Michael Shermer with Christopher Ryan - Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress

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Listen to the Science Salon Podcast # 102 (audio-only):
bit.ly/ScienceSalon102
Most of us have instinctive evidence the world is ending - balmy December days, face-to-face conversation replaced with heads-to-screens zomboidism, a world at constant war, a political system in disarray. We hear some myths and lies so frequently that they feel like truths: Civilization is humankind’s greatest accomplishment. Progress is undeniable. Count your blessings. You’re lucky to be alive here and now. Well, maybe we are and maybe we aren’t. Civilized to Death counters the idea that progress is inherently good, arguing that the “progress” defining our age is analogous to an advancing disease. Prehistoric life, of course, was not without serious dangers and disadvantages. Many babies died in infancy. A broken bone, infected wound, snakebite, or difficult pregnancy could be life-threatening. But ultimately, Ryan argues, were these pre-civilized dangers more murderous than modern scourges, such as car accidents, cancers, cardiovascular disease, and a technologically prolonged dying process? In Civilized to Death, Ryan makes the claim that we should start looking backwards to find our way into a better future. Ryan and Shermer also discuss:
• human nature: peaceful or violent?
• humans: spectrum or binary?
• what hunter-gatherers were really like and why it is so hard to know
• hunter-gatherers and…children, women, the elderly, sex, religion, politics and economics
• how egalitarian were hunter-gatherers?
• why hunter-gatherers don’t think of work as “work” in the way we do
• the lottery test: if you won the lottery would you work at your job, live in your neighborhood, live your life?
• was civilization the biggest mistake humans ever made?
• the “Big Gods” theory of religion vs. the communal theory of religion, and
• how we can learn from our ancestors to lead more balanced and healthier lives.
Christopher Ryan, Ph.D., and his work have been featured on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, NPR, The New York Times, The Times of London, Playboy, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Outside, El Pais, La Vanguardia, Salon, Seed, and Big Think. A featured speaker from TED to The Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House to the Einstein Forum in Pottsdam, Germany, Ryan has consulted at various hospitals in Spain, provided expert testimony in a Canadian constitutional hearing, and appeared in well over a dozen documentary films. Ryan puts out a weekly podcast, called Tangentially Speaking, featuring conversations with interesting people, ranging from famous comics to bank robbers to drug smugglers to porn stars to authors to plasma physicists.
This dialogue was recorded on November 20, 2019 as part of the Science Salon Podcast series hosted by Michael Shermer and presented by The Skeptics Society, in California.
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3 фев 2020

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Комментарии : 116

@howtheworldworks3 4 года назад

OMG sir, you just described like 80% of my book by accident when you described what you would do if you were king of the world. I am so glad you did because that means you and many intellectuals will love it once it's done. And hopefully it will reach to the general population too later.

@johnnysprocketz 2 года назад

intellectual may be a stretch..

@JonathanDavisKookaburra 2 года назад

The ‘Big guy in the sky’ model of god and religion serves the added bonus of being able to have a pope or a priest class be gatekeeper to that one single door to the divine.

@MoonChildMedia 2 года назад

what makes me happy? CREATING....just about anything. I've been terrible at relationships my whole life and now live alone, but if I had to list one thing that I really needed in a relationship, but never really found it would be validation.

@richardthomas9856 4 года назад

What I like about the present is the science we have learned and continue learning.

@dingolightfoot8823 3 года назад

Science has destroyed the lives of millions and science has always made us ruminating animals dissecting everything and killing life as a whole! We as humans are not meant to understand the vast knowledge science offers.... We are naturally supposed to live by the great mystery of things not outsmart ourselves and then dumb ourselves down ! Say no to science and say yes to a hunter gatherer lifestyle! The end times are near

@carnivoroussarah 3 года назад

Whatever chaos wreaks the world, we are always whole. We are a part of the universe, we are one. We will return to our natural state upon death and it will all be okay. It is okay right now. Everything is fine!

@kwj171068 4 года назад

Another Great discussion.

@warrenlatham6848 2 месяца назад

Great show! 😀

@ribbonyobski5881 2 года назад

This is insightful. I am 70, and this resonates with me

@luisvasquez812 4 года назад

Ty for knowledge !!

