February 24, 1998
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Human Progress
Opinion
The other day, one of my friends started talking about how much nicer the social life was for humans "in the good old days - before our technological detour lured us away from Eden."
Now that I've debated the issue with other friends, I've come to realize that a lot of people still maintain the misconception that humanity has gotten more violent, more evil and less happy than our ancestors were back in the day.
I think a lot of the problem comes from TV. Primitive peoples like the one that visits Gilligan's Island all seem to have close-knit families, plenty of food and peaceful customs.
I don't know when the producers decided what everybody's stereotype of early humans would be, but it's far from the pained existence that anthropology now considers reality.
My favorite type of line is, "You know, you just look around at all of this violence in today's world - it's like a time bomb waiting to explode!" You see them staring at the horizon, imagining a time long ago, when humans peacefully cooperated to make fires and hunt down wooly mammoths.
Of course, they're just having another media vision - in real life, we come from a sordid past. If you take even the most peaceful hunter-gatherer societies, say the !Kung San of Central Africa, it's very clear that their violence and homicide rates were actually higher than those found in the worst of modern American cities.
And if you look at a more "average" society, like the Yanomamo of Venezuela, you'll see a society in which clans were constantly at war, with the victor killing every man in the village, slaughtering all children and taking the women hostage as additional wives/child factories/slaves.
In fact, the only reason that war wasn't more widespread back in the day was simply because clans just didn't have the organization or the resources. Wherever they did, there was violence that would have modern activists screaming.
Even imagining the Ancient Romans burning cities to the ground and the village pillages of the Middle Ages, the genocide of the Third Reich is nothing new. Now that we're getting our act together with global structures like the United Nations peacekeeping force and other conscious efforts to prevent violent atrocities, I'd say that we're making progress in the right direction.
The ultimate irony is when people preach about returning to a natural and equitable social system, and then turn around and crusade for women's rights. They aren't aware that 83 percent of the cultures that were so very in line with Mother Earth also allowed men to have as many wives as they pleased. Women didn't sit on tribunal panels with their husbands as much as they suffered from customary domestic abuse.
Nowadays many people would consider electing a female president, because the modern woman is prescribed a higher status than ever before. Women's Liberation, the Civil Rights Movement - all products of a very modern world.
One of my friends recently informed me on how humans once had a healthier, more natural diet that developed in a time when we would walk about with the chipmunks and gather nuts and berries from the forest floor.
Of course, those of us that know better realize that the land before Sumer HUH? was no SuperWegman's. You did not have unlimited access to herbal goodness - if nature dealt you caribou, you ate caribou. And the next night you ate caribou, and you ate as much caribou as you could before it rotted.
It's harder to be a vegetarian when GreenStar isn't down the street, and back then it was hard to be nourished at all, let alone with a healthy variety. Of course, the realization that most pre-agrarian societies faced regular (more than annual) famine periods of mass starvation should dull the edge of romanticism with which these issues are sometimes addressed.
In other words, you can embellish the "natural" lifestyle all you want, but if you think life in college is strenuous, the natural world would have had you complaining more than a fratboy whose sport utility vehicle got stuck in the snow.
Remember that ear infection you complained about when you had to stop by the health clinic? Not too long ago, you would have been dead. Feel like the modern lifestyle is hard on your family? Just be glad you have parents - a couple of generations ago, people (those that survived the 50 percent infant mortality rate, anyway) went out at 30.
Despite the facts, the ignorance propagates, for a negative story will always win the struggle for people's attention. People still complain about deteriorating morality, even though crime has been falling consistently throughout the nineties. People balk at the number of suicides, even though it's the same as it was a century ago.
Yeah, we have our web porn, our nuclear warheads, Spice World and Webster re-runs ("Ma'am? George? Why are you white and I'm black?") and more than enough problems, but a look backwards to how far we've come should put it all in perspective.
And remember that this is the transition period - not a destination. After 25,000 years of the same old thing, I think it's more than fair to allow a little more than a millenium to work out the kinks before we start judging.
So go ahead, the woods are calling you - run away from this evil machine that is progress and go frolic in the heather with the bluebirds and wildebeests. Or quit complaining and start helping us move in what still seems to be the right direction.
There's going to be a huge capacity for further progress in our lifetimes, and a large potential for the vocal and uninformed to prevent what could be crucial advances.
Only with faith in the human species can we proceed, and that is only made possible when we disband ignorance and realize just how much we have overcome. It's nice when the truth doesn't hurt - we have a lot to be proud of.
Nathan Wilson is a junior in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The North Façade appears every Monday.
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