Environmentalism and genocide
Environmental journalist Richard Manning regards
humanity's adaption of agriculture as problematic, if not outright disastrous.
"Our kind has spent at least 290,000 years as hunter-gatherers, only 10,000
years as agricultural people, making the latter way of living a relatively
brief and novel experiment. Only small traces of agricultural life can be read
in our genes. We still run on hunter-gatherer software."
This part of Manning's claim is not so
controversial. F. A. Hayek made a similar point in
The Fatal
Conceit, where he point out that "man's
instincts ... were not make for the kinds of surroundings, and for the numbers,
in which he now lives. They were adapted to life in small roving bands or troops
in which the human race and its immediate ancestors." So the point about
instincts is not what is objectionable in Mr. Manning's book. What
is
objectionable is the point of view he takes toward it. Manning clearly favors
the hunter gatherer mode of life, and regards the switch to agriculture and
civilization as a bad thing, caused by warfare and disease and leading to
colonialism, genocide and corporate
capitalism.
Hayek won't have any of
this worship of the primitive. He knows that a return to a hunter-gatherer mode
of life would lead to the starvation of billions of people. The environmentalist
lust for such a mode of existence harbors within its bowels a genocidal mania, a
hatred of civilized life that is pathologically disturbing. Beware
environmentalists! These are dangerous people, rife with irresponsible
sentiments and desires.
Posted: Sat
- March 27, 2004 at 09:02 PM