49 ms·
Are Hunter-Gatherers The Happiest Humans To Inhabit Earth?
- harry8 9y agoI'm going to write a new book that argues people who don't read this kind of BS are happier than those that do. Could back that with stats too (just ignore the correlation/causation thing...) Watching your children die due to diseases that are totally trivial in our non-hunter-gatherer society makes you happy. oooookaaaay... FFS
- dpark 9y ago> Watching your children die due to diseases that are totally trivial in our non-hunter-gatherer society makes you happy. oooookaaaay... FFS In fairness, people not packed into cities don’t have exactly the same issues with childhood diseases. I don’t disagree with your sentiment, by the way. I just don’t think it’s directly comparable that way. It’s also worth noting that many societies are not hunter gatherer and have high child mortality rates. The road from “tribal” to “modern” is full of dysentery.
- austenallred 9y agoRegardless of how you look at the statistics, modern humans are healthier and live longer on average by every measure
- gyrgtyn 9y agoThe 1st world at least
- riffraff 9y agono, even in the second (the ex-communist block) and the third (south america, africa, and non aligned countries in general). Just check one of the Hans Rosling videos on TED[0]: almost everywhere life expectancy has increased, child mortality has dropped, education has risen. [0] https://www.ted.com/speakers/hans_rosling https://www.ted.com/speakers/hans_rosling
- WalterBright 9y agoThe kid is wearing factory made shoes.
- olewhalehunter 9y agoyou're wearing a hunter gatherer genome, whats your point?
- yorwba 9y agoHunting and gathering with modern tools might be not that bad of a lifestyle for idle humans in a world where robots can do everything better.
- klipt 9y agoSounds a bit like working at Google. "Time to 'gather' some fruits from the micro kitchen!"
- WalterBright 9y agoI do my hunting and gathering at the local supermarket. There I find my favorite prey - the elusive coffee bean.
- klipt 9y agoOf course, farming didn't overtake hunter-gathering because farmers are happier. It overtook because farming can feed massive armies capable of conquering hunter-gatherer land by force. Although I guess, in the end, not being conquered/enslaved/killed might make people happier.
- agumonkey 9y agoIs it true or just extrapolated hint ? I like to criticize "modern" societies, but some times I think that having predictable source of food was an obvious goal for any human being.
- klipt 9y agoI'm just saying that in the end, happiness isn't the metric reality optimises for so much as survival. Evolution also tends to prod happiness to correlate with survival, but there might be some lag when society/technology is moving much faster than genes can.
- agumonkey 9y agoCan't say but my happiness, and I believe lots of others too, looks like a sunny sunday morning with a happy bunch (family/friends), and some activities to keep our local environment afloat (food, shelter, aesthetics) during the other days.
- clord 9y agoPredictably bland and plentiful or unpredictably punctuated and exciting to find? What makes humans happy?
- tachyonbeam 9y ago> some times I think that having predictable source of food was an obvious goal for any human being. I don't have the citation, but IIRC, monkeys get higher dopamine spikes when success at a task is probable but not guaranteed. Having something that is unpredictable but likely to yield a reward is what motivates effort. Having a predictable supply of food is less stressful, but possibly, not as motivating. Maybe not as satisfying as successfully hunting an animal. Sidenote: it's also been theorized that browsing social media is addictive because of the unpredictable aspect. You can keep scrolling, there is always new content, and there is some chance that you might find something interesting, but it's not guaranteed.
- Shorel 9y agoAlso mentioned in 'Sapiens'.
- clumsysmurf 9y agoThe only time I'm relaxed and feel happy is when I am out in untamed nature - seeing and hearing nature. It doesn't matter if its just a hike or "working" hard on trail maintenance. If this[1] is true, "Every 2.5 minutes, the American West loses a football field worth of natural area to human development." Walking down the street among human development just doesn't do anything for me, so I quit going outside. It seems like expulsion from the biosphere. I wonder if other people feel this way, whether consciously or not. [1] https://www.disappearingwest.org/ https://www.disappearingwest.org/
- agumonkey 9y agoThere's also a huge mental cost induced by society. Everything, has to have a purpose, a ROI; everything has a price (even free, it takes space). When you live in nature, you just do as you feel. No reference, no efficiency, it's freeing; and that's a feeling you rarely get in society.
