Neanderthalcouzin
Fulfills one of his dreams
To go back in time
And see our hunter-gatherer ancestors
♫Look around your world pretty baby♫
♫Is it everything you hoped it'd be?♫
♫The wrong guy the wrong situation♫
♫The right time...♫
Abel Tasman National Park 2010 AD
Etosha National Park 40,000 BC
It's really difficult to talk about this stuff
when I'm actually on the trip.
It's a really bad connection
but it doesn't matter. I'm actually here anyway.
All right? Okay, bye.
- Aha, a tribesman. Looks like he's on the hunt.
.
- Excuse me? Hello? - Who are you?
.
- Just think of me as coming from a distant tribe.
So may I join you?
- Sure, come on.
- Who's that guy over there?
The one with the mars ball thing, what?
- Oh him, that's Pierre Mosaic.
He has this ridiculous idea. He's crazy!
.
He talks about living in a different way. I don't know
in some kind of insane future where
we have food just coming to us or something. I don't get it.
We don't hunt and gather anymore?
- Oh well, you know that actually sounds a lot like where I come from.
- What?!
- Yeah.
- Oh guys, oh guys, we've got another Mars Project supporter.
- No no, I mean
some of the things you just mentioned are completely true.
You know, that's what it's like where I'm from.
- What do you mean?
- Well, where I come from we don't hunt or gather we just...
- That's what we are.
[That's] what we do.
Do you mean you don't hunt?
You'd die.
- No, you see we have a totally different
socio-economic system that emerged from centuries
of civilizations engaging in large scale agriculture and... -What, what?!
- It's domestication of plants and livestock, you know? -What?
.
- OK, it's where you take the kudu you just hunted, and well
you breed it yourself, and you keep it for yourself.
The plants and the things you gather, well we just grow them.
As a result of this we have specialization of labor.
Most people don't even work in
.
what we call agriculture, let alone hunting. I'm a copy editor.
- You mean to tell me that there is a future
where people don't hunt and gather?
- Yep.
- If that's not impossible, we're hunter-gatherers
by human nature. It's who we are.
-Yeah, human nature is a simulacrum.
.
- Huh? - It means it's largely bullshit.
You see, human behavior is a derivative of a complex interplay
of environmentally learned, ecologically-dependent conditions
no doubt interacting with a whole slew of what we would call
hard-wired or evolved genetic predispositions.
Genes in this sense set propensities but
especially in regards to behavior, we're soft-wired
for cultural learning and environmentally-contingent adaptation.
There is no such thing, for instance, as a gene for hunting.
Subsistence models, for example, are directly a function of
ecological constraints, what the habitat can provide
and we, in turn, anthropologically alter that environment
eventually to the point that just about everything we do
does not even occur in a "natural habitat".
We actually live inside technology, so to speak.
We learn and adapt to our own human-made social environments.
You, as a nomadic egalitarian hunter-gatherer from the Pleistocene
you have by necessity
the dramatic ever-changing labile environments you live in.
You move constantly from place to place
according to basic necessity in order to survive.
By doing this, you lower your ecological risk
and it is this labile environment that, potentially, set in motion
strong selective pressures for a malleable, flexible, adaptable brain
capable of immense social learning and behavioral plasticity.
Without our ability to learn greatly
from our social and physical environment
well, we might not have made it through this difficult time you're in now.
-Yes, and the only way to get through life is as a hunter-gatherer.
- Well, no.
Where I'm from we live in predominantly sedentary large-scale populations
that are entirely reliant on a largely technological agricultural base.
They provide the food through advanced
highly-efficient technological means
and the rest of us can say, well, you know
become a teacher or an artist or a politician or a copy editor.
- What's a politician?
- The love child of a trumped-up lawyer and a businessman.
- What are those things?
- Well, they're some of the other things people do
instead of hunting and foraging.
- Listen, you and Pierre Mosaic are totally insane
if you think any of this is possible and no one will go along with it.
You don't move around? How do you avoid droughts?
Did you think about that? No, you didn't.
How about seasonal changes in the food we find?
You can't stay in one place. Tell that to Pierre before we exile him.
- Well, you see while you and your band lower your ecological risk
of staying in only one place by constantly moving
tracing seasonal changes in asynchronous resources
in my home we lower our ecological risk of staying in one place
by creating very far reaching systems of economic exchange
which stretch further than any hunter-gatherer could reach anyway.
We don't have to be on the move.
I produce one type of food, and someone produces another type
far away, and we exchange it.
That's how we can stay in one place
making only one type of food, and we don't worry.
- Wait a second. You mean to tell me that
you control the plants that come out of the ground?
- Well, you know, yes.
- That's how you take the wild game and keep them
in the same place and control them too?
- Yes.
- Impossible! Ridiculous!
The kudu would attack the whole camp, and they'd run away.
- Yes, but they aren't wild anymore.
We domesticated them using something called selective breeding.
We breed docility into them to keep them in one place
and take what we need when we need it.
- So your telling me
you take all the meat and keep it in one place?
And then you take all the tubers and fruit, and you keep it in one place
and you somehow make it grow?
