Re: CHAT: Religion, Philosophy & Politics

On First Moon of Tenderness of first Red Cat, Lars Henrik Mathiessen wrote:

        On First Air of Tenderness, I had written:

> > I would believe that for a family or a small village, hunter-gatherers
> will
> > use less land than primitive farming.  But if you improve the farming
> > technology, we could increase the amount of people supported for the
> same
> > land; and if we have good trading practices, a larger used land could
> > support an even much larger amount of people.  Probably we are still far
> > from saturation but I thing the mass of people on earth is higher than
> the
> > one a hunter-gathering economy could support, in terms of usable land.
>
> I think you need to tell us what you think a hunter-gathering
> lifestyle means. The definition everyone else is using is for a group
> of people to hunt/fish/dig/pick their food and then wait for new
> animals/fish/roots/fruits to appear on their own.
>
Well.  It is also my definition.

> As soon as you do anything at all to increase the amount of food you
> can get, like by rounding up animals and protecting them from other
> predators or collecting the seeds of plants you like and sowing them
> elsewhere, you're not a hunter-gatherer anymore. Even if it's machines
> doing the work for you, you're a farmer with very fancy tools.
>
I mean, you can live a hunter-gathering life style if you are not involved
in how food is comming to you.  If an ancient nomade hunter-gathering tribe
had come to a plantation of a primitive agricultural village and eat from
the plantation, they don't stop being hunter-gatherers.  If we can bring the
simil to my _ideal_future_, then the whole society won't be hunter-gathering
but will allow people who want to be hunter-gatherers to worry nothing about
how goods ar provided.  They just hunt/fish/dig/pick.  Some ohter part of
the society, those who feel more confortable doing this kind of tasks, will
build/operate/support the machines that ensure the enviroment will no be
seriously harmed by those milliard hords of hunter-gatherers.

-- Carlos Th