Amazing Human Nature

I've been going over some of these posts and here's my commentary.
1st, I disagree with first post. Agriculture did not simply "rear its ugly head". Humans are a constantly evolving species, without evolution we would still be stuck in the trees (chimps). It is evolution that enabled us to develop agriculture in the first place, allowing our population to grow to numbers unimaginable for a hunter-gatherer society. This increased population density allowed specialization to develop (as mentioned in class), and we continued on the path of evolution through specialization. I doubt we would have steam engines, nuclear power, internet, NASA without specialization. We did not stress the earth's resources back then, things were in relative balance (time of early agriculture). Yes, there were inequalities that came out of agriculture, but honestly I'd rather have that than us stuck in the stone age.

And in an attempt to correct this inequality, many individuals labored in the past century to produce a classless society. After a great economic cost and millions of lives thrown away, I think we can say the experiment was a failure.

The most interesting thing: in the 21st century we will need to adapt techniques that go contrary to human nature. It is the only way to reverse the above described processes. Fattening food, cheap food? People will buy these things automatically. Do people think twice? hardly. Of course i'm not trying to shift blame away from the corporations and the government that subsidizes them, this is also their fault. But what i'm trying to say is, they capitalize on the fact that most people really don't want to think to much for themselves. (There's actually a lot of evidence to support this).

Same story for the consumerism- people love buying things. People like having new things and more things. As I said, its in human nature. Maybe human nature is faulty, but it is inherent in our evolution. Whoever had more had the greatest chance of attracting a mate (stone age- whoever had bigger tribe, more food, whatever). This strategy has worked out well so far. Unfortunately, as we enter the 21st century it is working so well that it is literally tearing the planet apart to keep the machine running and people consuming. It ceases to be beneficial when humanity itself becomes endangered. When that happens, its time to change our nature and adapt.

Human nature is adaptable to the environment. That is the whole point of evolution. So, we should evolve in the 21st century and find a new way of continuing the process of evolution without older habits such as excessive consumerism, falling for unhealthy foods, and the like.