"Geben Sie mir Kaffee, dann mache ich Phänomenologie daraus." (Give me my coffee so that I can make phenomenology out of it.)
-- Edmund Husserl
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Expository Writing-Food: Article
All,
the link below will lead you to an article by Jared Diamond, a, important historian, writing on the question of whether the agricultural revolution of the Neolithic age was a good thing. Please read and comment.
I don’t agree with Diamond’s claim that the revolution of agriculture makes human worse off; especially when he states that “farming helped bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions.” Sexual distinction already existed before the revolution of agriculture. In Paleolithic societies, men may have participated in gathering plants, firewood and insects, and women may have procured small game animals for consumption and assisted men in driving herds of large game animals off cliffs. The development of agriculture magnifies such division which actually derivate from the hunter-gathers societies. In addition, the statement about “Women in agricultural societies were sometimes made beasts of burden,” is also incorrect. The example he gives in the following paragraph represents the failure to take responsibilities, which is not specifically relates to the development of agriculture. Diamond didn’t connect the reference with his argument, which makes the reference sounds very ambiguous.
Pre-historic hunter and gathering techniques and lifestyle are better than that of todays. I believe this statement is absolutely ridiculous. The “food” system we have right now is very efficient and diverse. The author makes outlandish points to deceive the reader to believe that hunting and gathering was ultimately better. He sneakily states the positives to our system at the beginning but by the end of the paper it felt like those statements are turned into a mockery. Towards the beginning of the paper he explains that a tribe that still hunts and gathers has more “leisure time and doesn’t work as hard” as there neighboring farming tribes. How do you measure hard work? He uses hours to prove that hunters and gatherers take less time to produce there food then the farmers. But what is he really measuring? He left out the time that the others in the tribe will need to do to prepare it. They might get the food quicker but a native in the neighboring village can go to the market and have what the need ready in 2 seconds. He also left out the quantity and quality of food. The farmers easily produced more food per time than those in the Kalahari Bushmen tribe. I cannot prove how the quality of the food is but by him leaving that detail out leaves me to believe it probably favored the farmers. Throughout the article the author made many more of these little tricks. He would show interesting factual data that would immediately fool the “normal” reader, but what data was he leaving out. Most readers get so caught up in the numbers that they forget to look at the other side. The food system we have today is great. You receive a vast variety of food from all over the world with little time wasted. Therefore I without a doubt believe that the system we have today is better than the world has ever seen.
I believe that the agricultural revolution was indeed a good thing for society. However, some of the comments made by Diamond made me disagree. By stating that hunter gatherers have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work harder than farming tribes is just another way of saying that these people were just a bunch of lazy, unmotivated people. How can he say something that he cant prove? I mean this happened thousands of years ago. I'm very sure that these farmers worked just as hard as their hunter/gatherer counterparts. Diamond goes on boasting about how good hunting and gathering is. Yes, he makes some valid points within this article but it seems like he is hiding some key benefits of a farming society. Also when he states "farming may have encouraged inequality throughout the sexes" is totally false. Gender roles have been put to use long before an agricultural system occurred. Even within the hunter gatherers there were gender roles. The men's jobs would be to hunt, provide food, and protect their families whereas the women would prepare the meals and watch over the children. Overall, I think that this article was well written. However, I think his argument wasn't backed up with factual evidence.
As I was reading this article I found myself questioning a lot of what Diamond presented and counter-arguing a lot of his assertions. Throughout the entire scope of human history Diamond extrapolates on just one era: the era of the hunter-gatherers (which has limited facts based on its distance in history). He uses assumptions from the hunter-gatherer era to try and elicit the reader to recognize the "heavy consequences" of switching to agriculture, presenting that it was the "worst mistake in human history."Regardless of this article being published in 1987, he compares the era of hunter-gatherers to the time that agriculture was brand new and still developing and assumes it is the cause of the state of our modern socio-economic ladder is the way it is. Not only does it seem he is going against common perception in that social classes existed and leadership/submissive roles were present long before agriculture, but he attempts to use one change as the reason behind all changes. It is like he is attempting to state that solely because there is a letter J there is a letter K, failing to acknowledge the rest of the preceding letters of the alphabet. Overall, I feel Diamond's argument lacked strength due to too many presumptions based on general facts and assumptive history.
