Good start. I like the direction. You lost me halfway through, because we were talking about size and measurement, and then we weren't and then we were talking about creating a global community (hooray! I agree). I'm not sure I felt shock nor inclined to disagree, which was my first flag for something to notice. When I don't feel skeptic…
Good start. I like the direction. You lost me halfway through, because we were talking about size and measurement, and then we weren't and then we were talking about creating a global community (hooray! I agree). I'm not sure I felt shock nor inclined to disagree, which was my first flag for something to notice. When I don't feel skepticism, I turn skeptical.
Because I've been thinking about just this trajectory yesterday (good cross-influence, if you ask me), I'll share some of my thoughts, as well as a handful of the resources I've been running across.
My concern this weekend was about the "deal" we've made as humans to say that human progress equals technological progress. At university, I studied a good deal of art, a good deal of technology and a smattering about our social context and how to write. Somehow I managed to get a true liberal arts education while focusing on some depth of art and technology. Throughout that time, I've been troubled by the idea that technology roughly means "the study of how to do things" and yet we use it as a stand-in to mean anything from "my smartphone" to "that computer" to "the traffic lights at Van Ness and Broadway" to "paper" and "books." The word and what it infers is so broad as to be meaningless and yet it clutters our days and discussions.
After hearing a friend talk a little bit about work she's doing in regenerative agriculture (helping farmers in Latin America move from a slash-and-burn approach to creating more coffee farms to growing and distributing spices that are more-native to the land), I started to get the inkling that perhaps agriculture (the part you left out after "hunter-gatherer") was really the peak of human existence. Or, in milder terms, we've been raising crops for a good several thousands of years, but we only have several hundreds of years using and understanding the new tools we've created. Let's start with Eyptian pyramids and Roman concrete as a starting point – there's a ton of other neat inventions earlier than that, but those are the more popular ones I can think of now. Most of this stuff required or assumed slavery in some way. I'm not sure (but I could be wrong), that we have a long history of slavery when humans are able and encouraged to grow their own food. Or, as a different friend reminds, government violence operates best once you "lock the food up."
Those are my thoughts at the moment. Your introduction reminded me of these resources:
* The internet informs me that my taste is terrible and that I ought to feel ashamed for reading a book that describes not only human evolution, but also historical fiction on the evolution of sex and sexuality. Personally, I find that there are interesting questions posed and a decent recalling of the evolution of humans as a species. Everything is contested ground these days. See "The Revolt of the Public" for a decent framing of that.
Good start. I like the direction. You lost me halfway through, because we were talking about size and measurement, and then we weren't and then we were talking about creating a global community (hooray! I agree). I'm not sure I felt shock nor inclined to disagree, which was my first flag for something to notice. When I don't feel skepticism, I turn skeptical.
Because I've been thinking about just this trajectory yesterday (good cross-influence, if you ask me), I'll share some of my thoughts, as well as a handful of the resources I've been running across.
My concern this weekend was about the "deal" we've made as humans to say that human progress equals technological progress. At university, I studied a good deal of art, a good deal of technology and a smattering about our social context and how to write. Somehow I managed to get a true liberal arts education while focusing on some depth of art and technology. Throughout that time, I've been troubled by the idea that technology roughly means "the study of how to do things" and yet we use it as a stand-in to mean anything from "my smartphone" to "that computer" to "the traffic lights at Van Ness and Broadway" to "paper" and "books." The word and what it infers is so broad as to be meaningless and yet it clutters our days and discussions.
After hearing a friend talk a little bit about work she's doing in regenerative agriculture (helping farmers in Latin America move from a slash-and-burn approach to creating more coffee farms to growing and distributing spices that are more-native to the land), I started to get the inkling that perhaps agriculture (the part you left out after "hunter-gatherer") was really the peak of human existence. Or, in milder terms, we've been raising crops for a good several thousands of years, but we only have several hundreds of years using and understanding the new tools we've created. Let's start with Eyptian pyramids and Roman concrete as a starting point – there's a ton of other neat inventions earlier than that, but those are the more popular ones I can think of now. Most of this stuff required or assumed slavery in some way. I'm not sure (but I could be wrong), that we have a long history of slavery when humans are able and encouraged to grow their own food. Or, as a different friend reminds, government violence operates best once you "lock the food up."
Those are my thoughts at the moment. Your introduction reminded me of these resources:
- Featured the Matt Taibbi's substack today: https://press.stripe.com/#the-revolt-of-the-public
- A short read (speculative science history [!]) that I'm almost done with: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-collapse-of-western-civilization/9780231169547
- 1977, Powers of Ten by Ray and Charles Eames: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
- Isle of Woman / Geodyssey series * from Piers Anthony: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/piers-anthony/isle-of-woman/
* The internet informs me that my taste is terrible and that I ought to feel ashamed for reading a book that describes not only human evolution, but also historical fiction on the evolution of sex and sexuality. Personally, I find that there are interesting questions posed and a decent recalling of the evolution of humans as a species. Everything is contested ground these days. See "The Revolt of the Public" for a decent framing of that.