Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress

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What, however, feels a bit stale is the narrow USA-centric viewpoint of the ”normal”. Yes, the author gives examples from Europe and the rest of the modern world. There are other books comparing regional nutrition-, drug-, sex-ed-, family life- and working habits between the US and e.g Europe, which do it with more focus and overall make this narrative more intetesting. I’d really like the ”normal” here to have been more of my perspective. This book shows that most of us are a bit like Dr Pangloss on steroids. This is because we not only believe that we live in the best of all possible worlds, but even that the world is getting increasingly better. That is, it is better to live now than it was to live yesterday, and it will be better to live tomorrow than it is today. Progress, young man, progress. For hunter-gatherer tribes, an individual is prized for their intelligence, hunting skills, and so on. When they exceed their skills through arrogance, selfishness, pride, or an unequal amount of power, they are laughed at, socially exiled or eventually killed. As long as they provide social benefit to the group, they are mutually benefited themselves. In agricultural societies, however, there is a conflict regarding the messages of promoting generosity and support and sharing, competition and survival and private ownership. Large populations with complex civilizations are prone to conflicting value systems. Our Civilization borrows from the future and feeds from the past - the ultimate entropic death spiral 🌀 While precivilization is condemned, civilization is often seen as perpetually improving, all despite human nature’s competitive, aggressive, and bloody history. This view of humankind is routinely used in the justification of slavery and war and colonialism. Rather than connecting more intimately with one another, civilized people are conditioned to not trust each other, to compete, to feel shameful over their bodies and instincts.

While the social hierarchical system, built upon control and expansion, rationalizes itself under these premises, messages of altruism, generosity, and sharing, which are prominent in foraging groups, are conflicted with and misrepresented. Above all there will be happiness and joy of life instead of frayed nerves weariness and dyspepsia. As much as I’d like to give it 4 stars, I cannot due to the deficiencies. The book is full of interesting facts about ”primitive” life, and really takes a fresh view in looking at the individual and psychology, rather than at the bigger narrative (like Jared Diamond), or statistical (like Harari). I learned a lot of new things.Foundling hospitals began when so many people were dumping babies by the side of the road. “In the early 1800’s, roughly a third of the babies born in Paris were left at the foundling hospital.” So much for Parisienne romance. He thinks that if no one is there to signal that they’re there, it is likely because alien civilizations have collapsed when trying to do so, or because they have (chosen?) not to evolve at all. Dore, Jimmy (2019-11-23). "How We Are Being 'Civilized To Death' w_Christopher Ryan". YouTube.com. The Jimmy Dore Show . Retrieved 2019-11-24. To a whole degree, the book challenged a lot of my thoughts and beliefs. I was wondering on which basis he was basing his argument, which goes as follows: The greater woes of man,—cancer, depression, diabetes, STD's, anxiety, wars, greed, loneliness, chronic disease, (even tooth decay)—are products of civilization, of agriculture and modern societies. He compares the status quo with the pre-historic simplistic groups of people living off the land in hunter-gatherer societies.

Ryan makes an absurd amount of certain claims that just seem ludicrous, at one point insisting that modern humans have all been trained to find things like rape and enslavement normal. I don't know where he's getting that from. He provides quotes from people from PNG who could not get over how much more we work than seemed reasonable to them, or why we spent so much time away from those we loved for so little return. Given hunter-gatherers generally only work about 20 hours a week, they can hardly be blamed for looking at us askance. They also struggled to understand why the majority of the people allowed a tiny minority to dominate so much of the wealth of society – given that sharing is so fundamental to hunter-gatherer society. They couldn't quite understand why those who selfishly hoarded wealth weren't killed by those without. At the end of the book, Ryan discusses the Fermi paradox, an enigma outlining that the universe should be full of aliens due to its size making it impossible notto have other planets like ours.

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The effect reading this had on my mindset, i.e. I now think everything about modern life is ridiculous and don't much care for it and have decided to zone it all out, is amazing! I came to the book expecting to find common ground with Ryan, but couldn’t get past the effluviant mess that was intended to pass for deep thinking. It seemed at first that this was a genuine inquiry into better times of the past. But little by little, I realized that he just doesn't like capitalism, he doesn't like Western society and Western thought, and he'd want anything but what the West offers. Upon these realizations, I would definitely say: If anxiety was the price for truth and knowledge, then I want anxiety over a life that's spent in play. I would prefer a life of meaning over a simple life of subsistence. Civilized to Death is shallow in many respects. He tells us that people live into old age, but they're depressed and are in chronic pain, and that was something that didn't happen in the past. Again, he misuses statistics and makes false conclusions that further undermine his argument. Ryan posits that civilization has given rise to competitive institutions thriving on ever-expanding commerce, displacing the sense of meaning and happiness that humans experienced during 99% of our existence on this planet. This decline is due to the stratification of communities into hierarchical divisions — between owner and worker, man and woman, wealthy and poor — that accompanied the development of agriculture.