As much as I’m concerned, the agricultural revolution of the Neolithic age really has both positive and negative influences. I can’t deny the fact that farming really messes the development of the human beings. At least there are several examples, mentioned in the passage, proving that agriculture is really bad for human’s health. Compared to hunter-gatherers who are capable of getting a variety of food every day, farmers really have a limitation on the choices of food they can obtain. What they have is just the single crop they plant. In other words, those people, who concentrate more on agriculture, don’t have an access to have more diversified nutrition. Because of the confinement that people can only grow one or two crops, they may run the risk of suffering from starvation if the agriculture fails. It is also true agriculture encouraged people to clump together in crowded societies, many of which then carried on trade with other crowded societies, led to the spread of parasites and infectious disease. What’s more, the development of agriculture plays an important role to stimulate the formation of class divisions, in which most people are still struggling today. In contrast, it’s still hard and ridiculous to imagine that the world now is still in a primitive condition in which all the people hunt wild animals as their food resources. Agriculture revolution not only improves the efficiency of the total production of goods and food but also set up the beginning of order and equality which are the most two important factors that maintain the world now. In a way, small tribes and simple hunting activities can’t evolve to big cities and trades without agricultural revolution. So I really can’t make the judgment or assertion that the revolution is totally advantageous or harmful. Agriculture revolution can have different attributions or meanings, depending upon the perspective in which we are analyzing.
During the days of hunting, people were healthier than after the agricultural evolution. However, social and gender discrimination did exist. The strongest people in a community had especial privileges and were leaders because those were the hunters that could bring more food than the others. Gender determined a role in society. Men were hunters, and women either participated in gathering or taking care of children. Society hasn't changed its bases at all after adopting the practice of farming. There has always been a group that has some kind of authority, and social division have always been common.
“The adoption of agriculture was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered.” I totally disagree with this argument. Jared Diamond listed several reasons why the shift to agriculture society was a failure: Hunter-gatherers enjoyed a varied diet while farmers do not, dependence on a limited number of crops made farmers ran the risk of starvation, and agriculture caused the spread of disease. The author tried to deceive readers with believable reasons, but none of his supporting arguments is right. We now live in the society of diverse foods. There are numerous food choices that can satisfy people’s whimsical trends and preferences. Even though he argues hunter-gatherers had more various foods, they did not have various ways to cook the foods, which could not allow ‘varied diet’. Therefore, when he said people who live in agricultural society do not have varied diet, his statement was totally ridiculous. Also, the author argued agriculture causes starvation since farmers depend on limited crops, rice and potato. However, agriculture produces a massive amount of foods at one time, while hunter-gatherers can only get small amounts of foods despite of their physical labors. Also, since most animals hibernate in winter, it put shackles on the major hunting and led to having more starvation than agriculture has. Jared Diamond argued agriculture caused the spread of disease. However, in the period of hunt-gathering, people ate all parts of foods they got from the wild, because they did not know what part they should eat or not. So people got a lot more disease from unclean or poisonous foods. Therefore, due to the lack of factual data, I believe today’s agriculture-based food system is better than hunt-gathering system.
I think the agricultural revolution is good for people nowadays. At least if it really hurt the society or the human’s body no one will make the revolution. In nowadays people can eat everything they want even not in the correct year. Also the population becomes larger and larger, that means people need much more food than many years before. If people keep continue grow food in a constant speed us before, the food will be not enough. After the agricultural revolution, the quantity of food becomes big enough to feed the population. Also the nutrition in food is better than the regular kind. The food contains more protein and other stuff. That helps people’s health much better than before. So the food revolution not only make people can taste the thing they want in different season, support enough food resource for the large population but also can make people live longer and healthier.
