“Give us today our daily bread”

We’ve been around for a while.
300 millennia, according to some. 70 millennia, according to others. Who use a more stringent set of criteria.
Anyway. Homo Sapiens is considered to be 300 000 years old while his nephew, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, is a little younger. Only 70 000 years…

Regardless of age, for most of this time we have been foragers.
OK, even our ancestors had tools. We’ve been around for 300ky while tools have predated us by more than 1my. Yes, our hominin predecessors were the ones to invent tools…

Then what is our contribution? Why are we the ones who are still around?

According to Ernst Mayr – if I interpret correctly – we’ve simply been lucky!
Nothing happened.
No catastrophic event bad enough to extinguish us. And no freshly minted ‘superman’ to take our place.
That question, regarding our contribution, speaks volumes about our infatuation with ourselves.

Hence the paradox.

Very recently, we’ve done something. Used agriculture on a large enough scale to change our way of life.

As foragers, we used to live in a certain way.
As homo economicus, who actively, agentically, produces food – and everything else we need, we’ve crossed yet another barrier. Benchmark? Anyway, we live completely different lives from those experienced by our foraging (fore)fathers. Despite the fact that there’s no biological or psychological difference between us.
Don’t believe me? Take a small child from the African or South American bush, lovingly raise them in a functional family and tell me if you find any difference. Between any of those children and their ‘already civilized’ school-mates. The key concepts here being ‘lovingly raise them in a functional family’ and ‘school mates’. If you understand what I mean…

‘Completely different lives’.
‘OK, I get it. They, the lives, are different. But are they better? Or worse?!?’

Your question, your very pertinent question, is extremely eloquent.
It fully expresses the paradox haunting us.

As foragers, we’ve learned to speak. To carve. To make beautiful tools. To paint…
As foragers, we’ve become human.

As agriculturalists, we live way longer lives. And accomplish way many more things.
Yes, ‘things’.
We speak the same. We paint the same. We carve the same. We even eat more or less the same things. Less of them but there’s nothing really new in our diet. Less diverse, heavily processed in too many instances, but no really new ingredients…
The only two differences between us and our fore-fathers is the length of our lives and the amount of things we end up owning.

So. Are our lives better?

Longer, for certain!
Less painful? Probably. Considering the physical pain…
Happier?

Then what? Give up agriculture? Go back to bare-back foraging?

How about learning from agriculture?
Digesting the concept, not only the produce…

As foragers, we were ‘expandable’. Each of us could do everything. Statistically, speaking… Gathering, hunting, fetching water and wood, you name it. We depended on each other, of course, but none of us was irreplaceable.
As homo economicus we also depend on each other. But differently!
Just remember what happened last week. When nobody knows how/why, yet, the fuel lines of an airplane taking off somewhere in India were switched off.
Or think about what happens when one of your colleagues calls in sick.

Smith, Adam ‘Free Market’ Smith, taught us about ‘the baker, the butcher and the brewer’.
We still have to digest his teachings.

Our daily bread demands a lot of cooperation.
We’re no longer capable to accomplish much individually.
Our longer and way more bountiful lives depend on our ability, and willingness, to cooperate.
Respectfully….