Civilized to Death The Price of Progress - Christopher Ryan

Written by Christopher Ryan
Read by Christopher Ryan
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Release date: October 1, 2019
Duration: 09:20:33

Most of us have instinctive evidence the world is ending—balmy December days, face-to-face conversation replaced with heads-to-screens zomboidism, a world at constant war, a political system in disarray. We hear some myths and lies so frequently that they feel like truths: Civilization is humankind’s greatest accomplishment. Progress is undeniable. Count your blessings. You’re lucky to be alive here and now. Well, maybe we are and maybe we aren’t. Civilized to Death counters the idea that progress is inherently good, arguing that the “progress” defining our age is analogous to an advancing disease.

Prehistoric life, of course, was not without serious dangers and disadvantages. Many babies died in infancy. A broken bone, infected wound, snakebite, or difficult pregnancy could be life-threatening. But ultimately, Ryan argues, were these pre-civilized dangers more murderous than modern scourges, such as car accidents, cancers, cardiovascular disease, and a technologically prolonged dying process?

At a time when our ecology, our society, and our own sense of selves feels increasingly imperiled, an accurate understanding of our species’ long prelude to civilization is vital to a clear sense of the ultimate value of civilization—and its costs. In Civilized to Death, Ryan makes the claim that we should start looking backwards to find our way into a better future.

A review—Hunter-gatherers were happier, wiser, and healthier than we are. Journalist Ryan (co-author: Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, 2010), host of the podcast Tangentially Speaking, is convinced that the idea of progress is insidious propaganda propelling the world to economic, ecological, and political collapse. “Every day,” he asserts, in one of his many broad generalizations, “more people conclude that the approach to life promoted by the central myths of civilization are generating loneliness, confusion, anxiety, and despair for many of us.” Most people, he claims, are unhappy, working in jobs they hate, eating food that has been leached of nutrition, living in overcrowded cities where they are cut off from nature and from one another, and suffering from diseases that “are by-products of civilization itself”—” To counter what the author sees as the mistaken Narrative of “Perpetual Progress,” he recommends looking closely at how our distant ancestors lived. …Their downfall came from farming. Once they adopted agriculture, their social structure changed, becoming hierarchical, competitive, and overpopulated. “Measures of health, longevity, security, and leisure all declined for almost everyone,” writes the author, including the elites. Ryan’s solution to the chaos of contemporary life is simple and simplistic: to bring “hunter-gatherer thinking into our modern lives” by forming “horizontally organized collectives,” using “nonpolluting locally generated energy,” and offering “a global guaranteed basic income that incentivizes not having children.” A nostalgic portrayal of the prehistoric world with little relevance for our current era.