wyvernfriend
Written on Mar 19, 2013
I found this slight. interesting but slight. While some points are valid (aka our cultural structure and social structure is broken but we have too much invested in it for an easy fix) some are quite invalid. Yes, we need to stop having so many children *but* we can't just starve people because there's a famine in their country. The English tried that in Ireland, it was referred to as Laisse Faire Economics. Millions of Irish people died or fled the country, while there was enough foodstuffs being produced in some areas, but they were being exported for profit. Also profiteers robbed people blind. That's what happens when people prey on people.
Also animals don't just kill enough to satisfy themselves, ask a sheep farmer about dog packs or a person with hens about foxes, then come back to me about animals being perfectly in balance with each other. This is a fallacy as dangerous as the noble savage concept.
While the author presents the idea that there is no "one true way" or "one truth" the book is absolutist, offering a concept that agriculture is wrong and that the one true way is hunter-gatherer. Some of the theories say that the only reason we developed education and other concepts like that was because that due to agriculture you could support people who would teach and would do other things rather than work on the farm, that it gave people time.
What the world needs is more balance. While I do agree that the Western European or "mother culture" as depected in the book is broken, and needs fixing, I don't think this is the cure.
Worth reading mindfully for the ideas, I disagreed with much of them, but found myself thinking, which rose the book above the original 3 stars to 3.5 stars.
Also animals don't just kill enough to satisfy themselves, ask a sheep farmer about dog packs or a person with hens about foxes, then come back to me about animals being perfectly in balance with each other. This is a fallacy as dangerous as the noble savage concept.
While the author presents the idea that there is no "one true way" or "one truth" the book is absolutist, offering a concept that agriculture is wrong and that the one true way is hunter-gatherer. Some of the theories say that the only reason we developed education and other concepts like that was because that due to agriculture you could support people who would teach and would do other things rather than work on the farm, that it gave people time.
What the world needs is more balance. While I do agree that the Western European or "mother culture" as depected in the book is broken, and needs fixing, I don't think this is the cure.
Worth reading mindfully for the ideas, I disagreed with much of them, but found myself thinking, which rose the book above the original 3 stars to 3.5 stars.