How do you make it grow? Are you a wizard?
- No, you keep the seeds of the plants
and plant them and you monitor them.
You breed the wild animals into docility
and you make sure they keep breeding. No magic.
.
- Well, it sounds like magic to me.
Look, don't you even realize it's in our nature to hunt?
- Oh no, not the human nature thing again.
- Yeah, see what you want is to take away our nature.
Say what you want, but every one of us hunts.
All our ancestors have done it, and we always will do it.
Even the lion hunts. It's nature, not just in human nature.
Look around, for crying out loud!
Don't you realize if you kept all the game in one place
everyone would make their hunting camps around it
and they'd just wake up in the morning
and they'd hunt everything until its all gone?
You haven't thought this through at all.
- Listen every single point you make is entirely limited
to your own experience, culture and worldview.
You think none of this can happen because
you keep referencing a limited knowledge base
and simplifications of both reality and human behavior.
People in this environment are no longer hunter-gatherers
so they don't stand around and chuck spears at the animals, ok?
The animals don't destroy everything and
go on another one of their epic migrations
because they are domesticated and fenced in, ok? And again
the reason you're a hunter-gatherer is because of your environment.
You're not programmed strictly to be one.
I couldn't hunt with a spear to save my life.
And that's kind of the point, isn't it? I mean it's
about necessity and having the necessary cognitive apparatus to adapt
learn and respond to differing social and physical environments
.
which were the hallmark of our more recent ancestral past
and hence, evolutionary pressure to be highly behaviorally flexible.
Right, you know that tribe four days' walk over the mountains?
- Oh yeah, those bastards.
- You know the way they speak differently to you? You know
they wear different adornments. They have different nutritional preferences
and they even have different practices in how
they mate and how many mates they have.
Why do you suppose that is?
- They're just different, and just stay away from them, Mate.
- They are that way for a reason.
They were raised in a different social environment.
- Look, it doesn't matter what you say
we're hunters and gatherers by nature
and if you have any special collection of magically calm wild game
we would all go there and hunt them to the very last one.
- Well, yeah, maybe you would.
You see, in the environment I come from I have no doubt
you'd have an extremely difficult time changing and adapting
but you could.
For a start you aren't allowed to do that, but
you wouldn't need to anyway. Get it?
You do this because you need to do it.
Your environment brought that propensity out of you. The fact is
as you shifted into my civilization, your values would change.
- My values would change?
Mate, that sounds a little bit hairy fairy.
I mean hunting the kudo isn't even just a value.
It's my very spirit, as a hunter.
It's in my nature, and it's what humans do. It's our duty.
.
If there were animals everywhere, who hunts them anyway?
- Well, no one.
They just get slaughtered and sent to the people who want it.
- Than there's nothing to do is there? Nothing!
What do people do except sit around in the sun all day?
- Well I tried to explain. You do a million other things.
I can't even describe them all
because you don't have the frame of reference.
Do you know where you teach the children in your clan
about your ancestry? You know, cave painting, hunting
and you just engage them in educational activities?
- Well we just live together we don't take separate time
to do those things. It's just part of normal life. - Right, well
in this environment where I come from some people specialize
in specifically teaching the children of the tribe, so to speak
things that expand their knowledge
their frames of reference and understanding of reality.
Some people are like special spear and tool makers.
Others only paint the caves.
You know they do that and nothing else. Does that make sense?
- No they wouldn't do those things because the food is just their,
I keep telling you, they can just go and get it.
- Well, in my world it's sink or swim just like yours, Mate
except instead of running around and getting food and water
we get this stuff we call money.
It's a proxy for resources, shelter and a quality of life.
Without it, we're lion food.
So even though people do want to do things besides hunting
you know, they have to anyway.
Otherwise, they're nothing. - Check this out:
I spent four hours yesterday searching for a dried-up water source
and it looks like I'm going to have to move again to find reliable water.
- Ah, that's terrible. - And you're telling me
you just tell the water to stay in one place
like you do with the animals and plants?
You see, you can't have this life you're talking about.
You're always going to be free roaming nomadic hunter-gatherer.
- You know, well, in fact, we don't tell the water
to come to us or stay in one place.
We use systems engineering. We use irrigation systems.
Ugh! Okay, how can I put this?
.
We use our special knowledge and tools
to bring the water to us from the rivers and lakes.
Everyone has their own shelter like your makeshift shelters
only permanent, and well, inside them, we have a special lever.
OK, it's like when you stick a sharp point into a tree
and the sap comes out, right? - OK.
- Well, we have a stick that you twist, and you know, we call it a tap
and the water just comes rushing out.
.
- You never have to search around in the baking heat like a
migrating pack of elephants for some dried-up muddy water source.
You just take a few steps, twist the stick
and the fresh cold water flies out like a waterfall.
.
And there's another stick that sends it out extra hot.
- What?
- We decide if we want it cold or hot
and we have a special room that recreates a rain shower
only the water's warm
and we stand underneath it to clean our body and it feels good.
- Wait you have a room that becomes a rain storm
only the storm is warm, and you stand in it to clean yourself
then you can twist the stick and get as much water as you ever wanted?
