Came across this through Human Nature.
The Garden of Eden
Although rational in many ways, the idea of considering human beings as something apart from nature is dangerous. Evolution has shaped all organisms, us included. Moreover, we are all shaped to live in particular environments. If animals are kept under unfavourable conditions their health tends to deteriorate, they typically behave oddly and appear discontent. People living in modern societies show similar ailments, as witnessed by the incidence of various maladies, including mental disorders. I believe it is possible to alleviate these problems by creating living conditions closer to those our genes are adapted to; but in order to do so, we need to accept our biological inheritance...
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...Yes, our genes are adapted to a Stone Age way of life. They expect our bodies, including our brains, to mature in interaction with the social, physical and natural environment of those days. When conditions deviate from that norm, we gamble with our health. Some changes may not matter, or may even be purely beneficial, but other discrepancies make us vulnerable.
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Take our immune system, for example. A highly complex entity designed to interact with the surrounding world of germs, our immune system seems to suffer from a lack of dirt! Ten thousand years ago babies crawled on a carpet of soil and grass. Today, in the absence of a steady stream of mostly innocent bacteria to contend with, the immune system tends to develop aberrant ‘behaviour’. It launches excessive attacks on harmless pollen or, even worse, on the person it belongs to. Asthma, allergy and rheumatic disorders descend on us like plagues. But who would have guessed that the solution may be a bit of Stone Age living: a daily spoonful of mud for the babies?
Hey!! I agree with THAT
I don't know that I agree wholeheartedly with his conclusion that we can re-create paradise.
However, when you consider the increasing prevalence of behavioural disfunctions such as ADHD, anorexia, through to "road rage", you really do have to wonder where we "lost touch".
2 comments:
I don't know about anorexia, but I suspect that ADHD is pretty normal for humans as an effective adaptation to a hostile environment that is well adapted to a hunter/gatherer or agricultural lifestyle.
I suspect that these are people who are well suited to a life close to the earth, and particularly to its dangers, and should be directed that way. We especially shouldn't try to make them into poets, historians, philosophers or literary critics, which is what, it seems to me, is what our education systems seem to aim at.
I'm sorry, but that article is utter crap. Life in the stone age was nasty, brutish and short. There never was a natural garden of eden and biology tells us that. If their was such a thing (a religious idea) it would have only existed by the power of a supreme being who changed what we know of as natural laws.
Yes, a lot of people have asthma and science has indeed taught us that a little exposure to germs can make asthma less common. Asthma does indeed suck to have, but it doesn't hold a candle to cholera or dysentary which kills millions of kids around the world who are still stuck in the 'garden of eden.'
Utopianism seems to always include the need for millions to die.
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