@shosugino6716 4 года назад

7:55 is the Apex. It'd be fun debating Dr. Shermer.

@peterz53 4 года назад

Excellent!!

@thegroove2000 4 года назад

Sociopaths and narcissists are the norm.

@Winterascent 3 года назад

They are also shown to use the system for themselves and excel by doing so, or by manipulating systems for themselves.

@woody7652 4 года назад

Thanks!

@bw2191 4 года назад

Good talk.🙂

@nikosavage1111 3 года назад

I have a brother who is receiving a Master’s Degree in Divinity. I can only hope that one day he finds these books discussed on this channel.

@schmetterling4477 3 года назад

No offense, but you can only hope that one day you won't be related to someone in the sex offender registry, if we go by current statistics of folks with Divinity Degrees.

@johnnysprocketz 2 года назад

my condolences

@patmoran5339 4 года назад

Progress is better than stagnation. Life is better than death. Obesity is better than starvation. Peace is better than war. Right is better than wrong. Civilized life is better than living as a nomad. The avoidance of solving problems makes no sense.

@MoonChildMedia 2 года назад

progress would be better if we had the capability to know when to pull it back. For example: Plastics. Glass was better for many things and it still could be...it would be better for people, and better for the enviroment. Plastics were progress, but too much.

@patmoran5339 2 года назад

@@MoonChildMedia We will never know when to "pull it back." That would be prophecy. Prophecy is, thankfully, not possible. We will never know the future. And that is a good thing. That means that we can continue to make unlimited progress if we choose to do so. We will create the future.

@tzaotees 2 года назад

Love this conversation. Thank you so much Michael :)

@spacedoohicky 4 года назад

I can't remember where. I found a site that had some stats that showed how the claim that people lived just as long in the past is also a statistical trick. Like the interpretation that way of people living just as long is also bad. I wish I could find that site.

@GM-yb5yg 3 года назад

There is plenty of evidence to show tell us exactly the truth about human age. People who died in their 40's, 50's or 60's, (or younger)usually died of causes that we can for the most part prevent with modern medicine. Our genetics haven't changed in such a short period, it's absurd to even suggest that, based on how we think of genes.

@spacedoohicky 3 года назад

@@GM-yb5yg What do you mean about genetics?

@cpfrgb 3 года назад

Great interview, great questions great answers...

@DAVIDPETERS12C 4 года назад

Your first set up shot in this video had a nice appearance, lighting/angle, etc. better than a Rogan podcast... which went away with the wide-angle/too close/one-point perspective/split screen view. Just sayin'.

@JAYDUBYAH29 4 года назад

Hmmm not considering the goings on in the superdome after Katrina.

@Zettoman 4 года назад

can that community be virtual?

@boydhooper4080 Год назад

At around the 50 minute mark. To a very large degree that work by Frans De Waal has been debunked. Unfortunately, they didn’t conduct the experiment very well, and when others repeated the scenario with better controls, it didn’t replicate Review work from Mike Tomasello, & Richard Wrangam for updates.

@Winterascent 3 года назад

Civilization has created misery for the vast majority of those subjected to it, for most of recorded history. People love to argue against that, usually from pretty good comfort in their modern life. 1:21:00 the Anasazi were corn farmers, so civilized basically. Might as well use the Aztec as an example.

@schmetterling4477 3 года назад

How does corn farming make you civilized? Discuss!

@pbredder 4 года назад

Our ancestors had to eat seasonally, in terms of diet, or what they could 'preserve'. And one does not have to go that far back; I grew up on a small farm without electricity. Try doing that these days.

@spaceghost8995 4 года назад

Many still do in other countries.

@DomFortress 3 года назад

I do one meal a day intermittent fasting. I eat enough to sustain my manual labour, kickboxing, and powerlifting. I don't need to guilt myself to be "thankful" for civilization like some sorta virtue signaling, and I'm not obsessed with foods nor anxious about my hunger. What has modern civilization done for the above? Nothing good.

@nefaristo 3 года назад

At 22:00 there are still no data supporting the hypothesis that people are less happy than... Whatever alternative to civilizations the guy is referring to. So , thanks to the wonders if civilization, I'll look for a more contents dense podcast.