I think the agricultural revolution is good for people nowadays. At least if it really hurt the society or the human’s body no one will make the revolution. In nowadays people can eat everything they want even not in the correct year. Also the population becomes larger and larger, that means people need much more food than many years before. If people keep continue grow food in a constant speed us before, the food will be not enough. After the agricultural revolution, the quantity of food becomes big enough to feed the population. Also the nutrition in food is better than the regular kind. The food contains more protein and other stuff. That helps people’s health much better than before. So the food revolution not only make people can taste the thing they want in different season, support enough food resource for the large population but also can make people live longer and healthier.
One question that led Jared's position was, "How do you show that the lives of people 10,000 years ago got better when they abandoned hunting and gathering for farming?" This was a rhetorical question to have the reader think there is not a possible answer, and so he shared his opinions and supported his statements with evidence. Diamond spoke as if he knew the material, so why a reader wouldn’t be convinced that what Diamond was proposing was true? Although he did bring up good points such as, the division between social classes, gender and above all health and food; I do not support his arguments. Diamond mentions farming brought a "deep" class division which I believe. Before farming there were hunters, and when hunting; individuals would hunt with other individuals together. Of course farming was a different direction than hunting, but with farming people were able to produce more food. When more food was available, people could also receive money from trading their food. Although farming brought a lot of barriers, it is definitely better than killing off another species to ensure development and stability.
The notions brought up in “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race” seem plausible when looking back on the past thousand years of human history. There are undoubtedly multiple effects on society due to the transition from hunter-gathers to famers and “controlling” the land. The way this argument is structured however, does not successfully prove the different points trying to be depicted. First off, the evidence presented had no factual reference. For a reader to completely believe the points being made, the author needs to offer citations to prove the validity of his research. Another point is the existence of gender roles and that they have been around for centuries and although may have shifted, nevertheless have always existed. An interesting section of the article was the idea that the evolution of ways humans obtained food has influenced social separations and the formation of “elite” classes. Jared Diamond , the author states, “Only in a farming population could a healthy, non-producing élite set itself above the disease-ridden masses”( The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race). The way Diamond makes this sound is unusual and wouldn’t normally reach the minds of those who subconsciously divide all humans into nonexistent categories.
The Agricultural Revolution remodeled human life-style from hunter-gatherers to sedentary-non nomadic farmers. Jordan Diamond talks about how admirable and efficient the hunter-gatherers were, while he criticizes how farming was a decline in our evolution as a human society. After reading the article and Diamond’s argument, I disagree with farming been a bad thing. Hunter-gatherers still exist in today’s society but they are a minority who is started to be affected by progress because of the modern and technological world we live in. The article starts by explaining how hunter gatherers used to live a very healthy life. They lived day by day eating what nature gave them, like berries, different plants, and animals which provide them with the right amount of proteins they needed. Therefore, they were very healthy. Even though there are still nomadic tribes like the Bushmen, or the Hadza in Tanzania, the agricultural revolution had a remarkable impact on the world. Farming stabilizes communities because it facilities an environment where people can interact socially, and depend on one another. This bond between people builds up relationships, and eliminates the need for hunter gatherers.
I thought his first good point was one that seemed to make the most logical sense. It was, “Since crops can be stored, and since it takes less time to pick food from a garden than to find it in the wild, agriculture gave us free time that hunter-gatherers never had.” This logical progression of agriculture technology is the assumed path it would take, looking at it for a hindsight perspective it would make sense that we would adapt and switch to methods that would make things more efficient and timely. It was cool to see the differentials in height of men and women way back when in the early BC’s and how that differentiated with the adoption of agriculture. The most important message that I got from this article was when he stated, “One boils down to the adage ‘Might makes right.’ Farming could support many more people than hunting, albeit with a poorer quality of life.” This eludes to a strong message that portrays how we live our lives today as Americans and across the world. We seem to have a lower quality of lively, in the humanity realm of things compared to way back when, where there wasn’t racial and sexual discrimination.
the old style of hunter gatherer was efficient, back in the the prehistoric times. But in this modern day and time that we live in, it is inefficient. Our food system now is rather efficient. though diamond claims that the revolution made everything worse on the people. I believe that there couldn't be anything farther from the truth. The revolution helped a lot of people and It seems to me that diamond was more concerned with social classes and the sexist views that had to do with the hunter gatherer time. Where women were just the mens assistant instead of actually having a part in the hunt.
