Meaning and Ultimate Goals

[JimboSteve]

<p>I take issue with this factual claim:</p>

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my impression is that individual farmers were out-competed by growing farming industries

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<p>[Family</a> Farms](<a href=“http://www.nifa.usda.gov/nea/ag_systems/in_focus/familyfarm_if_overview.html]Family”>http://www.nifa.usda.gov/nea/ag_systems/in_focus/familyfarm_if_overview.html)</p>

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research indicates that people’s health declined when they become agrarians due to the inferior diet.

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<p>Source?</p>

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homo sapiens’ brain-size and height were reduced quite dramatically around 10k years ago.

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<p>In other words, we’ve removed selection pressures towards intelligence and brute force? In other words, life’s become easier and less demanding on our physique and our intelligence?</p>

<p>Either way, your assertion is wrong in that it has been* since* 10000 years that there has been a mild decrease in brain size, and height shows the opposite trend (though this likely due only to our awful quality of living and despicable ability to avoid scurvy and other dietary deficiencies) after the end of the 19th century.</p>

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maybe the answer really is that agrarianism won out because the agrarian societies were more powerful,

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<p>In other words, people choose power and houses over unstable, hard-to-secure means of living.</p>

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someone who doesn’t believe that story sounds ungrateful doesn’t he.

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<p>Not ungrateful. Just a mix of unappreciative and, not entitled, but something close to it. I don’t know how to communicate the difference, but long story short: it’s hard taking someone seriously who professes the desire to give up cell phones, antibiotics, and quick bites for a dirt hut, half-rotten meat, and occasional bad winters that inflict starvation. And, though you say you do not have this desire, your comments only make sense in light of a fetishization of the “unencumbered” primitive state of man. </p>

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but i do think the amount people are working is too much on the average. too much in the sense that people would be happier if they could work less

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<p>Well, duh. I would also be happier if I could get free money, but I can’t.</p>

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i know some research shows that in countries where the work week is shorter people seem to be happier.

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<p>Now, this is probably true. But I would like you to consider that many people do not prioritize happiness over a larger house and a bigger ego. And that’s their choice. In many Scandinavian countries, it is not entirely their choice, so they get slightly more happiness and they don’t get a slightly larger house and a slightly larger ego. </p>

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it is true that there is this pernicious consumer culture i think where people are willing to work more to buy things that society pressures them to, not because those things improve their life or make them happier.

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<p>Not everyone wants to be happy in the same way. Some people prefer other things.</p>

<p>As for consumerism, I’ll take a few broken Slap-Chops* and a ripped Snuggie* for everything else I buy that I do like having. </p>

<p>*DISCLAIMER: I have never bought either of these things.</p>