“Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?”
Jared Diamond is a clever man. This much is obvious. I recently came across an article written by him a while ago entitled ‘The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race‘. When Diamond says things like that, he’s not being sarcastic, or cute, or about to launch into some trite childhood reminiscence. No, he’s being totally serious.
So what’s the mistake, you’re wondering. Farming, that’s what. The first farmers (and many subsistence farmers today) had a substantially worse standard of living than their hunting and gathering contemporaries (including poorer health, shorter life spans and less leisure time). The first European settlers crossing the great plains in America often remarked how lazy the native populations were, but the locals were well fed and enjoyed doing whatever it was they did between hunts.
The one big direct advantage of farming had over hunting and gathering was that it allowed higher population densities. Eventually that led to surpluses, division of labour, technology and civilization, but it also allowed for social hierarchies, which resulted in one group of people dominating another. Farming may have led to the invention of the washing machine, but only after enabling the subjugation of women.
There are plenty of people who want to go back to this kind of ‘natural’ living, or at least the kind of social structures it produced, but it’s too late of course, Pandora’s Box has been opened. Before farming there was no political power to be grabbed and there was no ‘progress’ to be made. Nowadays it’s a utopian dream to imagine that if one power structure is removed it won’t be replaced by another one, as if everyone would just unilaterally agree to mind their own business. So what we’re left with, since some bright spark decided to scatter a bunch of seeds ten thousand years ago, is arguing over the least worst way to organise our lives, or have them organised for us.
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I’d put Religion above Farming as The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race. But then again, I was born on a farm.
Prostitution is the oldest profession known to man so I would say Brothels are The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race. But then again I was born in a church on the edge of a farm.