‼️ Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress by Christopher Ryan ‼️
57/∞
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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📚 Length: 400 pages
🔊Audiobook: 9 hours 20 minutes
Why you should read this book?
💡Offers an interesting introspect how we used to live as hunters and gatherers.
💡 Brings a possible explanation of why people in western society are so unhappy even though they are seen as ’rich.’
💡 Sheds light on how children were raised in tribes and how it was better than we do it nowadays.
Did you also had a teacher in the elementary school, who told you that you are extremely lucky to be born now and not in the middle ages or even thousands and thousands of years ago? 😃 Who told you that the civilisation is the ultimate bliss and salvation? Did you ever gathered up enough courage and talked back to that teacher and said: BULLSHIT, Ryan says otherwise! 😃 😃 😃
Ryan argues that being ’civilised’ is actually a bad thing. It robbed us of all the perks in the whole and wide universe of what it means to be a human being! When I look on the great western civilisation and its problems, I cannot do otherwise but to agree with him.
...
9 to 5 = modern day slavery
Majority of us (living in the western society) is unhappy all the time. In the western civilisation we go to work like slaves and we do not get paid enough to cover our basic living cost. Everybody keeps stealing our money (the government, the inflation, the refugees) and everybody says it is not their fault (well, it is their fault). Despite the fact we work, we cannot afford our own flat/house and take a good care of our family. But guess what?! It was not like that all the time throughout the history.
Let’s start with some examples from the book. Ryan says that we lived happily in tribes before the ’invention’ of the agriculture. He even points out that some inventions might not have been invented because people simply liked to do certain things (like to walk a few minutes to the river to get water, instead of building a mill and a pipeline).
Hunters and gatherers have spent 4 hours a day with tasks such as hunting and gathering. What about the rest of the time they got in the day? You guessed it right! The rest of the time was their free time! The rest of the day was spent on messing around, social bounding etc. All the things nowadays we do not have time for. Most of us sit in fuckin' offices and we steadily degenerate, because we lack movement, meaningful relationships and healthy food.
Now, compare this lifestyle to your usual: 8 hours, 5 day work week. If you work in a law firm, count in some extra hours to make sure your equation is right and do not be shy to add some work weekends, too. 😉🤟 (12 to 18 hours per day is sufficient for a law firm incl. weekends) 😂
When you get a burnout (from too much stress, lack of free time and meaningful relationships), remember, it is the consequence of the modern western lifestyle which we all are so lucky to have! 😂
Construction of the new houses
If you live in the what we call “the greatest western civilisation“ you know that to build a house takes a lifetime. Not because it is difficult, but because you have to pay every single motherfucker in the system set up by western civilisation. Just some examples: you need to pay an architect, town hall, workers, engineers, craftsmen, you need to pay somebody to buy a land where the house will be bulit all of that. Which means you need to earn a shit tons of money! Which you do not have, because you did not wit lottery recently. So you need to take a mortgage! Then you need to pay the bank, feed the greedy bankers and then keep stressing over your financial burdens for the rest of your life until the point where you paid your mortgage off. But when you reach that point in life you are already on a death bed. But even to afford a mortgage, you need to belong to the top of the most successful people in the western society.
How did hunters and gatherers tackled the housing problem? Let’s say you moved to a new village, you are homeless and you are in dire need for a new house. Well, the men in the village would just gather up and build you one in three days or so! That’s it! In return you help them with whatever they needed. Housing was not a privilege in the society of hunters and gatherers, it was given right, so next time someone will try to convince you otherwise (e.g. your evil greedy govenment), remember hunters and gatherers paid nothing for housing and land they lived on.
Who do you think had it better? Hunters and gatherers or we?
Lifespan
Hunters and gatherers did not live as long as we do. Very few of them aged over 40. Their life was shorter, but the quality of their life was higher. Did they had to suffer elderly diseases like we do nowadays? E.g. Alzheimer, immobile joints, falling off stairs etc.?
It was even considered reasonable to let some elders die or to leave them behind so they did not slow down the tribe and did not act as burden.
Would you rather live shorter and more fulfilled life or the long dragging, long life filled with suffering, waiting and final isolation?
Resources
Females pick only men with the top resources in the western society. Other men do not interest them. These men do not need to be smart, healthy, handsome, these man do not need anything. All they have to have is the access to resources. If you do not have money in the western society, you are basically a useless piece of shit. Women will say: I do not prefer rich men, but all they do is to prefer rich and wealthy men, because only these man can secure their potential future offspring.
In the societies of hunters and gatherers your wealth played some role, but not the same one as in the western society. Hunters who were successful on a hunt knew they were just lucky and that the next time they might not be so lucky. Therefore they shared whatever they caught with all the members of the group. This made them feel good and needed, but it also helped to forge heathy and good relationships in tribes. Compare it with the stingy and wealthy in the western society who only cumulate riches and do not share with others.
What does this behaviour lead to? To the class struggle (described by Karl Marx), to inequalities in the society and to a larger and larger number of angry young males in the western societies. Because a very few man can afford to have a family in the West nowadays. Family = unreachable luxury.
More importantly, according to Ryan, incidents such as rapes were rare in the societies of hunters and gatherers. Women were not having sex with one particular man, but with all men they liked. An offspring cost loads of money and the very last thing you want to do as a man, is to provide for a baby your woman has conceive with someone else. Which is the reason, why single mothers are completely undesirable by all men in the western society and they are then becoming a burden for a state and the rest of the society, because they had to be fed off the taxes all people in that one particular country pay. Which is very unfair to those who want to have family but cannot afford on, but they still have to pay made up taxes. But in the society of hunters and gatherers it was not such a big deal when a woman had 5 babies, each of them with a different father.
