The essentials of life are what our hunter gatherer ancestors had. They are what we needed for 95% of our species' history.
Physical activity (running, lifting and squatting), not being alone too long, strong healthy social bonds, good diet, sunlight, adequate sleep, access to nature, sex
Take these away = depression and physical issues ensue. Many things we do in modern society bring us closer to that lifestyle and are more or less complex adaptations of these simple components of the average HG lifestyle. Think about all the things people do to maintain themselves and be happy and the ways modern society fucks it up.
In particular I'd say the social aspect of modern society is the worst because money = social relations, and money grants you access to the fenced off property that holds the other essentials to life. Therefore, social relations are based on acquiring this property at the expense of others (because it is limited) and guarding it from others while pretending to be generous. This selects for self-centred, narcissistic/sociopathic duplicitous behaviour (and hence for most of civilisation's history 'bad' kings and 'good' priests had a symbiotic relationship).
The hierarchy and extreme atomisation produced by neoliberal capitalist society causes things like sociopathy, bullying, childhood abuse, rejection, and all kinds of social abuse and carnage. Dog eat dog, etc. Atomisation produces loneliness, which is a massive killer. Whereas in a small HG band, the sociopath who hoarded food and tried to enslave others would've been expelled. There was no property to hoard anyway, so taking shared items would make no sense. HGers tended to live in egalitarian bands, and while there was/is some stratification in some groups, those who hold responsibility also have accountability by the others. This is easy to achieve in small enough groups (20-100 people).
Capitalism has permeated every single facet of our lives, because the economic base determines culture. This is the Marxist concept known as materialism. And the economic base is just a set of social relations. At the heart of our society is the exploitation of labour power by capital. Everything, from families to marriage to music to jobs to romance to media is all influenced by these basic social relations. And it is getting worse as the super rich win the class war they've been waging since the 80s.
Some HG and early pastoralist groups even had psychedelics that they used to heal people. Whereas modern society has banned them just like the Church banned them in South America when Europeans colonised the Americas.
See the book "Against the Grain". Agriculture and civilisation was not actually "progress" but was in fact a huge disaster that caused the enslavement and abject misery of humanity. HGers were enslaved and forced by despots and their armies into essentially work camps (cities) that spread disease (due to overcrowding and unsanitary conditions) and famine (as they could not move to new areas unlike HGers, and had to rely on one or a few crops). Modern civilisation in the developed world is the exact same thing but with a few adaptations to make it a bit easier for humans to enslave themselves while still being able to more or less try to emulate HGers.
Modern society is a balance between the barbarism of civilisation and the enlightenment of savagery...and sadly for many of us the latter takes precedence in our lives, especially now that capitalism/psychopathy is winning the class war and destroying the planet..
Physical activity (running, lifting and squatting), not being alone too long, strong healthy social bonds, good diet, sunlight, adequate sleep, access to nature, sex
Take these away = depression and physical issues ensue. Many things we do in modern society bring us closer to that lifestyle and are more or less complex adaptations of these simple components of the average HG lifestyle. Think about all the things people do to maintain themselves and be happy and the ways modern society fucks it up.
In particular I'd say the social aspect of modern society is the worst because money = social relations, and money grants you access to the fenced off property that holds the other essentials to life. Therefore, social relations are based on acquiring this property at the expense of others (because it is limited) and guarding it from others while pretending to be generous. This selects for self-centred, narcissistic/sociopathic duplicitous behaviour (and hence for most of civilisation's history 'bad' kings and 'good' priests had a symbiotic relationship).
The hierarchy and extreme atomisation produced by neoliberal capitalist society causes things like sociopathy, bullying, childhood abuse, rejection, and all kinds of social abuse and carnage. Dog eat dog, etc. Atomisation produces loneliness, which is a massive killer. Whereas in a small HG band, the sociopath who hoarded food and tried to enslave others would've been expelled. There was no property to hoard anyway, so taking shared items would make no sense. HGers tended to live in egalitarian bands, and while there was/is some stratification in some groups, those who hold responsibility also have accountability by the others. This is easy to achieve in small enough groups (20-100 people).
Capitalism has permeated every single facet of our lives, because the economic base determines culture. This is the Marxist concept known as materialism. And the economic base is just a set of social relations. At the heart of our society is the exploitation of labour power by capital. Everything, from families to marriage to music to jobs to romance to media is all influenced by these basic social relations. And it is getting worse as the super rich win the class war they've been waging since the 80s.
Some HG and early pastoralist groups even had psychedelics that they used to heal people. Whereas modern society has banned them just like the Church banned them in South America when Europeans colonised the Americas.
See the book "Against the Grain". Agriculture and civilisation was not actually "progress" but was in fact a huge disaster that caused the enslavement and abject misery of humanity. HGers were enslaved and forced by despots and their armies into essentially work camps (cities) that spread disease (due to overcrowding and unsanitary conditions) and famine (as they could not move to new areas unlike HGers, and had to rely on one or a few crops). Modern civilisation in the developed world is the exact same thing but with a few adaptations to make it a bit easier for humans to enslave themselves while still being able to more or less try to emulate HGers.
Modern society is a balance between the barbarism of civilisation and the enlightenment of savagery...and sadly for many of us the latter takes precedence in our lives, especially now that capitalism/psychopathy is winning the class war and destroying the planet..
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