15 comments:
I don’t agree with Diamond’s claim that the revolution of agriculture makes human worse off; especially when he states that “farming helped bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions.” Sexual distinction already existed before the revolution of agriculture. In Paleolithic societies, men may have participated in gathering plants, firewood and insects, and women may have procured small game animals for consumption and assisted men in driving herds of large game animals off cliffs. The development of agriculture magnifies such division which actually derivate from the hunter-gathers societies.
In addition, the statement about “Women in agricultural societies were sometimes made beasts of burden,” is also incorrect. The example he gives in the following paragraph represents the failure to take responsibilities, which is not specifically relates to the development of agriculture. Diamond didn’t connect the reference with his argument, which makes the reference sounds very ambiguous.
Pre-historic hunter and gathering techniques and lifestyle are better than that of todays. I believe this statement is absolutely ridiculous. The “food” system we have right now is very efficient and diverse. The author makes outlandish points to deceive the reader to believe that hunting and gathering was ultimately better. He sneakily states the positives to our system at the beginning but by the end of the paper it felt like those statements are turned into a mockery. Towards the beginning of the paper he explains that a tribe that still hunts and gathers has more “leisure time and doesn’t work as hard” as there neighboring farming tribes. How do you measure hard work? He uses hours to prove that hunters and gatherers take less time to produce there food then the farmers. But what is he really measuring? He left out the time that the others in the tribe will need to do to prepare it. They might get the food quicker but a native in the neighboring village can go to the market and have what the need ready in 2 seconds. He also left out the quantity and quality of food. The farmers easily produced more food per time than those in the Kalahari Bushmen tribe. I cannot prove how the quality of the food is but by him leaving that detail out leaves me to believe it probably favored the farmers. Throughout the article the author made many more of these little tricks. He would show interesting factual data that would immediately fool the “normal” reader, but what data was he leaving out. Most readers get so caught up in the numbers that they forget to look at the other side. The food system we have today is great. You receive a vast variety of food from all over the world with little time wasted. Therefore I without a doubt believe that the system we have today is better than the world has ever seen.
I believe that the agricultural revolution was indeed a good thing for society. However, some of the comments made by Diamond made me disagree. By stating that hunter gatherers have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work harder than farming tribes is just another way of saying that these people were just a bunch of lazy, unmotivated people. How can he say something that he cant prove? I mean this happened thousands of years ago. I'm very sure that these farmers worked just as hard as their hunter/gatherer counterparts. Diamond goes on boasting about how good hunting and gathering is. Yes, he makes some valid points within this article but it seems like he is hiding some key benefits of a farming society. Also when he states "farming may have encouraged inequality throughout the sexes" is totally false. Gender roles have been put to use long before an agricultural system occurred. Even within the hunter gatherers there were gender roles. The men's jobs would be to hunt, provide food, and protect their families whereas the women would prepare the meals and watch over the children. Overall, I think that this article was well written. However, I think his argument wasn't backed up with factual evidence.
As I was reading this article I found myself questioning a lot of what Diamond presented and counter-arguing a lot of his assertions. Throughout the entire scope of human history Diamond extrapolates on just one era: the era of the hunter-gatherers (which has limited facts based on its distance in history). He uses assumptions from the hunter-gatherer era to try and elicit the reader to recognize the "heavy consequences" of switching to agriculture, presenting that it was the "worst mistake in human history."Regardless of this article being published in 1987, he compares the era of hunter-gatherers to the time that agriculture was brand new and still developing and assumes it is the cause of the state of our modern socio-economic ladder is the way it is. Not only does it seem he is going against common perception in that social classes existed and leadership/submissive roles were present long before agriculture, but he attempts to use one change as the reason behind all changes. It is like he is attempting to state that solely because there is a letter J there is a letter K, failing to acknowledge the rest of the preceding letters of the alphabet. Overall, I feel Diamond's argument lacked strength due to too many presumptions based on general facts and assumptive history.
