That life expectancy used to be around 30 is an old misunderstanding. Statistically it is true; but what people fail to grasp is that it was because so many people died in infancy or childhood. Once past the age of, say, 12 or 15, all the evidence is that hunter-gatherers have always had about the same lifespan as "civilised" folk. (Perhaps slightly longer, in view of their healthier way of living).
So the "life expectancy" argument fails outright; by the age at which people might get married, their life expectancy was little different from ours. And in fact the huge toll of childhood disease and accident is a powerful argument in favour of attentive, supportive parenthood.
I’ve never heard this, but it jibes with many things I’ve noticed in passing about longevity in historic times. A good one to investigate a bit further - thanks
Yuval Noah Harari also had a bitingly amusing passage in his first book, "Sapiens" (which I liked much more than his later work):
“We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. The word ‘domesticate’ comes from the Latin domus, which means ‘house’. Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens”.
So, asks Harari, what did the wheat offer H Sapiens in return for being domesticated? Not better nutrition, nor security against violence, nor even safety from hunger and even starvation. Just the possibility of multiplying exponentially – the [perhaps rather foolish] definition of biological success.
“With time, the ‘wheat bargain’ became more and more burdensome. Children died in droves, and adults ate bread by the sweat of their brows… Paradoxically, a series of ‘improvements’, each of which was meant to make life easier, added up to a millstone around the necks of these farmers.
“Why did people make such a fateful miscalculation? For the same reason that people throughout history have miscalculated. People were unable to fathom the full consequences of their decisions”.
Every good harvest tempted people to have more children, but they failed to see the long-term implications. Eating grains weakened their immune systems while being crowded together with farm animals encouraged infectious diseases; and even when they had a surplus of food, that just attracted robbers and enemies so they had to build walls and lose workers to become soldiers.
You might enjoy 'Against the Grain', by James C Scott, which basically makes the case that the development of grain-based agriculture was where it all went wrong.
Thanks! Actually I had been pondering whether to add a recommendation for "Against the Grain: How Agriculture has Hijacked Civilization" by Richard Manning! Fair exchange is no robbery...
Another insightful reflection, David - thank you! Part of the problem here is that 'marriage', much as 'religion', has ceased to be a a descriptor of something positive (as 'religion' was for Tolstoy), but a stick with which to beat at any and all 'tradition'. The question of marriage today is the question of whether you are capable of making a promise. What you promise can be 'diverse and complex' - but if we cannot even make a promise, our problems go far deeper than the issues with marriage.
If you will excuse me giving vent to my inner doom-monger, our problems are worse than not being able to make promises; we consider the very exercise of promise-making to be foolish at best, because promises are about commitment and we consider commitment to be inherently bad. This is not a recipe for a society that will last.
...and this is why we have abandoned human rights, since at their heart they were promises. I fear your diagnosis may be all too accurate, but clearly we are not ready to give up because we both still feel the need to write. If I may paraphrase, Terence: 'while we can still write, there is hope'.
You illustrated why voting Conservative is useless, for you still get Woke extremism, but maybe more apologetically and with more Anglican fudge. But morality is a matter of ought to be. The problem is equality, that is equal outcomes and even equal opportunities are not what ought to be. Equal opportunity is not unqualified it really means diverse opportunities to equally flourish. Equality is primarily about equal responsibility before the law, and equal pay for equal work types of stuff. Things will only change if this dangerous communist equality ideology is named for what it is and challenged. You don't challenge it with an Anglican fudge though, you need a better narrative, which is grounded in reality. Marriage is not some invention, it is a human legal type of a significant pattern in nature. It is unique for humans because of our higher spiritual nature. It illustrates a dynamic of difference enabling a field of inequality where things can actually happen and grow, which is partly illustrated by babies always being potential. Nothing happens in an equilibrium of equality, in fact things die in such a situation for there is no flow. This field of action between difference, for example different polarity, is an example well grouned in nature. Also the best might not happen if you keep breaking and remaking these creative fields, like gestation human flourishing actually takes a long time.. Finally what stops a government promoting what it believes in, (surely this happens anyway)as long as it leaves basic freedom rights in tact for others to live as they please. So a key problem is that key basic public rights are not distinguished from diverse private ones and so the conversation is muddled and conflated.
