

25 Reasons Why I Think “Modern” Times Are The Stone Age  - markpeterdavis
http://www.markpeterdavis.com/getventure/2011/02/25-reasons-why-i-think-modern-times-are-the-stone-age.html

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shod
25 reasons I know Mark Peter Davis isn't living in the stone age:

1\. He drives a car.

2\. He owns keys, cash, and cards.

3\. He receives medical care.

4\. His life expectancy is above 35 years.

5\. He owns a computer.

6\. His basic survival doesn't automatically involve exercise.

7\. He has alternatives to walking when traveling long distances.

8\. Universities exist in his time.

9\. He sleeps on a mattress.

10\. Medicine exists to help control many causes of death. He'll likely die of
natural causes after a long life.

11\. Flight is possible for humans.

12\. He's able to express his thoughts in a way that can be recorded and
processed by non-living machines.

13\. He's able to consider nutrition in his diet.

14\. He meets people outside his immediate community without necessarily
considering them a threat.

15\. He considers his own impact on the wellbeing of the planet.

16\. When contemplating his family's safety, he is able to consider the
assistance of police, firemen, and medical professionals.

17\. Monetary investment exists in his time.

18\. Monetary transactions exist in his time.

19\. He's learning a foreign language.

20\. His child's education includes reading, writing, and arithmetic.

21\. He recognizes the concept of mental health.

22\. He recognizes that disease has medical causes.

23\. He is able to form written contracts to help counter the deceit of
others.

24\. Industry exists in his time.

25\. He typed that post.

~~~
asdfj843lkdjs
Life expectancy was only 35 because of infant mortality. Once you grew up,
people tended to live almost as long as we do today.

And medical care is not by any means new. Cesarean section is named after
Cesar, and it was a well established medical practice before he was born.

 _He sleeps on a mattress._

Well golly, call the patent office, tell them to shut down and go home, we
can't possibly improve on this.

Honestly, where are all of you present defender coming from? Is the future too
awesome for you? Sour grapes over the fact that you too get sick, age and can
die?

~~~
TeMPOraL
> Life expectancy was only 35 because of infant mortality. Once you grew up,
> people tended to live almost as long as we do today.

Ok, so why we calculate it this way? Shouldn't we look at median instead of an
average? Or average on data between lower and upper quartile? I thought that
quartiles exist exactly for those kind of situations...

------
jterce
I think I'm glad we're still in the stone ages. I would break that list up
into two distinct categories, the first of which I would define as positive
(beautiful?) aspects of being human.

Being Human, positive

\---------------------

I age.

I sleep.

I will die.

I walk places.

I educate my child.

I think for my computer.

I put effort into exercise.

I make purchase decisions.

I make investment decisions.

I meet people by happenstance.

I don’t always know when people are lying.

=====================

Problems / Annoyances, negative (fix these)

\---------------------

I typed this post.

I waste resources.

I still drive my car.

I plug my computer in.

I know a foreign language.

I know people with diseases.

I contemplate my family’s safety.

I traveled to universities and work.

I carry things - keys, cash and cards.

I eat bad food because it tastes better.

I need to get my medical reports "faxed".

I know people with mental health problems.

I sit for 6 hours on a flight and write posts like this.

I breathe polluted air, drink impure water and eat contaminated food.

~~~
asdfj843lkdjs
The fact that you will die is positive/beautiful?

------
asdfj843lkdjs
As amazing as many of this we have are, we should _never_ lose the hunger to
solve any of the 25 listed reasons. They are real and they are serious.

------
praptak
I wonder if we are actually happier than people x years ago. And of course
whether it is at all possible to determine that.

~~~
huherto
Our lives are better, but I doubt we are happier. Sometimes, I observe people
that are much worse (economically) than me, and I see how they laugh. I am in
general a happy person, but I don't think I can laugh with the same intensity
as they do.

I can't find the reference, somebody posted a study where they show that after
one year of either winning the lottery or becoming paralytic, people have the
same level of happiness. I think is comforting to know that now matter what,
we adapt, and we go on with our lives.

------
ebaysucks
The two main reasons we are still a barbaric society: 1\. We still pay taxes.
2\. We still die.

One day, hopefully within my life time, we'll reach escape velocity and move
beyond a jungle mentality.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
You could always go back to the jungle. No taxes there at all.

~~~
pg
That may not be true. The exactions imposed by shamans are effectively taxes
imposed by a priestly class.

Present customs about taxation seem to derive mostly from tributes extracted
by conquering tribes. But even in those cases there may be a thin historical
thread connecting them to shamans, since the royal families of conquering
tribes often had a semi-divine status.

~~~
sabat
_Present customs about taxation seem to derive mostly from tributes extracted
by conquering tribes_

Tax money builds roads and other infrastructure in common. The origins of a
system don't dictate its current reasons for existence -- it may have started
as shamanic tribute, but now it's to provide for social needs. (And, perhaps,
to pad the coffers of privileged corporations.)

