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This largely relies on the idea that pre-civilized life was preferable. And, for some groups, it was. All the women enjoying close to 0 sexual freedom and dying
by projektir 7y ago
This largely relies on the idea that pre-civilized life was preferable. And, for some groups, it was. All the women enjoying close to 0 sexual freedom and dying in child birth might disagree, though.
- JulianMorrison 7y agoPatriarchy is a farming-age invention.
- projektir 7y agoI am pretty sure menstruation and child birth are not farming age inventions.
- JulianMorrison 7y agoYou'd be surprised. Longer breastfeeding suppresses ovulation and menstruation, so fertility is relatively rare. Childbirth works better squatting. Humans evolved to be hunter gatherers, most of our history is pre-settled-agriculture, we do fit that lifestyle better. And patriarchy was never contingent on those things anyhow. It's just a cultural choice that got stuck because it was woven into the form of citified civilization.
- contraryBecause 7y agoSo, I guess you're cool with the Darwinian aspect of childbirth, where we just let women bite it on their own, because if they can't survive the birthing process they must've been unfit organisms? And oh yeah, what about that part where, as part of nomadic life (you know, living in undefended tents, encampments, shanty towns, what have you), guys can pretty much just take what they want when push comes to shove, and inseminate women according to any opportunity available (see also: orangutan mating strategies), like, you know, when it's dark at night and everyone's trying to sleep and no one is looking. And before you retort that such a thing is easier said than done, consider that the definition of success is not living well after the act of conception. As long as the proverbial toilet gets flushed, the pregnancy was mostly a runaway train, with few reliable undo buttons. How do those aspects of sex differences fit into your world view of the old dastardly, dastardly patriarchy?
- projektir 7y ago> Longer breastfeeding suppresses ovulation and menstruation, so fertility is relatively rare. > Childbirth works better squatting. I would like to see citations indicating that these statements are true to a significant degree that modern improvements are of little value. I can't even find data on maternal mortality before 1800.
- walterstucco 7y agoWhile some of it it's true, especially the longer breastfeeding cycles, hunter gatherers were very exposed to natural dangers and groups were very small and vulnerable: a sickness or an accident could whipe them away overnight.
- Natsu 7y agoThere are patriarchal hierarchies among crustaceans, it seems less like a 'choice' and more like the result of a random, survivorship-biased process.
- buttcoinslol 7y agoDo you mean in the sense that hunter-gatherer prehistorical cultures tended to be more egalitarian?
- m463 7y agowait, hold up. The point was "knowing when to stop". Civilization creates these juggernauts that start moving and when they reach their goals their momentum carries them past need and reason. How many laws do we need? Do we need more roads (or lanes)? Should taxes increase? in percentage!? Do we need to "add value" to every product ever? Do kids need more homework? Do you need another iPhone?
- Atari800-YC 7y agoNo, but I might like to have another Atari 800.
- projektir 7y agoI'd say that passage says a lot more things than that, and I'm responding to them. It's part of the fairly resilient narrative of "it was better before" that I think is extremely not true. In my view, it is also nonetheless still not good enough, so I don't want it to "stop", depending on what you are defining as "it" here. Most problems we currently face are not a result of civilization itself. Count of laws or roads doesn't seem very material to me. Adding value treadmills just indicate some failure points of capitalism. But everything else we had before was even worse. What is the purpose of this exposition? We have many problems to fix, but none of them will get fixed by going backwards.
- perl4ever 7y agoI never bought my first iPhone. I am however, not at the point at which I feel like the world should stop turning. I'm more like "ok, I am capable of selecting the good things from the bad, and letting go of the novel tech I don't like". Perhaps that is a product of being middle aged and I will feel differently when I am 80. Douglas Adams wrote: “I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.” I like to look at classic car ads, and I saw one for a car from the 60s or whatever, and I forget the exact phrasing, but it said it had had a modern type of stereo installed, which had AM/FM and a CD player. Which I thought was funny, because that kind of pinpoints the assumed age/generation of a buyer. Going by Adams, someone who thinks car CDs are new, but good, could have been up to 35 in 1985 when the first car CD players came out. Which is exactly the age to remember mid to late 60s cars as desirable as a teenager. But now they are close to 70 years old, and that's why the prices of such cars are trending down. I'm not sure that it's inevitable that you hate new things as you get older. Maybe it's more that people feel insecure about their ability to choose which new things they like, because it becomes a disorienting flood.