That life expectancy used to be around 30 is an old misunderstanding. Statistically it is true; but what people fail to grasp is that it was because so many people died in infancy or childhood. Once past the age of, say, 12 or 15, all the evidence is that hunter-gatherers have always had about the same lifespan as "civilised" folk. (Perhaps slightly longer, in view of their healthier way of living).
So the "life expectancy" argument fails outright; by the age at which people might get married, their life expectancy was little different from ours. And in fact the huge toll of childhood disease and accident is a powerful argument in favour of attentive, supportive parenthood.
I’ve never heard this, but it jibes with many things I’ve noticed in passing about longevity in historic times. A good one to investigate a bit further - thanks
May I recommend, for a start, Jared Diamond's short essay? https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race
Yuval Noah Harari also had a bitingly amusing passage in his first book, "Sapiens" (which I liked much more than his later work):
“We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. The word ‘domesticate’ comes from the Latin domus, which means ‘house’. Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens”.
So, asks Harari, what did the wheat offer H Sapiens in return for being domesticated? Not better nutrition, nor security against violence, nor even safety from hunger and even starvation. Just the possibility of multiplying exponentially – the [perhaps rather foolish] definition of biological success.
“With time, the ‘wheat bargain’ became more and more burdensome. Children died in droves, and adults ate bread by the sweat of their brows… Paradoxically, a series of ‘improvements’, each of which was meant to make life easier, added up to a millstone around the necks of these farmers.
“Why did people make such a fateful miscalculation? For the same reason that people throughout history have miscalculated. People were unable to fathom the full consequences of their decisions”.
Every good harvest tempted people to have more children, but they failed to see the long-term implications. Eating grains weakened their immune systems while being crowded together with farm animals encouraged infectious diseases; and even when they had a surplus of food, that just attracted robbers and enemies so they had to build walls and lose workers to become soldiers.
“The trap snapped shut”.
Enjoyed that article
You might enjoy 'Against the Grain', by James C Scott, which basically makes the case that the development of grain-based agriculture was where it all went wrong.
Thanks! Actually I had been pondering whether to add a recommendation for "Against the Grain: How Agriculture has Hijacked Civilization" by Richard Manning! Fair exchange is no robbery...
Another insightful reflection, David - thank you! Part of the problem here is that 'marriage', much as 'religion', has ceased to be a a descriptor of something positive (as 'religion' was for Tolstoy), but a stick with which to beat at any and all 'tradition'. The question of marriage today is the question of whether you are capable of making a promise. What you promise can be 'diverse and complex' - but if we cannot even make a promise, our problems go far deeper than the issues with marriage.
If you will excuse me giving vent to my inner doom-monger, our problems are worse than not being able to make promises; we consider the very exercise of promise-making to be foolish at best, because promises are about commitment and we consider commitment to be inherently bad. This is not a recipe for a society that will last.
...and this is why we have abandoned human rights, since at their heart they were promises. I fear your diagnosis may be all too accurate, but clearly we are not ready to give up because we both still feel the need to write. If I may paraphrase, Terence: 'while we can still write, there is hope'.
This was a refreshing perspective and I’m glad I signed up
You illustrated why voting Conservative is useless, for you still get Woke extremism, but maybe more apologetically and with more Anglican fudge. But morality is a matter of ought to be. The problem is equality, that is equal outcomes and even equal opportunities are not what ought to be. Equal opportunity is not unqualified it really means diverse opportunities to equally flourish. Equality is primarily about equal responsibility before the law, and equal pay for equal work types of stuff. Things will only change if this dangerous communist equality ideology is named for what it is and challenged. You don't challenge it with an Anglican fudge though, you need a better narrative, which is grounded in reality. Marriage is not some invention, it is a human legal type of a significant pattern in nature. It is unique for humans because of our higher spiritual nature. It illustrates a dynamic of difference enabling a field of inequality where things can actually happen and grow, which is partly illustrated by babies always being potential. Nothing happens in an equilibrium of equality, in fact things die in such a situation for there is no flow. This field of action between difference, for example different polarity, is an example well grouned in nature. Also the best might not happen if you keep breaking and remaking these creative fields, like gestation human flourishing actually takes a long time.. Finally what stops a government promoting what it believes in, (surely this happens anyway)as long as it leaves basic freedom rights in tact for others to live as they please. So a key problem is that key basic public rights are not distinguished from diverse private ones and so the conversation is muddled and conflated.