quote:

ORIGINAL: thompsonx

quote:

Air and water quality are both a lot better than they were in the '60s: there hasn't been any black snow since the turn of the '80s. A few pieces of legislation have been passed about air quality in the last half a century.

http://www.defra.gov.uk/evidence/statistics/environment/inlwater/iwriverquality.htm

I am sure it is but these guys seem to think Britain has a long way to go in water quality.
The chart seems to show that about half the waterways in many parts of Britain have only fair to poor water quality

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ORIGINAL: luckydawg
]I think it is a lot of dead babies and crying mothers.

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

The fact laid out in these two posts: do pay attention.

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Isn't your environment being steadily stripped away around you?
Isn't your environment being steadily poisoned about you?
And yet you question their persistence in face of the same obsticals that you persist in the face of

Followed by (after I observed that my native environment is being expanded rather than destroyed, unlike the pygmies'):

quote:

That was my point.

No it wasn't. Your point was the opposite of that,

Why didn't you tell us you were a mindreader

and now you're trying to argue otherwise, despite what you said in the first place still being posted for anybody looking at the thread to see.

No when you asked for clarification I gave it.

Incidentally, what's the current global population? Think there's enough rainforest left to feed everybody, rather than the forty or fifty thousand people with a an unusually small bodymass to support who have the bits that the loggers and ranchers haven't razed yet staked out already? Think somebody whose gene pool started in North Europe (or even Africa's coasts rather than rainforests) would last ten minutes in the mubunti's shrinking environment?

I have not suggested that you or anyone else become hgs.

quote:


Actually t, you need to look at that chart a little more carefully. Those aren't %'s. they are deaths per 1000 live births. Not a single country in the world has a 20% rate. Angola is the worst at 18%.

Sub saharan Africa shows from about 8% to 18% infant mortality...so far you have shown no validation for your claim of 20% infant mortality amongst the Mbuti.
This is really not relevant...why does the infant mortality rate make any difference to you or to the fact that the Mbuti have managed to survive for five or six thousand years while other cultures have come and gone?

Congo (where the Mbuti is a subset) has a infant (before 1 year) rate of 7%. The Mbuti who are part of that average have a 20% rate.

IF you think that is admirable, that can be your opinion. I think it is a lot of dead babies and crying mothers.

Since you have never been there you have no understanding of their feelings. You projecting your feelings on someone else is hardly conducive to rational thought.
Admirable is not a functional word to describe the mathematical concept of balancing population impact on an ecoscape. These folks seem to have accomplished that...how many other societies have?

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

Have you not? It looks more like you've spent this last thread doing nothing else.

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx
Since you have never been there you have no understanding of their feelings. You projecting your feelings on someone else is hardly conducive to rational thought.

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Admirable is not a functional word to describe the mathematical concept of balancing population impact on an ecoscape. These folks seem to have accomplished that...how many other societies have?

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

I think luckydawg has it right in this case.
I also suspect that the back to nature guys will be fucked as soon as the stuff they need that's mass produced runs out: you know, bullets, sanitary products for their ladyfriends, toilet paper, books, newspapers, generators, medical supplies, like that.

There is a civilization in central Africa, we call them pygmies. They call themselves
Mbuti. The ancient Egyptians wrote about them some five or six thousand years ago and described them as "pre-stone age people". The Egyptian discription parallels the discription by modern day anthropoligists.
These folks (the smallest humans on the planet hunt the largest land mamals on the planet with sharp sticks and never loose) have no king,president,chief or prime minister.
They live long healthy lives that are equal or greater than most industrialized societies.
No one is rich no one is poor. No one is hungry. They do not have a word for war,murder of a human or rape.
Nor do they have words to describe any of your above products.

quote:

It is pointed out and we all know it to be true that there is no non-hunter/gatherer society that has a lifespan in the same zip code with the hgs...Rome was a few hundred years the hgs are in the thousands of years.
The social constructs of the Mbuti have no prisons,no tax collectors, no cops, because they have as much use for them as they do for a bible or a slide rule. Their population is stable and does not abuse its environment's ability to supply them with all of thier needs. If the lack of modern medical facilities was a factor they would have died out thousands of years ago.
If they were literate what value would it have to them...they do not have cable so they dont need a tv guide.
Another thing they do not seem to have "unplanned" pregnancies and their spacing of pregnancies tends to be farther apart than non hgs.
Obviously they have been doing something right...they are still here.

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I could go through the rest of the special pleading you've resorted to for the bulk of thios thread, but why bother? Apparently it doesn't count towards any interpretation of what you've been saying that you don't want to 'fess up to.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Moonhead

quote:

ORIGINAL: thompsonx

quote:

Air and water quality are both a lot better than they were in the '60s: there hasn't been any black snow since the turn of the '80s. A few pieces of legislation have been passed about air quality in the last half a century.

http://www.defra.gov.uk/evidence/statistics/environment/inlwater/iwriverquality.htm

I am sure it is but these guys seem to think Britain has a long way to go in water quality.
The chart seems to show that about half the waterways in many parts of Britain have only fair to poor water quality

If I was drinking straight out of the waterways, that might worry me.

quote:

ORIGINAL: thompsonx

quote:


I could go through the rest of the special pleading you've resorted to for the bulk of thios thread, but why bother? Apparently it doesn't count towards any interpretation of what you've been saying that you don't want to 'fess up to.