- unknown_apostle 9y agoJust to be clear: everything in nature also has a ROI of sorts. I would say people who live in nature are also constrained by their environment and have to be very economical. They depend on their tribe, on the cycle of seasons and the weather, have to be prepared for chance meetings with predators, can't fully prepare for other things like trauma, infection and natural disaster etc. The closest you can currently get to "doing as you feel", involves moving to Europe and becoming dependent on the socialist state. You can live for free in a flat forever, never have to work, get free health care for every booboo, just hang out all day surrounded by people who do the same thing. I would say this is currently the state of the art in living an unnatural life. And as a result, you might end up being miserable. But I do sort of understand what you mean; our brains were built for living in natural environments. These impose fairly random and complex constraints, with stress coming in big but short-lived peaks and real family being constantly around. Living in a concrete jungle and having constant low level stress, doing and eating the exact same things every day, taking pills for every little ill is a recipe for alienation and early death.
- protomyth 9y agoI guess it depends on your definition of happy for the dead and never born. Hunter-Gathers couldn't specialize, and that has made all of the difference in our lives. Without specialization a lot of the joyful activities that we participate in would not be available and most of us wouldn't be here. Yes, I get it. Some find joy in the primitive, the promise of stripping way the complications of modern life, and feeling the raw world again. That's fine for a weekend or a week, but understand what you give up. Me, well, I like indoor plumbing, heat, and refrigeration.
- Top19 9y agoLook I hate Facebook, Google, the news, prefer physical books, like to exercise, whatever but I always hate seeing this stuff. In Western society there are always two lies operating at once. The first lie is that technology will save us and fix everything and is the ultimate path, the second lie is that throwing away all of our technology, being as close to nature as possible, blah blah will also save us and fix everything. One thing happier people do in fact have is a sense of historical perspective and also future sacrifice. Knowing the sacrifice that 500 mothers and fathers made before you to move the human race hopefully a little forward, and knowing that you can help pass along their sacrifice, knowledge, and your own hard work to your children, grandchildren, and subsequent generations.
- maxerickson 9y agoAre a large percentage of people in our technological society actualized in that way? Do people that take a 2nd job to put food on the table for their kids see that as progress for the human race?
- imustbeevil 9y agoWould you rather take a 2nd job or run around naked looking for an animal you can kill? Everyone realizes the progress humanity has made. It is disrespectful to the people taking second jobs to insinuate that they'd be better off living ten thousand years ago. What does that say about how you view their life?
- maxerickson 9y agoI didn't insinuate they'd be better off as hunter gatherers, I questioned whether the flowery stuff the other poster said about advancing the human race was something they gave much thought.
- ddingus 9y agoFalse choice. The current level of economic struggle in the US is both unacceptable and unnecessary. I might take the hunt, and or form community with other peers who have had quite enough. Together, it's not a bad equation. I lived that kind of way for a time having delivered from the wilderness to food on the plate before age 16.
- gt_ 9y agoI love looking for things. I think a lot of us do. Web searches, thrift stores, street photography, 3D models, Github projects. Momentary instances of challenge keep it exciting. I do think most of us find comfort in the "hunting and gathering"-like types of activities we indulge in. Our visual senses still celebrate the red colors and glossy surfaces of apples and berries.
- hanoz 9y agoThey may be happier, but they are fewer. What good is mean happiness versus sum happiness in the grand scheme of things?
- marchenko 9y agoThe Repugnant Conclusion may be of interest: “For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better even though its members have lives that are barely worth living” (Parfit 1984) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/
- mjfl 9y agoMaybe they are, humans have never been rational. It is much more important to have vaccines and antibiotics than to be happy. People reading this crap who then get the urge to strip down to a loincloth and run into the woods should be aware that these viewpoints always portray the best case scenario. Forget germs, starvation, or exposure (which are enough to make you miserable / kill you by themselves), what about other people? What if someone mugs you and takes your stuff. What if another tribe comes in and says (understandably) "look, food is scarce, we're claiming this herd of gazelle. If you hunt these gazelle, we'll kill you." If you're a woman, what if you get raped? If you're a man, what if your wife gets raped, are you gonna go kill the guy? You? What if you get killed trying to do that, what happens to your wife? No, living under modern society is much better, happy or not.
