[d_burfoot]

Historians will tell you that in many ways, agriculture was the worst thing that ever happened to humanity. Agriculture meant hard, back-breaking, monotonous labor; it meant pests and disease due to population concentration; it meant a bland diet that did fully meet nutritional requirements; it meant social hierarchies of kings and priests. But societies that did not adopt agriculture were outcompeted and eventually destroyed by those that did.

[voidmain]

Follow this reasoning to its conclusion: once humans are no longer part of the most efficient military-industrial "meta build", states that keep them alive will be outcompeted and eventually destroyed by those that do not.

[NoGravitas]

Yep, it's all driven by Moloch, and nothing but.

[lbrito]

I don't think that's a very mainstream view amongst historians. I can only name two popsci authors, Jared Diamond and Yuval Harari, that espouse that thought.

[throw4847285]

Ok, but try the same argument with sedentary societies. Those seem "superior" despite all the negative side effects, right? But here comes one of a number of steppe nomad tribes to show up and decimate their "superior" neighbors.

The vast diversity of human societies refuses any kind of rigid hierarchy of development. There are many branching paths, and no paradigm wins for long.

History is a not a game of Civilization.

[UtopiaPunk]

Ishmael is a good read.

[jackbravo]

What is it about?

[UtopiaPunk]

It's a fictional dialog that gives an account of history from a different viewpoint, from a society that was destroyed by modern civilization

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(Quinn_novel)

[bena]

Historians. Well, one. Well, he's not a historian. He's a biochemist and physiologist who has studied some anthropology.

It's Jared Diamond. That's who says agriculture was the worst thing that ever happened to humanity.

[NoGravitas]

He's actually pulling that from about 70 years of anthropology and anthropological archaeology; it wasn't in any way original to him.

[bena]

Which is why anthropologists published a book containing a bunch of essays that basically said, "No, this guy is wrong".