[Note: This is the fiftieth sample from my rough draft of a
far from finished new book, Wild, Free, & Happy. The Search field on the right side will find
words in the full contents of all rants and reviews. These samples are not freestanding
pieces. They will be easier to
understand if you start with sample 01, and follow the sequence listed HERE —
if you happen to have some free time. If
you prefer audiobooks, Michael Dowd is in the process of reading and recording
my book HERE.
PATHWAY
TO DOMINATION
As discussed earlier, humans originated on the tropical
savannahs of east Africa. For most of
the human saga, we were strong, healthy, nearly naked tropical critters with
beautiful brown skin and curly hair. In
the tropics, winters were not cold, and food was available year round, so there
was no need to preserve and store food. There
was no need to invent technology for staying warm, like protective clothing and
shelter.
Because they were nomads, hoarding personal belongings would
have made no sense. Hauling stuff across
roadless wilderness was hard work.
Because they lived simply, they didn’t need much stuff. Instead, their survival largely depended on
the knowledge stored in the glop between their ears. For them, the keys to survival included
cooperation and sharing, working well together.
Hunter-gatherers were egalitarian, everyone was equal. Nobody gave orders, or took them. No one went hungry unless everyone did.
The berry patch was freely open to all. If a wandering forager picked some berries,
they were hers to share and eat. If I
killed a kudu, the event was a perfectly normal and natural, like the sun
rising at dawn. Nobody owned the animal,
no one got upset. It would be carried
back to camp, shared with the band, making everyone happy. All was good.
If a lion ate my brother, nobody exploded with rage. Lions ate many brothers and sisters, because
they were good to eat. We all feed each
other.
In the tropics, some sort of food was generally available
year round. From week to week, folks
knew the prime time for various munchies, and where to find them. They regularly visited the wild buffet, and
took what they needed from the daily specials.
Long term food storage was unnecessary and absurd.
Big Mama Nature devoted a couple million years to fine tuning
the evolution of tropical primates for survival in tropical climates, our home
sweet home, where we belonged. Compared
to today, our ancient ancestors would seem to have been simple, stable, sane,
and sustainable. They were not
two-legged category 5 hurricanes, like modern consumers. Things were relatively cool for a very long
time (sort of). It wasn’t until much
later that some sorcerers discovered the Fountain of Progress, guzzled its
hallucinogenic fluids, and started smashing things.
Snow
Country Colonization
As discussed earlier, maybe 100,000 years ago, some intrepid
pioneers began migrating from Africa into Asia.
They wandered eastward through tropical lands, eventually reaching
Australia. The pioneers had a great
time, and found many wonderful things to eat.
Quite a bit later, some of them wandered northward, into regions having
a temperate climate, snow country.
In portions of northern Eurasia, they discovered vast steppe
and prairie grasslands that spanned from central Europe, east to the Pacific
coast. Temperate grasslands were ideal
habitat for nurturing large herds of large herbivores, the food most cherished
by hunter-gatherers. It was as if they
had stumbled into an unimaginable Serengeti-like heaven of limitless meat. Joy!
Oddly, this was a bit like polar bears migrating into
steaming hot Congo rainforests. The
notion of tropical primates colonizing snow country was equally silly. The colonists were not born with fur
coats. They were not capable of
hibernation. They were too big to easily
travel across deep snow, or thin ice.
Food was scarce during the winter months. They knew little if anything about food
preservation and long-term food storage.
But they were spellbound by the availability of so much meat! Might there be some way that they could
possibly make a home in this land?
The colonists proceeded to improve their skills at hunting,
trapping, and surviving the long and frigid winters. Over time, they got a bit too skilled. As generations passed, the abundance of game
gradually diminished. Some species
blinked out forever. By and by, folks
began fooling around with horticulture and herding, setting the stage for the
dawn of plant and animal domestication.
I’ve already pointed out the obvious fact that the
domestication of plants and animals was a sharp change of direction in the
human saga. It forced us into the
express lane to a turbulent future. I
must emphasize that it’s also important to understand that the mere fact that
hunter-gatherers successfully colonized snow country — thousands of years
before domestication — was itself a crucial turning point, a necessary
prerequisite. Domestication originated
in regions having a temperate climate, as did the first civilizations. Colonization unlocked the gate to dangerous
realms.
