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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

I actually think it is probably more insidious than that. We have a lot fewer full-time homemakers. Women are much more likely to have paid jobs.

The only way to schedule the birth is by scheduling a C-section. Waiting for the baby to show up when it decides to do so is a very organic, let nature take its course, humble thing to do and it is pretty alien to how most people live these days in developed countries.

Historically, we farmed. We had to figure out how to respect nature and work with it. Most jobs today don't really do that. We think we are in control.

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Actually historically, we foraged and hunted. After reading Sapiens I’m convinced that farming actually set humans on the path towards this very suffering. Large scale war, famine and pretty much every post agrarian revolution ill, is a direct consequence of having food surpluses.

This was also the theme of Ishmael, a terrible book wrapped around an interesting idea—that the native Americans practiced the right balance with the rest of nature.

What made it terrible?

The writing was awkward, lecturey, and belaboring points. I get it, it's an essay wrapped in something else, but something less palatable, not more. Like sister post, I often find that my taste wasn't great when I was younger, but this is one that I remember sucking even back when I read it. Still, the idea being explored is worthy. though only now am I trying to go mostly meatless.

I thought it was great when I read it in high school. Presumably if I reread it now issues of logic and style might stand out a bit more? I've found that for other books I loved a long time ago.

> I’m convinced that farming actually set humans on the path towards this very suffering.

I would say this more often, but it doesn't generally play well w/ much of the bell (or tails) crowd. But yes, most of our advancements (agricultural and "medical") actually exacerbate problems more than help them. Occasionally, a doctor will agree w/me.

Ah well... back to chasing "money."

If you've never watched James Burke's series Connections [1], you'd probably enjoy it. I binge watched it years ago on youtube, and walked away with the distinct impression that our path to calamity started with the plough.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series)#Connec...

Without agriculture we'd still be hunter gatherers with little to no technology and everyone would be struggling just to survive. Sure, there are unpleasant side effects that come along with technological development but quality of life is still vastly better as a result.

I don't think this suffering is worse than what people lived through back then.

Imagine if your full time job was just finding food to put in your mouth and wake up the next day.

I appreciate the comforts of modern society. I doubt I'd have been a good scavenger...

I haven't had my first coffee in the morning yet, so it may be me, but I'm struggling to see the link between food surplus & farming and war?

Hunting/gathering/swiddening tribes may have wars but they're just tribal wars, which are more like random murders. Lots of regret but those left alive can move on. In order to get awful generation-destroying authoritarian war wars, you have to have a sovereign. A sovereign requires what James C. Scott has called "legible" surplus. This is a surplus the sovereign can expect at regular intervals in the same locations. That is, fixed agriculture, preferably of grains or similar crops that don't spoil easily but require lots of related industry in order to support life.

Farming first leads to food surplus, but also to a food supply that occasionally collapses without alternatives. It also leads to large hierarchical society structures and problems around ownership of land/resources, which basically is what war is about.

Sapiens is a great book!

We became domesticated by wheat.

> The only way to schedule the birth...

Wow! Hadn't considered that at all. But, yeah, I guess, that would align w/ some other things I've heard(, but never actually experienced). Yikes!

> We think we are in control.

Yeah. (Thriller laughs)

(edit) Btw, one of my college profs used to send a lot of time in rural India. He said women there would go into labor while in the field, leave and give birth, and then pretty much return to work immediately.

Civilized countries have parental leave, where this is not an issue.

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