

The Original Affluent Society (1972) - dave446
http://home.iitk.ac.in/~amman/soc474/Resources/sahlins_original_affluent.html

======
adaml_623
This article seems to be a delusion based on the premise that 'primitive'
people don't feel pain and sadness at the loss of their loved ones. And hence
aren't saddened by the high infant and maternal mortality.

The fatal flaw is the assumption that he thinks he knows someone else's
thoughts and feelings. It's a bizarre thought experiment void of any relevance
to the modern world.

------
michaelochurch
Doubtful. The hunter-gatherer tribes that we encounter are (probably) fitter
than average on account of remaining extant into the 21st century, and even
those don't live long past their contact with industrial people.

Population is the first issue. Pre-industrial life _probably_ wasn't as
horrible as some make it out to be, with the life expectancy, once one
survived childbirth, closer to 55 than 20. (The 20-30 figure included infant
mortality.) However, hunter-gatherer lifestyles don't support a high
population. That means, as populations increase and tribes branch out and
split, but inevitably people run out of room, war. In the "original affluent
society" of pre-agricultural humanity, the major wars of nations didn't
happen, but low-level tribal wars caused a death rate of about 0.5% per year.
That's _8 times_ the murder rate in Flint, Michigan, the most dangerous city
in the US as of now.

Agricultural society can support more people per unit of land. That also means
that they will have more soldiers and conquer or assimilate the hunter-
gatherers. (Nomadic raiders, however, will typically be fitter and militarily
superior... but _their_ existence is predicated on that of the agricultural
people, so that doesn't scale either.)

So, ultimately the pre-agricultural "affluent society" was one with a high
rate of violence and not much stability, and it got wiped out pretty handily
by agricultural (or industrialized) neighbors. All that said, it is correct to
note that the standard of living for the average person did not improve much
between the Stone Age and (arguably) approximately 1800 AD. Economic growth
existed, but it was gobbled up by population growth. In some ways, life got
better each century and, in others, it got worse, but for the average person
there wasn't much progress from the neolithic up into modernity and, with the
psychiatric calamity of workplace Taylorism, people are arguably even
unhappier than they were in all of those societies where life was nasty,
brutish, and short. So, subjectively, I think the argument is strong for a
lack of progress (that is, in 2014, entirely the fault of society's poor
leadership). People _are_ richer now and live longer, but still mostly
miserable. That said, every phase of society was an inevitable consequence of
the former and "the original affluent society" would never have made it,
couldn't possibly scale up to our current population of 7 billion, and had a
rate of violent death that we'd consider appalling.

What I think has changed is the nature of work and our demands of it. In
primitive societies, "work hours" didn't make sense because people hunted,
gathered, fought, cooked, and built shelters as needed. There was a
heterogeneity to it. Modern work is psychological monoculture, with work
quality apportioned according to social status and rank, which means that it's
mental torture (extreme boredom) to be of low status. Primitive "work" (which
wasn't done in measured hours) had horizontal heterogeneity, whereas in modern
society the only antidote to crushing boredom is vertical growth, leading to a
low-level and generally nonviolent, but also inescapable, sense of competition
and stress. Pre-agricultural life had its flaws and people had good reasons to
escape it (and, one should note, the transition to agriculture tended to
unfold over thousands of years in most societies, with intermediate states of
some hunting/gathering and some agriculture) but it was probably less boring
than the average desk job today.

~~~
meric
The premise of the article:

1\. "To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the
present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited
wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times."

2\. "There are two possible courses to affluence. Wants may be "easily
satisfied" either by producing much or desiring little."

Following this definition, it's easy to accept hunters are affluent if it can
be shown hunter-gatherer tribes worked as needed and desired nothing.

The article makes no mention of whether this kind of society is sustainable
over the long run, only that this kind of society, where it exists, is
affluent.

I like the thought - to perpetually chase the limitless with the limited does
sound like a fool's undertaking.

------
ryanmarsh
_Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other
than the hunter 's - in which all the people's material wants were easily
satisfied._

Except that hunter-gatherer tribes routinely starved during lean periods. As
much as the author pines for a golden age, it simply didn't exist.

This fellow should read more books on paleoanthropology and fewer on
philosophy.

~~~
faizshah
Marshall Sahlins is one of the most well respected anthropologists in the
field, the context of the book "Stone Age Economics" was to refute the popular
misconceptions of hunter gatherers at the time (1960s-1970s) within the field.
This book does not have much to do with modern theories within the field on
hunter gatherers. It's usually added to introductory anthropology books to
refute commonly held notions about hunter gatherers that students may have.

~~~
Arnt
The text reminded me of the foreword to Gibbon's history of the Roman Empire.
Gibbon complains about esteemed historians who quote other esteemed
historians, but never go to the original sources or collect raw data.

A few hunter-gatherer peoples still exist and have been observed by
anthropoligists. Are those peoples actually healthier and and have lower
mortality than modern Andorrans? (I'm just picking a country at random here.)
Or is there some reason to believe that they would have been healthier, if the
modern world did not exist?

~~~
capisce
By random you just happened to pick the country with the highest average life
expectancy? :)

"According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Andorrans' average life
expectancy is 83.5, officially the highest in the world."

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7649339.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7649339.stm)

~~~
Arnt
It is? I had no idea.

"Hm, I need a first-world country, reasonably obscure... A... Andorra!" Done.