- weirdstuff 9y agoI'm not sure you know enough to compare the two. Disease, for example, is mostly a product of settled societies, not hunter-gatherers. Crime was a different issue as well, when tribes knew all the members. And sure, tribes had conflicts, but they were often not as violent as the total wars of the last couple centuries. I'm surprised so many people who know nothing except modern society are so quick to make sweeping assumptions about a distant and unrecorded past.
- 3131s 9y agoThey are also comparing it to the best outcomes for individuals in modern society. It's not like people don't still get raped, killed over resources, and finished off prematurely by disease and starvation. I'm not sure modern civilization would look the same without a long and continuing history of people sacrificed at the altar of progress.
- mjfl 9y agobut at least in society in the worst case I have police, medicine, insurance.. people working for money to help you
- clord 9y agoOf course they are. They’re living closer to what our species evolved for. Civilizational people are constantly having to check their preferred behavior for the greater good. Sure there are perks to having a civilization but there are costs, too.
- tootie 9y agoI guess when you're acclimated to extremely high infant mortality rates, nothing else really bothers you too much.
- js2 9y agoFor those not familiar, Ishmael is a philosophical take on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(novel) (It’s been mentioned on HN a few times which is how I think I became aware of it.)
- KGIII 9y agoIt's a book you can read every few years and get something more from it. Quinn's work is one of my favorites.
- Shorel 9y agoIshmael also deals with other issues. Important issues. Right now I don't think any truly civilized society would actually generate any garbage. When we solve that issue, we will look at the past (our present) in shame.
- tspike 9y agoIt is interesting to me that this topic provokes angry responses. I find the tenor of debate on this subject similar to what you'd find in reply to an article about early retirement through discipline in savings.
- cerealbad 9y agomercantile capitalism morphing into corporate feudalism; slavers need blinders for human tack. the usual suspects: torah, mahabharata, dhammapada, i ching, the communist manifesto, theosophy, neoplatonism, shamanism, utilitarianism, etc. no matter how far into primitivism we sink in the 21st and 22nd centuries, civilisation will always reboot with access to: bible (war), euclid's elements (mathematics), iliad (peace) and the right geographic start. if all knowledge is lost, it will only take a few of hundred years this time not tens or thousands. even completely demolished, cities are hard to hide. the pyramids will still be there, restarting the loop.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- aaron695 9y agoI find this idea horific. Rape and war are a normality in Hunter and Gather societies. I acknowledge they are fun and make us happy, in current society we farm these out to other activities like sport and computer simulations but in pre societies they are not so fun for the losers. It seems like survivor bias. If they are talking getting the best of both worlds then perhaps it's possible to move in that direction but the Earth won't support it in anything close to the way the tribes currently live so it seems like a bad way to be looking at it.
- gyrgtyn 9y ago> Rape and war are a normality in Hunter and Gather societies. no
- tonmoy 9y agoWhy are we trying to optimize ourselves to maximize happiness? Of course the hunter gatherers were happier, they evolved their happiness enducing brains slowly in the span of hundreds of thousands of years. In contrast we are living in a fast changing world. I think happiness can no longer keep up as being the proper reward function for success.
- gyrgtyn 9y agoLots of people are really misinformed about hunter-gatherer life. Why is that?
- outworlder 9y agoOf course they are. Hunting for food has to be better than slaving away at a corporate office. Which they can choose to do only when hungry. They were likely more fit too. So I buy that you can be happier like that. Until you or people around you start dying of (nowadays) preventable diseases. Or because you ran into some other group and they wanted your stuff - however little that is.