Should we judge women who have XYZ children each with a different father or is this preception a result of being civilised? (I would. My woman is my woman, I do not share, haha...)
Raising children in tribes of hunters and gatherers vs now
Modern women want to be strong and independent. At least this is the picture western propaganda tries to promote all the time. I say it is wrong. It is the new communist ideology which is here to destroy our world and make everyone unhappy (both men and women).
In the Czech Rep. is this ever ongoing debate as what is the role of a woman and a man when it comes to rising the offspring. To slot this into the context, Czech women can stay on maternity leave for up to 3 years (luxury in comparison to the USA where a woman gives a birth and goes back to work after 2 weeks). Czech women get a certain amount of money (let’s say 14 k EUR - it is ridiculously low, I know) from the state during this period and it is up to them if they want to stay at home for a year (and get larger monthly payments) or let’s say 3 years (and get lower monthly payments).
Now, being on maternity leave does not pay bills, which means men still need to work. Supposedly even harder, because family costs a fortune. Eventually, this leads to the problem that stay at home mothers get bored and exhausted by the baby. They often complain there no one to help them with their baby yadi-yadi-ya. I say to that: fair, I understand, but it is very hard to change this ration woman/man care provided for a baby in western capitalism based society. In the old days, grandparents, uncles, aunties would help, in the other words: the extended family. But nowadays, many of our relatives live in different cities (even countries) which means we can pop our babies by whenever we want or need (editor’s note: Makes me realise I haven’t seen my cousins in years).
What about hunters and gatherers? Who did they have sex with and who was taking care of the babies. According to Ryan, women had sex with anybody they liked (of course this is completely unacceptable in the western society). The father of the baby wasn’t one particular man, who had to provide for the woman and the baby. "The Father" was the entire tribe. When baby was crying, somebody picked it up and cheered it, when baby was hungry, somebody fed it. Gábor Maté has referred in his books to a numerous examples how modern western humans get fucked up as children, because the parents does not pay attention to them. Meanwhile, the mother could rest and it was up to the baby what connections within the tribe it will built and who will teach it to hunt and so on. In this way the baby did not suck all mental energy of one particular person, but this energy was equally distributed between all the members of the tribe.
Based on this book, I believe that hunters and gatherers were capable of raising emotionally healthier and more self-confident children than we can do nowadays in the western society. The baby got emotional care when and where it needed and the baby was not exhausting for its mother, but it was a joy for the entire tribe.
Why do you think there are so many angry young males nowadays? Because if only a few percent of the society is so rich and can afford to have a female and family, they are super successful. But look on some 3rd world countries. They neither have money nor our standard of living. But they have plenty of children! Then they try to come to Europe for better life. Only being surprised we do not want them! We want to have our own children! Not more refugees! It is said that one asylum seeker / refugee from Africa costs the EU around 620.000 EUR for 1 year since the arrival before he or she starts to work. This is unacceptable, we need to invest this money into our children.
Who will inherit and how agriculture changed our lives forever
Hunters and gatherers were all equal in their tribe. Not only men had the same say, but also women. It was very equalitarian society. What happened since we become farmers? Right, the class struggle has began and the society was divided on who have and who have not.
The land and kingdoms could be inherited only by one (usually the eldest son) in the family. What about the others? They need to leave and go somewhere else (and fight). The one who will inherit is also most desirable by females. It does not mean, he is the strongest, smartest, healthiest or the most capable of… He just inherits all the land, all of farm and with it the means of production (as Karl Marx calls it). This is the one with all the wealth while others get nothing… All what the others can do is to work for someone else and rely on what others will give them instead of building their own self-sustainable empire. Which leads to greater and greater inequality.
The boy and his dream - introspect into modern mental health care narrative
Ryan also mentions a tribal boy who had a what I would describe as hallucinogenic dream. The boy got scarred because he was not sure what his dream was suppose to mean. He told one of the elders in the tribe who helped him to manifest his dream into the reality. This helped to improved boy’s self-confidence and figure out what was behind his dream.
Imagine you do that in the western society. They send you to a shrink. There is no understanding for such a thing. Everything what was normal and human got penalised by the western system.
Did ’savages’ preferred civilisation over the wild nature?
The answer is no, they did not. ’Savages’ brought to the civilisation by Britons in the early days of exploration and colonisation to ‘London’ did not want to stay forever. They wanted to go back home, they never got used to the 'civilised world' where you need to pay for everything with money and nothing is free.
When another group of natives who have never seen a civilisation was brought over, they were not impressed. The only thing they learnt from westerners was that they added fletchings to their arrows.
Finally, there are some examples of us people from western civilisation who have left and never wanted to return. It was because they were free, they did not need to pay for everything they do, use etc. I understand these people…
Kaiser’s Verdict: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (highly recommended read)
Highly recommended. It will broaden your mind and helps you to point out the finger on your government, because it offers a comparison of how things were thousands of years ago when we were just ’stupid’ hunters and gatherers. You might come to the conclusion that being a hunter and gatherer was not as bad as your elementary school teacher once told you. After reading this book, you might even consider to quit your stupid 9 to 5 job and go to the mountains, seize the land, build a cabin, get a few chicken, stop paying made up taxes like Thoreau in Walden (reviewed by der Kaiser 👑 ) and tell the western society to fuck off.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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Coming Up Next:
Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Things You Need to Know About the World by Vaclav Smil
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