As much as I’m concerned, the agricultural revolution of the Neolithic age really has both positive and negative influences. I can’t deny the fact that farming really messes the development of the human beings. At least there are several examples, mentioned in the passage, proving that agriculture is really bad for human’s health. Compared to hunter-gatherers who are capable of getting a variety of food every day, farmers really have a limitation on the choices of food they can obtain. What they have is just the single crop they plant. In other words, those people, who concentrate more on agriculture, don’t have an access to have more diversified nutrition. Because of the confinement that people can only grow one or two crops, they may run the risk of suffering from starvation if the agriculture fails. It is also true agriculture encouraged people to clump together in crowded societies, many of which then carried on trade with other crowded societies, led to the spread of parasites and infectious disease. What’s more, the development of agriculture plays an important role to stimulate the formation of class divisions, in which most people are still struggling today.
In contrast, it’s still hard and ridiculous to imagine that the world now is still in a primitive condition in which all the people hunt wild animals as their food resources. Agriculture revolution not only improves the efficiency of the total production of goods and food but also set up the beginning of order and equality which are the most two important factors that maintain the world now. In a way, small tribes and simple hunting activities can’t evolve to big cities and trades without agricultural revolution.
So I really can’t make the judgment or assertion that the revolution is totally advantageous or harmful. Agriculture revolution can have different attributions or meanings, depending upon the perspective in which we are analyzing.
During the days of hunting, people were healthier than after the agricultural evolution. However, social and gender discrimination did exist. The strongest people in a community had especial privileges and were leaders because those were the hunters that could bring more food than the others. Gender determined a role in society. Men were hunters, and women either participated in gathering or taking care of children. Society hasn't changed its bases at all after adopting the practice of farming. There has always been a group that has some kind of authority, and social division have always been common.
“The adoption of agriculture was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered.” I totally disagree with this argument. Jared Diamond listed several reasons why the shift to agriculture society was a failure: Hunter-gatherers enjoyed a varied diet while farmers do not, dependence on a limited number of crops made farmers ran the risk of starvation, and agriculture caused the spread of disease. The author tried to deceive readers with believable reasons, but none of his supporting arguments is right.
We now live in the society of diverse foods. There are numerous food choices that can satisfy people’s whimsical trends and preferences. Even though he argues hunter-gatherers had more various foods, they did not have various ways to cook the foods, which could not allow ‘varied diet’. Therefore, when he said people who live in agricultural society do not have varied diet, his statement was totally ridiculous.
Also, the author argued agriculture causes starvation since farmers depend on limited crops, rice and potato. However, agriculture produces a massive amount of foods at one time, while hunter-gatherers can only get small amounts of foods despite of their physical labors. Also, since most animals hibernate in winter, it put shackles on the major hunting and led to having more starvation than agriculture has.
Jared Diamond argued agriculture caused the spread of disease. However, in the period of hunt-gathering, people ate all parts of foods they got from the wild, because they did not know what part they should eat or not. So people got a lot more disease from unclean or poisonous foods. Therefore, due to the lack of factual data, I believe today’s agriculture-based food system is better than hunt-gathering system.
I think the agricultural revolution is good for people nowadays. At least if it really hurt the society or the human’s body no one will make the revolution. In nowadays people can eat everything they want even not in the correct year. Also the population becomes larger and larger, that means people need much more food than many years before. If people keep continue grow food in a constant speed us before, the food will be not enough. After the agricultural revolution, the quantity of food becomes big enough to feed the population. Also the nutrition in food is better than the regular kind. The food contains more protein and other stuff. That helps people’s health much better than before. So the food revolution not only make people can taste the thing they want in different season, support enough food resource for the large population but also can make people live longer and healthier.
I think the agricultural revolution is good for people nowadays. At least if it really hurt the society or the human’s body no one will make the revolution. In nowadays people can eat everything they want even not in the correct year. Also the population becomes larger and larger, that means people need much more food than many years before. If people keep continue grow food in a constant speed us before, the food will be not enough. After the agricultural revolution, the quantity of food becomes big enough to feed the population. Also the nutrition in food is better than the regular kind. The food contains more protein and other stuff. That helps people’s health much better than before. So the food revolution not only make people can taste the thing they want in different season, support enough food resource for the large population but also can make people live longer and healthier.