- aryehof 9y agoSurely wealth or living in the "West" has no correlation to happiness, if happiness is considered freedom from worry, and freedom from a never satiated desire for more things, experiences and status.
- plafl 9y agoThe main point of the article seems to be that living the present is better than worrying about the future. For me it's just the opposite: I love to think about the future, being better at some sports, learning new things, working on more interesting things. I find the described "cyclical time" perception in the article quite depressing, some kind of never-ending groundhog day.
- sametmax 9y agoWhat you describe as not liking is not living in the present. It's intellectualizing the present.
- riffraff 9y agoJared Diamond's "The World Before Yesterday" touches on this wrt to the people of Papua New Guinea. These are people who basically lived in hunter-gatherer style until very recently, and have recently started to adopt the "modern" lifestyle. According to him, they do not regret it. Also, the "happy savage" meme has been around for literally centuries, and it's generally been propagated by rich, educated non-savages.
- Santosh83 9y agoThey will regret it some generations later as they swing to the other extreme. The core point here is too much of anything leads to stress. Living totally like a savage is indeed stressful. Also living a life totally immersed in urban dystopia is equally stressful. A happy medium works, but so few can get and remain there. Our economic systems encourage falling into extremes. They don't encourage stability and moderation.
- eksemplar 9y agoI find articles like this ridiculous. Plenty of things in the modern world is bad for your mental health. Social sites like Facebook, hacker news and so on are constant reminders that you're missing out. You didn't go to a social event last night and you still haven't picked up JavaScript, etc. On top of that research show that people now read comments rather than articles... It may just be me, but reading comments in general isn't a positive thing in my life. I mean, I enjoy the discussions on HN and often I walk away informed, but the time it takes could've been spent better. I've been here 30 minutes today. That's about how long it takes me to read a scientific article on a subject I'm interested in, and when I do that I typically walk away both informed, inspired and with a few ideas of my own. Which is the point I want to get to. Not everyone in the west is suffering. There are people who apply their focus to meaningful subjects and have interesting people to discuss them with. There are people who spend their Saturday walking in the forest. There are people who have enough wealth to live healthy lives with large degrees of individual freedom, and lastly there are people who combine all those things and lead truely impactful lives. I think those people are a lot more happy than hunter gatherers ever were, while also enjoying the fruits of modern technology enabling them to live beyond 35, not seeing half their children die, having easy access to a wealth of knowledge and in generally enjoying unsurpassed freedom.
- ivanhoe 9y agoI somehow think this is an idea popular mainly among people who never had to live that way for real (and no, going for a weekend in woods for fun is not comparable). Yes, they don't have our types of stress, but it's just not true that this is stress free living. Their every single moment is fighting to survive, to collect enough water, to hunt enough meat, not to get hurt, not to get sick or injured. And they're used to that life, so superficially they might look like doing much better than us, but life is still hard for them. Walking for hours to collect water and then bringing it back every single day is not something that people who had to do it remember fondly. Looking for food can be fun when there is enough of it, but sometimes there isn't, and they know very well that if they fail their family will be literally be left hungry, their children might even die. I honestly doubt it's much less stressful than worrying about mortgage. And all of that is in the normal situations, until a drought or disease strikes, or until their best hunter gets killed or injured, or neighboring tribe attacks and steals their women. In such extreme times civilization is the safety net that saves your life, and that's why we come up with it, in the first place. To make our life easier. And it is. And if it's too stressful for you, is it really because of the civilization, or because of your own choices and ambitions?
- sek3 9y agoWe don't have civilization today. We have a consumption machine that has gone of the rails trapping everyone from CEOs, Generals, Judges, Politicians to Janitors in mindless superficial activity. We have more in common with an ant colony than whatever civilization ideal anyone ever imagined.
- nils-m-holm 9y agoAnd anyone who mentions it will get marginalized. :(
- guntars 9y agoI doubt you or the parent commenter are going to be marginalized because of that comment is any way. The fact that you can have these beliefs and express them in a public forum is a sign of how civilized things actually are. There are plenty people alive that have lived through times where that wasn't an option. Talking to them might give you some perspective.