Energy
Storage and Risks
In snow country, hunters faced more challenges than their
ancestors had in Africa. Back in the
tropics there was no frigid season, so no need for the long-term storage of
food energy. If hyenas snatched the kudu
you just killed, you may have lost one day’s effort, or less. In snow country, the two options were store
energy or starve. Many weeks of hard
work were invested in creating their winter food stash, lots of eggs in few
baskets. On any day, it could be raided
by rodents, wolves, dogs, bears, or other hungry visitors. A sudden hot spell could melt frozen meat and
spoil it.
Of course, compared to snow country hunters, the farmers and
herders faced more and bigger challenges.
From planting to harvest, a farmer’s crops were vulnerable to many
potential risks (weather, fire, insects, disease, deer, bunnies, etc.). Once the harvest was brought in, the granary
was loaded with valuable energy for future use, something like a tank of
oil. It was a treasure chest that stored
the concentrated results of countless hours of hard work — like a crisp new
$100 bill, not a mere handful of pennies.
Carefully stored energy could be an irresistible temptation to folks who
weren’t your best buddies.
Likewise, herders invested loads of time and effort in
creating impressive treasure chests of living flesh. Herding was not risk free. Late at night, your livestock could be quickly
driven away by thieves. Wild predators
could pick them off. During a long
drought, or when anthrax or rinderpest came to visit, the herds in a region
could be obliterated. At any time, you
could lose the stored treasure of a year’s hard work, or more. Nothing was insured.
Livestock herds were overseen by masters who firmly
controlled their movements, protected them from predators and raiders, and
blocked their escape attempts. Lifelong
enslavement made it easy for masters to acquire their meat, milk, blood, hides,
and wool whenever needed. Imagine
spending your entire life subservient to a dominator who eventually intended to
cut your throat, strip off your hide, and eat you (and your kids).
In snow country, when hunters, farmers, or herders enjoyed a
lucky streak, it could lead to population growth, which could lead to increased
tension and conflict. More folks
expected a piece of the pie, and some got wee slices. Treasure chests, of course, have a long
tradition of inspiring the belligerent behavior of aggressive parasites. One successful day of raiding could snatch
the rewards of months or years of toil, an outstanding profit. Very clever!
More
is Better
The colonization of snow country, and the necessity of food
storage, inspired a new meme: more is better.
Having adequate energy storage was mandatory, but having even more was
better still. When good luck
disappeared, it could be a blessed life saver.
Folks painfully understood when they were dangerously
hungry. They also understood when life
was kind to them. Oddly, many humans
seem to have a hard time perceiving the border line between enough and way too
much. In their brains, the idiot light
that indicated [ENOUGH] never came on.
More was always better. Too much
was impossible. Why do wobbly wrinkly 85
year old gits, with a billion dollars stashed away, still put on a suit and tie
every morning and strive to hoard even more?
Herds of livestock were self-propelled warehouses of living
meat that didn’t spoil. Provided with
grass and water, their bodies added more meat every month. So, more is better was an intoxicating idea,
until the land was stripped of vegetation, and herders experienced the painful
revenge of merciless limits. Farmers
could farm like crazy, year after year, until their topsoil was drained of
nutrients or ran away. Limits spoil
rowdy parties.
Of course, for our wild ancestors who remained in the
tropics, the more is better concept was absolute nonsense. It was impossible for nomadic folks to make
use of more than enough (too much = waste).
They couldn’t haul surplus with them, and in the hot climate, it would
spoil, or attract pests and scavengers.
It wasn’t until much later, when domesticated crops and livestock were
imported into Africa, that tropical folks began suffering from serious more is
better deliriums. Prior to this, enough
was enough, and they all lived happily ever after.
Control
Freaks
Big Mama Nature is fully aware that unusual population
outbursts in any species can destabilize healthy ecosystems. She generally does what’s needed to restore
balance. The current human outburst has
become a spectacularly destructive living asteroid. It’s now traveling at maximum velocity toward
an invincible fortress of merciless limits that will take great delight in
splattering the juggernaut. There will
once again be peace on Earth (and a staggering mess).
