Philosophy thread

[Anonymous No.12158856]

Can anybody give me ONE reason why life now is better than a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

[Anonymous No.12158862]

>>12158856
Dont know about better, but certainly longer and more comfortable

[Anonymous No.12158882]

>almost no violence or risk of starving or dying of exposure
>sleep in a nice bed
>access to an enormous variety of food, medication, narcotics and culture

>less community
>complicated and unnatural problems

fair trade

[Anonymous No.12158888]

anime

[Anonymous No.12158897]

>>12158888
we need to go back

[Anonymous No.12158925]

>>12158862
>longer
You're more likely to get old, yes, but how many of those years are spent doing things that fulfill us? Instead of spending 10-12 hours a day hunting and gathering, we spend that time doing things which are empty, repetitive, distracting and unnatural.
>more comfortable
This is certainly true, though like you said it doesn't make our lives better.

>>12158882
>almost no violence or risk of starving or dying of exposure
Everyone dies anyway. An 80 year old man can look back on his life and it will feel just as short as a 25 year old looking back on his. The risk of dying young is not so terrible when all of that time is yours.
>sleep in a nice bed
>access to an enormous variety of food, medication, narcotics and culture
These are both based on our being born into these things. Our idea of "comfort" is a lot more comfortable than even someone from a hundred years ago, let alone ten thousand or more years ago. Comfy beds and exotic food don't mean happiness, and if you concede that an important part of life is denying yourself comfort than this is a negative anyway.

As for a "variety of culture", what can any of that add to the human experience? The stories that satisfy us and make us think are the same as they were back then. The philosophies we have come up with about violence, God, evil and virtue could all be thought up by any man in human history out for a stroll in the afternoon.

Even the truth and beauty contained within art can be seen in nature just as easily.

[Anonymous No.12158929]

>>12158925
living to see your grandchildren is an experience that cannot be abstracted away by your temporal relativism

[Anonymous No.12158937]

4channel

[Anonymous No.12158965]

>>12158929
You don't think people ever met their grandchildren? People would've matured more quickly in that type of environment meaning you would probably be a grandfather before you were 40. The idea that no one ever made it to this age or that everyone died violently are also not true.

Also, things like that should not dictate the structure of your entire life. Should a young man avoid any and all risk simply because he has never had children?

[a_poor_sinner !!eiHxl4pZe1i No.12158971]

>>12158888
checked

>>12158856
Go be a hunter-gatherer. Take a pelt, a canteen, you even get to keep a steel knife. Find out and tell us yourself which is better.

[Anonymous No.12158978]

>>12158971
>Go be a hunter-gatherer. Take a pelt, a canteen, you even get to keep a steel knife. Find out and tell us yourself which is better.
Wouldn't work in the same way. Over thousands of years of agricultural society our physiology has changed to make the same lifestyle virtually impossible. A modern human cannot simply be dropped into the wilderness (which themselves have changed) and expected to thrive in the way that prehistoric humans did.

[Anonymous No.12158979]

unlimited pussy, nigga

[a_poor_sinner !!eiHxl4pZe1i No.12158981]

>>12158978
>our physiology has changed to make the same lifestyle virtually impossible
>"impossible"
Citation needed.

[Anonymous No.12159141]

>>12158981
https://www.voanews.com/a/modern-human-weaker-than-ancestors/1903847.html
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/05/01/evolution-says-youre-weaker-and-more-disease-prone-than-your-ancestors
https://phys.org/news/2011-06-farming-blame-size-brains.html

>"During the Paleolithic Revolution humans were strong people. Their bones had much large muscle attachments than is common today, even for professional athletes. Their bones were harder, too."
- The Paleolithic Revolution by Paula Johnson

[Anonymous No.12159146]

>>12158862
Yeah so no wonder life is worse now.

[Anonymous No.12159151]

>>12158981
>posts pic of some degenerate isolated island race

[Anonymous No.12159153]

>>12159146
Well you can always make it shorter and harder. What is stopping you?

[Anonymous No.12159162]

>>12159153
>What is stopping you
Laws and regulations, social pressure, duties as a member of society.

[a_poor_sinner !!eiHxl4pZe1i No.12159172]

>>12159141
>he thinks hunter-gatherers are a species
You realize hunting and foraging was how Europeans survived on the American frontier, right? And foraging tribes existed only a few centuries before that, in some of the harshest parts of the American southwest and Mexico until the conquest?

[a_poor_sinner !!eiHxl4pZe1i No.12159178]

also how is this a "philosophy thread" or related to literature

[Anonymous No.12159185]

>>12159162
>Being weak
You are right you cant do it

[Anonymous No.12159228]

>>12158971
>>12159153
First of all, these don't answer the question.

Also, it would be futile to try and replicate a world that no longer exists. You could go off and live in the woods and shoot rabbits with a bow and eat berries, but the state of humanity would have changed and you would be an anomaly among people. It's completely different from being born into that world and it being all you know.

[Anonymous No.12159240]

>>12159172
I'm talking about prehistoric societies whose diet was extremely different from our own and who never experienced agriculture.

[Anonymous No.12159259]

>>12159185
Go ahead and lead by example

[a_poor_sinner !!eiHxl4pZe1i No.12159260]

>>12159228
>First of all, these don't answer the question. Also, it would be futile to try and replicate a world that no longer exists.
That was my point. Your question can't be answered. I want you to try though.

