Let's All Return to the Primitive Era

A reconciliatory journey to the past to deepen our relationship with the present

In the Tragedy of the Commons, the villager decides to graze an additional cow on an already overgrazed land because the system rewards him for doing so. He can ignore the costs to others and ignorantly to himself because payoffs rewards irresponsibility. The rewards (profits) are short-term but the repercussions are long-term, unseen, and paid by all.

Striding a few centuries back, the primitive hunter-gatherer societies were probably and possibly still remains the most just and relatively progressive (wealth was not absolute, but relative to the prosperity of others). They lived in harmony with nature, with close-knit communities, with collective values. And they did so at a high quality of life, with ample leisure time for cultural pursuits. The fact that they accomplish this without the advanced tools we presently gloss over is an embarrassment to the frontiers of economic civilization.

In our contemporary way of living, the era of individualism, of little fat men (as George Orwell once puts it), of relentless ambition, of unyielding pressure, we’re hemmed in by the demands of economic hardships. The gains of civilization are undeniable, but never has humanity been in dreadful and scary state than it is.

Perhaps we can begin with a throng of elementary questions; during the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to the contemporary culture, what did we irreversibly lose? What is it that made the “primitive” flourish and the contemporary flounder? What made it attain the highest quality of life with very little advances?

Put it differently, economy is not just policy. It's people. It's behavioural. It's choices. It's how we treat each other. The modern hunting nature of humanity has eroded the spirit of capitalism, the tool that we had banked on to unburden us from everyday demands and to prepare us to be, to live. Economic civilization, as it is, is hollow, flatantly failing to satisfy deeper needs including those for truth and those for meaningful work.

In developing countries, the benefits of the economic growth often go to the wealthiest, not to those who need them the most, not the weakest. Some have made a good case that economic growth occurs not because the masses demand it but because the elites need it most.

Fred Hirsch in his book Social Limits to Growth reveals how the "economics of bad neighbours" is taking shape. He paints an economic man as a moral disaster waiting to implode. The economic man is a hunter in the modern space, programmed to maximize his utility much to his own detriment and of others. He is willing to pay the longterm costs for the short-term gains.

What they call absolute economic prosperity is a rebellion against their own being. In that "economic prosperity" they are so happy to gain and have fun hurting other people and hurting themselves. Dozens of evils—ggressiveness, greed, alienation, violence—aren't human values but cultural artifacts we've gained thanks to mass-scale rational civilization of industrial culture.

However, despite simplification of everyday work, with a suite of tools never seen before doing the heavy lifting for us, we still want to borrow a page from the primitive age. When hunting came to an end and land cultivation and livestock rearing kicked in, humans realized they could just be; they could share, they could celebrate, they could communicate more meaningfully. Hunting transitioned as a mere means of survival, a way of being in the world and with others, and not a means to be away from our own being. It did not replace our genesis of existence.

The primary core of cultivation, hunting, writing, culting, settling, raising was to flourish together, to advance, to preserve, to retain their existence. What kept these people together, for so long and with little to no catastrophic human ingenuity, was the feeling of each other, the feeling of care, and that we don't need to bruise others to win the struggles of life.

The same cannot be said of the current times. We're a hunting society. We hunt not as a way of being with the world or being with others. We hunt to distort our existence, to conceal, to dominate. The 'hunting economy' switched on by the unchecked powers of politicians, the affluent and economic elements, is a superficial predation rather meeting people's needs.

There are, however, no easy answers to the current mix of economic problems but there is no easy escape from the their consequences. Our unfettered human ingenuity is a double-edged sword which must be rechecked, rebalanced, recalibrated if we're to still retain the spirit of being, caring the other, or flourishing together.