Domestication triggered a shock wave in the human saga. It radically altered the traditional core
relationship between humans and the rest of the ecosystem. For maybe two million years, hominins were
participants in a family of life that joyfully danced to the ecstatic music of
freedom. Then, domestication gave birth
to a monster child, a new and obscene verb named control. Devilish anti-freedom. The toxic juju of control has infected the
relationship, rendering it dysfunctional and violently abusive.
During the hunter-gatherer era, folks foraged for wild plant
foods, and took what they needed. This
wasn’t a labor intensive control-oriented process of clearing, tilling,
planting, weeding, etc. The shift to
agriculture transformed healthy sustainable wild landscapes into unsustainable
radically simplified manmade food production systems. Wild and free are the opposite of controlled.
Hunting was the pursuit of wild game, which required a
combination of skill and random chance.
Wild game is intelligent, alert, and driven by a powerful desire to
avoid predators. Being alive is
precious. Wild game is out of
control. They are not passive dimwitted
sheep in the pasture, constantly overseen by shepherds and dogs. Herding is the process of controlling enslaved
animals, for every minute of their lives.
When the herder needs meat, he selects which animal dies. Escape is impossible.
Agriculture was a sedentary enterprise, the farmer was firmly
bound to a specific piece of land. When
danger approached, the granary treasure chest could not be easily moved to a
safe place, because it was not self-propelled, like livestock. Depending on the threat, a farmer could
defend it (and maybe die), or abandon it (and maybe starve). High vulnerability, and a desire to survive,
inspired farmers to reside in villages, and benefit from mutual defense. Over time, as threats increased, villages
became walled and fortified cities. Over
time, a warrior class emerged, to molest incoming attackers, and to attack and
rob vulnerable outsiders.
Many farmers didn’t have the time, space, or desire to keep
much livestock, but herders did. Herders
who had access to extensive open grasslands could pursue a very different way
of life, and they did. Indeed, the
mindset of pastoralism eventually achieved great power. It provided the foundation for the mindset of
the world as we know it (stay tuned, more later).
Mother
Africa Infected
Lyall
Watson wrote a fascinating biography of Adrian Boshier (1939-1978), a young
British man who went to South Africa and walked a path of power. During his first six years in Africa, the lad
spent most of his time in the bush, learning the ways of the land,
rewilding. He would head off into wild
country with nothing but a pocketknife and a bag of salt (for trading), and
live off the land for as long as he wanted.
Boshier became highly skilled at catching and befriending
dangerous snakes. Walking into a village
wrapped up in a 14-foot python (4.2 m), he terrified the natives, giving birth
to his reputation as a powerful magician.
He would catch an eight-foot cobra, milk its venom, and drink it before
a gasping wide-eyed crowd.
Prehistoric cave painting in Europe gets a lot of
attention. African cave art gets
less. Boshier visited many caves,
because the rock art in them had immense spirit power. One day, he sat in a cave in Makgabeng, and
had a chilling experience when his eyes focused on a horrific heartbreaking
image. The artists were likely San
people, the original residents.
Mother Africa is where the human saga began, an evolutionary
adventure spanning back maybe two million years, when early hominins came down
from the trees. There’s a good chance
that the San people are the ancestors of most or all humans alive today. Around 100,000 years ago, some Africans began
migrating into the Eurasian landmass, where they eventually learned how to
survive in a temperate climate, and then much later conjured plant and animal
domestication into existence.
The images that had filled Boshier with horror were portraits
of fat-tailed sheep, critters domesticated in the Middle East. Sheep were not indigenous to sub-Saharan
Africa. They were brought to Africa by
folks who were returning to Mother Africa, their ancestral homeland, with some
new and creepy habits. Some say the
Bantus brought the sheep, others suspect the Khoi (Hottentots). Whoever brought them, they were symbols of a
dark transition. The family of life in
Africa was, for the first time ever, no longer entirely wild and free. Hideous manmade freak show critters had
arrived, along with a freak show culture of control and domination. Trouble ahead.
Watson lamented, “The introduction of a pastoral economy,
starting perhaps three or four thousand years ago, seems to have marked the
beginning of a relentless destruction, now almost complete, of the earliest way
of human life. It was the end of a
society that had discovered how to live in harmony with — rather than at the expense
of — nature.”
[Continued in sample
#51]