One question that led Jared's position was, "How do you show that the lives of people 10,000 years ago got better when they abandoned hunting and gathering for farming?" This was a rhetorical question to have the reader think there is not a possible answer, and so he shared his opinions and supported his statements with evidence. Diamond spoke as if he knew the material, so why a reader wouldn’t be convinced that what Diamond was proposing was true? Although he did bring up good points such as, the division between social classes, gender and above all health and food; I do not support his arguments. Diamond mentions farming brought a "deep" class division which I believe. Before farming there were hunters, and when hunting; individuals would hunt with other individuals together. Of course farming was a different direction than hunting, but with farming people were able to produce more food. When more food was available, people could also receive money from trading their food. Although farming brought a lot of barriers, it is definitely better than killing off another species to ensure development and stability.
The notions brought up in “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race” seem plausible when looking back on the past thousand years of human history. There are undoubtedly multiple effects on society due to the transition from hunter-gathers to famers and “controlling” the land. The way this argument is structured however, does not successfully prove the different points trying to be depicted. First off, the evidence presented had no factual reference. For a reader to completely believe the points being made, the author needs to offer citations to prove the validity of his research. Another point is the existence of gender roles and that they have been around for centuries and although may have shifted, nevertheless have always existed. An interesting section of the article was the idea that the evolution of ways humans obtained food has influenced social separations and the formation of “elite” classes. Jared Diamond , the author states, “Only in a farming population could a healthy, non-producing élite set itself above the disease-ridden masses”( The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race). The way Diamond makes this sound is unusual and wouldn’t normally reach the minds of those who subconsciously divide all humans into nonexistent categories.
The Agricultural Revolution remodeled human life-style from hunter-gatherers to sedentary-non nomadic farmers. Jordan Diamond talks about how admirable and efficient the hunter-gatherers were, while he criticizes how farming was a decline in our evolution as a human society. After reading the article and Diamond’s argument, I disagree with farming been a bad thing. Hunter-gatherers still exist in today’s society but they are a minority who is started to be affected by progress because of the modern and technological world we live in. The article starts by explaining how hunter gatherers used to live a very healthy life. They lived day by day eating what nature gave them, like berries, different plants, and animals which provide them with the right amount of proteins they needed. Therefore, they were very healthy. Even though there are still nomadic tribes like the Bushmen, or the Hadza in Tanzania, the agricultural revolution had a remarkable impact on the world. Farming stabilizes communities because it facilities an environment where people can interact socially, and depend on one another. This bond between people builds up relationships, and eliminates the need for hunter gatherers.
I thought his first good point was one that seemed to make the most logical sense. It was, “Since crops can be stored, and since it takes less time to pick food from a garden than to find it in the wild, agriculture gave us free time that hunter-gatherers never had.” This logical progression of agriculture technology is the assumed path it would take, looking at it for a hindsight perspective it would make sense that we would adapt and switch to methods that would make things more efficient and timely. It was cool to see the differentials in height of men and women way back when in the early BC’s and how that differentiated with the adoption of agriculture. The most important message that I got from this article was when he stated, “One boils down to the adage ‘Might makes right.’ Farming could support many more people than hunting, albeit with a poorer quality of life.” This eludes to a strong message that portrays how we live our lives today as Americans and across the world. We seem to have a lower quality of lively, in the humanity realm of things compared to way back when, where there wasn’t racial and sexual discrimination.
the old style of hunter gatherer was efficient, back in the the prehistoric times. But in this modern day and time that we live in, it is inefficient. Our food system now is rather efficient. though diamond claims that the revolution made everything worse on the people. I believe that there couldn't be anything farther from the truth. The revolution helped a lot of people and It seems to me that diamond was more concerned with social classes and the sexist views that had to do with the hunter gatherer time. Where women were just the mens assistant instead of actually having a part in the hunt.
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