- Yeah!
- Get the f*** out of here!
- No, no really.
- Do you understand what your saying?
We have an expression here. It goes:
"No time to talk until you've found water."
Do you know how important water is?
We can't risk one day without it.
I spend my whole life worrying about where
my next mouthful of water is coming from. Listen:
I don't know what the hell you're on
but this sounds like some kind of ridiculous Utopia
and nothing you can say will change that.
- Ah, the Utopia argument. - What?!
.
- Well, for a start, there's no such thing.
There is no final spear, no final arrow head.
Of course, it isn't Utopia. You only think it's Utopia
because you have a certain frame of reference
whereby you struggle every single day to get water
risking your life every single time you try and hunt large game.
You risk heat stroke, being gored, getting lost
breaking a limb, and surely dying as a result,
falling prey to disease and infections and never
ever, ever getting thoroughly outside that reality and environment
whereby the fight for water is a constant never ending struggle
that defines your very existence, worldview
lifestyle and understanding of reality.
For you, the lack of that striving, of just being able to twist your wrist
and getting abundant, endless water
hot and cold, literally on tap, is Utopian.
And on top of that, to not have to go on an 8-hour persistence hunt
to track down some elusive meat also sounds like Utopia, doesn't it?
You mean, you can just have it all in one place
fat, plump, and waiting patiently for a person to divide it up?
Tubers and fruit, all in a line, all told to grow there, and never leave?
If ever there was a hunter-gatherer's Utopia
it's what I'm talking about. But it's not Utopia.
It's real and it's just a lack of that particular striving.
It's almost like if a person where I came from
didn't have to run around 8 hours a day
just like you do for kudu hunting, in order to pull money
from circulating supply in order to survive and prosper
would probably sound like a Utopia to them, too. But they'd be wrong.
.
They'd be completely and totally and utterly, fully wrong.
Projecting their own strivings onto their own analysis
just like a world of amputees might see
the possibility of an automated prostheses as a Utopia as well.
They're wrong just like you're wrong, my friend
and Pierre Mosaic isn't a Utopianist. He never was.
You know, and while I'm at it, if someone wants to use
the name "communist" based upon one of its many elements
this man to the left of me counts as one.
He's your exponentially great-grandfather, and he's a communist.
That label can be used in just about any way it seems
but it is no more apt for anyone else than this guy.
For circa a hundred and fifty-thousand years, we had no money
concept of property and a totally egalitarian socioeconomic lifestyle.
And while some people might be tempted to call anything centralized
"communist", and I mean anything,
you have a central nervous system.
And since some are tempted to take anything that can be connected
by however many degrees of reasoning
.
or dot connecting or Kevin Bacon degrees of separation
including the science of systems engineering, apparently,
you may as well deny your ancestry;
that which made us who we are.
Give yourself a lobotomy
and refuse to use the many engineered centralized systems we use
from agriculture, to irrigation, to sanitation, to communication.
You will devolve yourself. Go right ahead.
.
Anyway, sorry for that digression, Sir, I don't know what caught me.
.
- Whatever. None of this sounds remotely plausible.
You're just a bunch of Utopian anti-hunter-gatherer retards
who jack-off to magical Ipods that cannot exist anyway
and never realized that human nature is to hunt and forage.
You cannot tell animals or plants or water to do anything.
You need to hunt to survive. People have to move to survive.
.
And Pierre Mosaic has a stupid beard.
- What?
- He's got a stupid f***ing beard. Look at his hat. F*** him.
- (Laughs) OK, it's just descending into total ad hominem.
- Oh yeah, you think so? You just can't take it
because you're an anti-hunting Utopian that wants to...
- magically control plants and animals. Yeah, I got it.
- And you jerk off to...
- ...magical Ipods.I got that too. Look
it doesn't matter if you hate Pierre Mosaic and The Mars Project.
- Mars Project. It's a cult!
- I don't even care about title or Mosaic's beard.
It's the ideas, the technology and observations of reality
and what's important and where we can go.
We give things linguistic labels because it's convenient
and people come together under it as a short hand.
But the fact is, large-scale agriculture is central to civilization
with irrigation, technology, and specialization of labor
are all waiting for us, and they're waiting for you.
.
It's just good to start a dialogue and see if
we can't make people aware of this and maybe speed up the process.
- You can't answer a single one of my points like human-hunting nature
water, animals and plants being magically controlled
and you just parrot the same "commie" Utopian nonsense
the bearded prick Pierre Mosaic spouts in his
anti-hunting, forage hating
magic magic Ipod-jerking Mars Project cult.
- You know, speaking of religion, I often debate creationists
and you come off pretty much exactly the same way.
- What's religion? I guess you're going to find out all about that
.
in a few thousand generations. Well, good luck with that, by the way.
.
♫Look around your world pretty baby♫
♫Is it everything you hoped it'd be?♫
.
- Yeah, it was a complete disaster, just
trying to deal with these communist egalitarian hunter gatherers.
It was all ad hominids, drawn out fallacies
and culturally-sensitive frames of reference...
-Time machine sound effect-
-Music fades out-