In anthropology, agriculture is regarded as mankind’s biggest mistake, infact its curse which will be humanity’s undoing…
Hard to believe but true, but anthropologists are a different breed of people…Of all the sciences, anthropology is one subject which truly is a science worth mastering, for it gives its students the ability to rise above petty human emotions and look at people not as black, yellow or white, but as different…
But why is it considered by anthropologists as the dumbest mistake of man?
With the advent of agriculture, man got a precious commodity at his disposal which was time. After all, when you no longer have to go out in search of food which is readily available at any given moment, you obviously have time on your hands to spend on different pursuits…
As agriculture became widespread and man got time to spare, his thoughts wandered. On a full stomach man started thinking, and with thinking came the advent of art, science, innovation and most importantly of all, with time to spare and a full stomach came the opportunity and desire for more of what everyone wants: Sex. With more sex came many more humans and a population explosion occured which in turn created the need for more agriculture. Forests had to be cleared for more fertile land and to make way for living space of more and more humans.
In many hunter-gatherer societies such as the native Americans, the Aborigenes of Australia, the nomads of Arabia and some still surviving tribes of Africa, lived off the land…Their survival depended upon the survival of the earth, as a result these people deified earth as their mother…Since survival depended upon sustenance and sustenance was hard to get by, a natural ecosystem had developed which kept in perfect balance the symbiotic relationship between man and nature…
Enter the agriculturalists…Having burgeoned their own lands, they sought to expand themselves in search of ever more land and natural resources…Agriculture having given them the means to develop a taste for material wants and become obsequious to the truly inane and insignificant things such as gold and diamonds…
These agriculturalists having overpopulated and exhausted their own resources, then developed organized warfare to plunder other agricultural societies or to defend themselves against others…
To make a long story short, what I am getting at is this: Are we really better off with all the progress we have made?
There is pollution, there is ozone deterioration, there is global warming, bigger weapons, more population? Couldn’t we have been better off living as hunter gatherers? So what if we developed the car, the airplane, the telephone, the television, radio, computer…Today to meet the rising demand of overpopulation cattle and poultry is genetically modified giving rise to new and terrible diseases…We come up with a cure for one disease and another pops up…Due to Pollution brought on by the ever advancing sciences, there are more ailments in history then there were ever before…
The most vicious and animalistic societies have become those that are now the most advanced, suicide rate has risen to an unprecedented level, competition for work and space is now cause for more mental diseases like stress and phobias than ever before…
So OK…We now have art…What then? What good is the Mona Lisa to me? What good is the whole of Louvre or Guggenheim to me? What good does it bring me that I can now travel at 65 mph or fly to Pakistan and back within two days…What good is it that now due to internet you are reading this…Nothing.
In my view, Progress has been more detrimental to humans than had the humans remained on the slow and steady path of hunting gathering…There would have been peace, both within and without…
I truly believe that had the human race never progressed to what we have now, we would have been far far better than what we are now…
The Arabs call the desert The Garden of Allah and for a good reason…It is from the desert that every earthborn Prophet of Allah came, because in the stillness of the desert, man can listen to himself…You think a prophet can be born in New York city?
It is very true when someone said that you can’t stop progress, and I for can’t…It’s a whirlpool which drags everyone in it flinging everyine it touches away from faith and God…However I do disdain it, for I am of the old world and old fashioned…
What do you think is the best thing progress has given you?