[Anonymous No.12159287]

>>12159260
>That was my point. Your question can't be answered.
So would you agree that our modern lives are either no better or even worse than those of prehistoric man?
To me one you reach this conclusion it explains a lot of old philosophical ideas, particularly religious ones. In the Old Testament it says that man was thrown out of Eden for trying to be as gods, which is essentially the goal of any technological or civilizational progress - to separate ourselves from nature, to make ourselves superior to our forebears. When Adam and Eve at the Fruit of Knowledge it simply meant that they had become self-aware and could reflect on their lives.

[Anonymous No.12159312]

>>12158929

In the long history of humans, there was a steep drop in lifespans from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic. Because humans’ diet was focused on a few starches, they died much earlier. It has been only recently that lifespans are significantly increasing, and then only in parts of the world. The global average is still less than it was in Paleolithic times. Paleolithic diets are more healthy because they are more varied.

[Anonymous No.12159321]

The key to happiness is having no alternative. We will not be happy until all contemporary forms of living are narrowed down to one through catastrophic civilizational collapse.

Or as Heidegger would say, when the gods return.

[Anonymous No.12159326]

>>12159259
I didnt say that I wanted to do it though

[Anonymous No.12159336]

>>12159326
So you're weak and stupid
Got it

[Anonymous No.12159377]

>>12158856
In first world countries, it's better overall.
Pros:
No starvation
Security
Health care available - break a leg in the stone age and you are a cripple for the rest of your life
Work for middle class people can be relatively comfortable

Cons:
Alienated mass societies, no organic communities
More stress from noise and overcrowding
Existential uncertainity, especially if you can't believe in a religion

For the third world, life is probably worse. They have all the cons and barely any of the pros. I would 100% rather be a cavemen than an assembly line worker in modern Bangladesh.

[Anonymous No.12159380]

>>12158856
gf with teeth

[Anonymous No.12159394]

More poetry

Tbh there is no way too refute this without saying art isn't better than not art, and if that's something you believe, leave

[Anonymous No.12159448]

>>12158856
Less starvation? Hunter/gathering might be ok in the right season in the right part of the planet, but for most it would be very haphazard. You also have the problem of predators, weather, accidents, illness and old age, all of which can effect your ability to collect enough food. There where reasons for the low human numbers until just a few milenia ago.

[Anonymous No.12159494]

>>12158856

I don't think it's much better but I don't think it's much worse either
The human paradigm has always been characterized by a unique form of mediocrity that remains inescapable
One could describe it as "pros and cons" >>12159377 and attempt to make some rough value judgments which can only be based in subjectivity and ignorance but this is little more than a desperate attempt to rationalize harder truths

[Anonymous No.12159511]

Nothing to do then except eat, fuck, find food, sleep, and kill your rival tribesmen savagely. That isn't the most vivid lifestyle as you can imagine.

[a_poor_sinner !!eiHxl4pZe1i No.12159512]

>>12159494
>>12159287
I just went to the supermarket and bought a whole chicken, carrots, and onions for $10. Feels good.

[a_poor_sinner !!eiHxl4pZe1i No.12159518]

(now I'm shitposting because literacy, gonna be thinking later because western canon)

suck it, cave men

[Anonymous No.12159546]

>>12159511
>kill your rival tribesmen savagely
Sounds farily vivid

[Anonymous No.12159557]

>>12159511
Don't forget wonton rape. Have you heard about the mass graves of CHILDREN that archaeologists have found? The prehistoric ancients were capable of crimes the modern mind can scarcely imagine, world wars included.

[Anonymous No.12159558]

>>12158882
>less community
How is this a bad thing

[Anonymous No.12159601]

Can anyone recommend based and redpilled secondary literature on Plato?

[Anonymous No.12159613]

Can anybody give me ONE reason why life now is better than the lifestyle of the early Church.

[a_poor_sinner !!eiHxl4pZe1i No.12159628]

>>12159613
>that pic
based book of acts

[Anonymous No.12159947]

If I had to give only one reason, I'd say stability. Life-threatening violence, accidents, exposure, disease, and famines do happen, but in a first world country they are not regular hardships, and we've put a lot of energy into minimizing them.

Maybe to the point that we're soft for it. But that's a trade I'm happy to make.


>>12159558

Human beings are social animals. Social isolation degrades mental health and strips away networks of mutual support. It's something of a new development that we can more or less ignore our neighbors and local communities, but we sure aren't any happier for it.

[Anonymous No.12159957]

>>12158856
You ever have fudge?

[Anonymous No.12159972]

>>12158925
>Instead of spending 10-12 hours a day hunting and gathering, we spend that time doing things which are empty, repetitive, distracting and unnatural.
I'm sympathetic to your view, but cmon. This isn't true in the way you think it is. That time spent hunting and gathering wasn't fulfilling. The entire concept of fulfillment came later in our social evolution. Same thing with being content. Primitives weren't content, they were "precontent". Human ability for fulfillment (or existential poverty, as an opposite) came after hunter-gatherers.

[Anonymous No.12160721]

>>12159178
Shut the fuck up, tripfag.

[Anonymous No.12160867]

>>12158856
I can eat more vegetables, vegetables are so yummy

[Anonymous No.12161767]

>>12158888

[Anonymous No.12161801]

>>12158856
Art, music & poetry.
& the buddha dharma.

[Anonymous No.12161830]

First we should probably decide what "better" means in this context.