Primitive vs. Modern

Favoring the modern over the primitive is one of the basic aspects of society. And there are certainly areas of human activity where a choice of the modern over the primitive is advisable. But when it comes to us (or our bodies if you will), primitive is as good as it gets.

We are what we are because of eons of adaptation (through natural selection) to a primitive environment. The optimal conditions for human life are far more primitive than those in which most people choose to live. And yet, the same error is repeated over and over again. Man thinks he can outsmart Nature. He thinks he can create for himself a better environment, better than that very environment that created him! Nature gave Man the power to adapt, to grow, to harden. Instead, Man chooses to adapt everything else to himself. For Nature also gave him the want for comfort, the instinct to avoid suffering whenever possible. A "control mechanism", a feeling of disgust for a life of excessive comfort wasn't all that important in the primitive world. The world itself was tough, forcing Man to be strong, so he never really needed to develop such an instinct.

There is no such thing as excessive comfort for today's Man. Weak, tired, sickly, burnt out from all those empty pleasures, he just keeps spiraling down. He doesn't feel well. What does he do? He tries to fix the problem by taking in more of that which caused it. Larger and larger doses are needed to achieve the same effect. Must be the commonest vicious cycle there is.

But a wise man knows nature can't be outsmarted and strives for the life that shaped his ancestors. Comfort is no substitute for freedom, just as pleasure is no substitute for power.

What is best in Man?

 - That which likens Man to Beast.



This has all been said time and again but I will repeat it nonetheless:

The more advanced the society, the less advanced it's average individual. Why? The Social Contract creates an environment in which power and freedom are traded for safety and comfort. Comfort is Man's most wide-spread drug and society provides it in large doses to all those who conform to it's rules. A life spent in such comfort creates an addiction that few can and even fewer want to break. All well and good for most people. But some people, myself among them, feel they have lost more than they have gained.

What does it take to break the addiction?

Just as an animal born and grown in captivity doesn't have much of a chance at surviving in freedom for long if it is freed suddenly (as opposed to progressively), so Man, too, has much to learn, and many instincts to rekindle, before he may call himself truly free once more.