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Before we get so excited about those high tech huts everyone is sleeping in these days, we should work on the problems we have right here in our caves. Will hu

Before we get so excited about those high tech huts everyone is sleeping in these days, we should work on the problems we have right here in our caves. Will huts help us share our mammoth meat more peacefully? Will huts make Atkinson Clan stop beating up Montanas? Will huts make Montanas any less annoying? Mark my words, sisters and brothers. These problems will go with us wherever we build huts. Until we learn to make Montanas less annoying and Atkinsons less murderous, I say we stay in these caves.

yifanl 6y ago
Kicking the can down the road is a sustainable policy, making the can bigger each time we kick it is not.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  That's true. Shortly after we moved out of the caves Atkinsons and Montanas invented warfare. We should have stayed in the cave. I'm sorry, my grandchild. Never leave earth.
  - yifanl 6y ago
    Sure, we can sustain ourselves off "one step forwards, one step back still moves us somewhere else", but the average person doesn't see how many steps back we take to make those steps forward and will come to an overly optimistic plan to move.
barbazoo 6y ago
Except that the cavemen were able to live sustainably in the cave in the first place.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth#Extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth#Extinction
  - barbazoo 6y ago
    Interesting, thanks for the link. My comment however was in response to the comparison cave/hut, not caveman lifestyle in general. But I get what you're saying. Maybe we're just fundamentally unable to live sustainably, by design so to speak.
    - cleansingfire 6y ago
      Slash and burn is ancient agriculture, too. While Wikipedia calls it sustainable, it was only sustainable with approximately no humans, resulting in functionally unlimited land. Larger populations can't wait for the forest regrowth part of the cycle. /grandiose We are genetically programmed to live for a few decades, reproduce, and care for our kin (both blood and tribe) in a world which was limitless (relative to us as individuals.) I deeply fear this is the sad answer to the Fermi paradox. Now, our survival depends on outsmarting our short-sighted genes.
- adwn 6y ago
  That's highly misleading. Pre-agricultural humans weren't some kind of noble savages, living in perfect harmony and balance with nature. They lived "sustainably" only in the sense that their environment killed them off at the same rate as they procreated, not of their own volition.
  - dalbasal 6y ago
    Between (and in defiance of) those two positions are some interesting ideas about sustainability. On one end, "cavemen" are sustainable humans with implied cultural virtues. On the other, the pre agricultural equilibria is mostly about high human mortality and low population size. At any given time though, people often had cultural understandings of natural ecosystems. We started being humans by living as part of such ecosystems, and undoubtedly both caused and witnessed all sorts of sudden changes and disasters... some linked to human activity. If you live in an areas, and rely on plants, game and such... your culture is more likely to be "literate" in these things. Game can be hunted out, plants overharvested. A population surge in one species may deplete another. "Balance" can be restored, sometimes in a more or less beneficial way than before. These are all observable, and of great interest to people (those left) who make their living this way. The occasional and unpredictable flush of rabbits one autumn, is relevant to the life of someone who eats them.

yifanl 6y ago

Kicking the can down the road is a sustainable policy, making the can bigger each time we kick it is not.

dalbasal 6y ago
That's true. Shortly after we moved out of the caves Atkinsons and Montanas invented warfare. We should have stayed in the cave. I'm sorry, my grandchild. Never leave earth.
- yifanl 6y ago
  Sure, we can sustain ourselves off "one step forwards, one step back still moves us somewhere else", but the average person doesn't see how many steps back we take to make those steps forward and will come to an overly optimistic plan to move.

barbazoo 6y ago

Except that the cavemen were able to live sustainably in the cave in the first place.

wizzwizz4 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth#Extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth#Extinction
- barbazoo 6y ago
  Interesting, thanks for the link. My comment however was in response to the comparison cave/hut, not caveman lifestyle in general. But I get what you're saying. Maybe we're just fundamentally unable to live sustainably, by design so to speak.
  - cleansingfire 6y ago
    Slash and burn is ancient agriculture, too. While Wikipedia calls it sustainable, it was only sustainable with approximately no humans, resulting in functionally unlimited land. Larger populations can't wait for the forest regrowth part of the cycle. /grandiose We are genetically programmed to live for a few decades, reproduce, and care for our kin (both blood and tribe) in a world which was limitless (relative to us as individuals.) I deeply fear this is the sad answer to the Fermi paradox. Now, our survival depends on outsmarting our short-sighted genes.
adwn 6y ago
That's highly misleading. Pre-agricultural humans weren't some kind of noble savages, living in perfect harmony and balance with nature. They lived "sustainably" only in the sense that their environment killed them off at the same rate as they procreated, not of their own volition.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  Between (and in defiance of) those two positions are some interesting ideas about sustainability. On one end, "cavemen" are sustainable humans with implied cultural virtues. On the other, the pre agricultural equilibria is mostly about high human mortality and low population size. At any given time though, people often had cultural understandings of natural ecosystems. We started being humans by living as part of such ecosystems, and undoubtedly both caused and witnessed all sorts of sudden changes and disasters... some linked to human activity. If you live in an areas, and rely on plants, game and such... your culture is more likely to be "literate" in these things. Game can be hunted out, plants overharvested. A population surge in one species may deplete another. "Balance" can be restored, sometimes in a more or less beneficial way than before. These are all observable, and of great interest to people (those left) who make their living this way. The occasional and unpredictable flush of rabbits one autumn, is relevant to the life of someone who eats them.