is an interesting take, especially as many progress-obsessed people also complain about global warming, pollution, eradication of species, deforestation, etc. Is that progress?

Also those "non-sentinent animals with rudimentary tools" did have quite some culture, and technology. Not in today's sense of course: no personalized advertisements with goebbelsian tricks to trick people into wasting even more resources and destroying our environment even more. They only made rudimentary tools like composite bows, tools for horse riding and taking care of animals, etc.

I'm also sad to hear that people before 1960 were just a kind of animals in your opinion, and if that is the measure, many people around the world still are.

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thriftwy 977 days ago
Many people before 1960 were human because they excercised curiousity and wanted to go forth.

Many people today are trying to return to animal state, like you are contemplating it.

An illegal immigrant crossing the sea for better living is more human than a developed country suburban dweller trying to learn carbon neutral living.

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fodkodrasz 977 days ago
How is a developed country suburban dweller trying to learn carbon neutral living not exercising its curiosity. Isn't learning that?

How do you know we were always going forward in the right direction? How do you know sometimes we don't need to go back? DDT? CFC gases? There lots of examples even from the recent times.

Why do you think people in the pastoral civilizations didn't exercise their curiosity? Just because they didn't built things you fancy? Didn't they create things, like art, just for the sake of beauty? Isn't that a kind of exercising curiosity, Didn't they develop and learn methods to live in harsh environments, to use the plants as medicine, etc. Isn't that kind of learning valuable, because it does not lead (as quickly) to creation machines doing fancy flashing stuff? they were living, and progressing in a different pace in possibly different directions.

Your attitude is not simply colonialist, but also lack respect for many forms of knowledge, only for these are not on the modern technocratic urbanite's tool-belt makes it especially narrow-minded.

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edgyquant 977 days ago
> do not know other way to put stuff in space and make computers than agriculture followed by industrialization.

It remains to be seen if this results in a better lifestyle for humanity

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thriftwy 975 days ago
It already did?
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