So far you have not posted anything that shows that I think you or anyone else should be part of a hgs. That you want me to have said that so that you would have an argument is not my problem.
As you have pointed out, for the world to return to hgs would require the deaths of more than half of the people on this planet. That that could happen is not impossible. If that were to happen then do you feel that hgs would have an edge on mts (micro-technical societies)?
If there were no manufacturing capacity then everything would have to revert to hgs or at least to sfs (sedentary farming societies) to be able to jumpstart back to mts...if they decide they wanted to.

quote:

ORIGINAL: thompsonx

quote:

ORIGINAL: Moonhead

quote:

ORIGINAL: thompsonx

quote:

Air and water quality are both a lot better than they were in the '60s: there hasn't been any black snow since the turn of the '80s. A few pieces of legislation have been passed about air quality in the last half a century.

http://www.defra.gov.uk/evidence/statistics/environment/inlwater/iwriverquality.htm

I am sure it is but these guys seem to think Britain has a long way to go in water quality.
The chart seems to show that about half the waterways in many parts of Britain have only fair to poor water quality

If I was drinking straight out of the waterways, that might worry me.

So you admit that your water quality has diminished and what comes out of the tap wont kill you because of the chemicals and filters that they use. If that is your idea of clean water then who am I to disabuse you of your ignorance.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Moonhead

quote:

ORIGINAL: thompsonx
Since you have never been there you have no understanding of their feelings. You projecting your feelings on someone else is hardly conducive to rational thought.

Really? It seems to have been good enough for your man Turnbull, doesn't it?

Turnbull was a cultural anthropologist who did some of the research we are discussing. He is neither my "man" nor the be all end all of research on the Mbuti. He is however one of the main sources of information we have on this society.
Until you have read his books and his field notes then I would suggest that you are not in a position to judge his methods or conclusions.

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Admirable is not a functional word to describe the mathematical concept of balancing population impact on an ecoscape. These folks seem to have accomplished that...how many other societies have?

Off the top of my head, the native Americans,

Who were disrupted in this pursuit by the Europeans who murdered them.


the whole of Europe prior to the industrial revolution,

Is it your position that the Greek,Roman and Phonecian empires were hgs?


China for most of its history

Is it your position that the early Han dynasty(@200bc-@200ad) was a hgs

(and they've been getting things back under control at a surprising rate for the last forty years), those other parts of Asia that weren't wrecked by the British Empire or turned into a sweatshop by your own country, Russia back before the revolution when everybody was either a serf or one of the elite, the kibbutzes in Israel, several south seas islands before they started exporting phosphates and most of the middle east before they started exporting oil. (There's doubtless a lot more examples, but those are the most obvious ones.)

None of these are hgs


Your sympathy for the mbuti is fair enough, but we had a choice between eden and civilisation

Eden is a mythical place in the bible...so if you believe that anyone made a conscious choice between a fairy tale and industrialization then we have no common ground for discussion because I do not believe in magic as a lifestyle

a long time ago and we made the decision you seem unhappy with.

Not at all, why would you say that?
Unless you're willing to kill off most of the world's population, there's no going back on that, though.

On this we have long since reached agreement...haven't we?

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Eden is a mythical place in the bible...so if you believe that anyone made a conscious choice between a fairy tale and industrialization then we have no common ground for discussion because I do not believe in magic as a lifestyle.

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If there was no manufacturing capacity, nobody would have any option but to revert back to hunter gathering or subsistence farming. I'd be interested as to how you'd suggest that might happen.

I am not sure that the reversion could be stopped at subsistance farming because of the need to create a seed bank and tools but once the regression stopped then it would most likely be a steady progression back just as it has brought us to today.
How it might happen???
some fool with access to the "Red Button"
pandemic
global warming
your guess is as good as anyones but that it is possible I am not doubtful of that it will happen I have not a clue.

Given that there are about forty thousand of your beloved mbuti,

They are not my beloved anything...they are just people whom I read about in a book...I have never been there and have no plans to go anyplace where the humdity at sunup is 92%

we'd be talking about a lot more than half of the world's population dying, btw: 80% would probably be the bare minimum.

I dunno...pick a number but it would be a bunch.

You have not stated in so many words that you want anybody to revert to a pre tool using culture. However, the stream of justifications you've made for the mbuti having opted out of any cultural evolution for six thousand years is remarkably easy to take as such a statement.

It is possible to read something and not be personally invested in it.
I go to the museum and look at art... I do not want to own it,
I read how the Mbuti live and take note of it without wanting to move there.
I can discusss the Amish, who have opted out of cultural evolution for only a few hundred years without wanting to move in with them or encouraging other to do so.

You're even treating a couple of anthropology texts which put a specific spin on interpreting their lifestyles as inarguable holy writ.
No I am quoting research that has not been siginificantly superseeded.

Few science texts can be treated like that, particularly when they're fifty years out of date.

The latest work that I can find is by Bahuchet and it substantiates rather than refutes this work.
A couple of years ago Dr.Liazos undertook a critique of Turnbull's field notes and while he points out some inconsistancies he does not refute any of the bassis of the work or its conclusions.

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ORIGINAL: jlf1961

It is nothing short of a miracle we made it out of the cold war without nuking the entire planet into a lifeless rock.