Comment by vtange | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vtange | Hacker News Reader

The article presents a sort of naive assumption that if we stayed primitive we may have ended up in a more egalitarian, less brutally competitive world.

Problem is, in a less developed culture, there is still competition due to human nature and due to uncontrollable factors such as natural disasters. Pre-European-Contact Native Americans often fought against one another during periods such as drought.[1][2] Ironically one of the benefits of civilization is a stronger ability to handle situations of disaster and shortage that forces populations to go to war.

I'd also add that in a "civilized world" there are probably more avenues in life open to a person who isn't bound to the responsibility of food production (which constitutes 90% of a hunter-gatherer society). Science, history, the arts? Aside from oral traditions, all are outside the reach of a primitive society.

Oh, and at least in a modern civilization such as ours we have a small fighting chance against say, an incoming apocalyptic asteroid.

[1]https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/thanksgivin... [2]https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25cvxm/were_...

> The article presents a sort of naive assumption that if we stayed primitive we may have ended up in a more egalitarian, less brutally competitive world.

Incidentally, that was in essence the ideological basis of the infamous Khmer Rouge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge

It also seems to ignore the existence of war in pre neolithic species like chimpanzees. While it might be difficult to argue that a direct correlation of behavior exists, it shows a distinct seperation of war and agriculture.

Perhaps you didn't read to the end where they discussed how the bushmen got past the level of Chimps:

>>. A key to that lost or forsworn ability, Suzman suggests, lies in the ferocious egalitarianism of hunter-gatherers. For example, the most valuable thing a hunter can do is come back with meat. Unlike gathered plants, whose proceeds are “not subject to any strict conventions on sharing,” hunted meat is very carefully distributed according to protocol, and the people who eat the meat that is given to them go to great trouble to be rude about it. This ritual is called “insulting the meat,” and it is designed to make sure the hunter doesn’t get above himself and start thinking that he’s better than anyone else. “When a young man kills much meat,” a Bushman told the anthropologist Richard B. Lee, “he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants or inferiors. . . . We can’t accept this.” The insults are designed to “cool his heart and make him gentle.” For these hunter-gatherers, Suzman writes, “the sum of individual self-interest and the jealousy that policed it was a fiercely egalitarian society where profitable exchange, hierarchy, and significant material inequality were not tolerated.”

But that's in a single tribe. What about between tribes?

People who want to paint pre-civilized (or pre-industrial) peoples as egalitarians will only point to specific behaviors in specific tribes. What they won't do is refer to the rates of violent death among those peoples, which are significantly higher than what we put up with even in the worse parts of the developed world. It's noble savage mythology to the core.

And that's a lovely quote, but what does that have to do with war between groups. This might have relevance if I were discussing some sort or societal revolution, but where chimps are concerned, "revolution" is the changing of a dominant alpha, not a true societal structure change (and, yes, the same can be argued that differing forms of human government are illusory as they end up degrading to an alpha male style group, but that's a discussion for a different day). War, in most cases, involves violent conflict between disparate social groups. Maybe my comment was mistaken due to the breakdown of English in pointing to different types of conflict, where "war" has become a general phrase for conflict..... otherwise, I don't understand what this imaginary, egalitarian society phrase has to do with war. The real truth of the matter is, when food, sex and space are plenty, conflict is sparse. When any of those become scarce, conflict will happen and might will make right.

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