@semarugaijin9451 2 года назад

Thank you, these radicals who love to rail against civilization are never quite clear about what the alternatives they recommend are. But for the most part it sounds like extreme primitivist poverty imposed on us by a communist dictatorship.... No thanks.

@nefaristo 2 года назад

@@semarugaijin9451 i know, I used to believe a bit in that crap. Then I asked myself the most important questions in the universe when you complain about something: _compared to what_ ? 🙂 Plus I read s pinker's "better angels of our nature"... Where various bad ideas go to die.

@semarugaijin9451 2 года назад

@@nefaristo damn right! : )

@howtheworldworks3 4 года назад

I love your mindset. Simplifying this over-complicated world is exactly what we need to do in order to have the best possible society. I did that for myself already and I hope to help others to do the same once I will finish my book. If you are curious to know what kind of simplification I am talking about then you could start by watching My little pony Friendship is magic. And no, I do not hate technology. I love my PC and phone and I will never give them up. But there is also a better way to have these and the better society I was talking about.

@TracyPicabia 4 года назад

Having read no Ryan and all of Pinker I'm in no position to argue that Ryan's pick of cherries looks horribly paltry compared with Pinker's; but I'll do it anyway. The tree is infinitely better described by Pinker with his enormous baskets of harvested .... and so on and so forth

@TracyPicabia 4 года назад

@@chrisshaw2853 Assuming that under the irony you are agreeing with me that Ryan's tedious noble savage romanticism is exactly the delusional ideology that Pinker is gently destroying in everything from The Blank State to Enlightenment Now.

@TracyPicabia 4 года назад

It's no way to treat a fig tree, is all I'm saying

@aptcmpasion 4 года назад

at 56min, the 'authorities' are GOING to do WHATEVER They feel like doing, TO whoever They feel like doing it to

@gardenlove9742 4 года назад

Lord of the Flies

@kavolis 4 года назад

Spot on, the book could go with main stream back in 70's and even 60's together with hippie culture. Chris makes a lot of good points by identifying that BS about #progress of modern civilized society. I agree 100% on that. But often I just couldn't follow his logic when he tried to tell a story about how people were happy 12000 thousands of years ago. Why he's telling about peaceful people INSIDE some kind of community (say, hunter-gatherer) of up to 150 individuals? The conflict rises only when you have numerous communities side by side... this is what tribalism (an innate mindset of any human being) is all about: there's peace inside community and there's a conflict with outsiders. It always was like that. Noble savage? Christ... Indians in Americas were slaughtering each other and were constantly at war. Same with any tribe in Africa or in Europe. It's just funny how Chris avoids to name the real problem (though he knows that for sure, he's a smart man) - it's not the civilization, it's the number of people what distorts natural circumstances of a human being. Even his argument about how evil agriculture is and that agriculture was a result of civilization. What in the world he is talking about? He completely ignores the fact that agriculture was the only granted way to feed bigger population, why Chris ignores the fact that even in hunter-gatherer system population is enlarging if it's in proper circumstances/conditions (nature rich with food and relatively small amount of threats, say, predators and poisonous snakes). Not to mention Chris's argument that noble savages are peaceful and only agricultural societies begun to fight and become aggressive... how about Mongols? They were uncivilized nomads, hunters, but still their military expansion was one of the bloodiest events in history of humanity - they left piles of heads behind their backs. Peaceful savage? Sure. While he's inside his community and when he has a woman which is giving births to HIS children. Egalitarianism is another buzzwords in the book that Chris is failing to prove - I had a sense in some parts that I'm re-reading "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State" by Friedrich Engels. I was really disappointed by Chris's propensity to cherry-pick sources and how he failed to subdue the ones (for example, Steven Pinker) who oppose his point of view about "noble savage".

@nectarcape 4 года назад

Military expansion? You seem to be confusing hunter gatherers with civilized tribes. Indians, mayans, aztecs, mongols etc. weren't hunter gatherers. This is a point which people often tumble with. Chris is talking about tribes of people who only carry what they can, no swords or territory or anything like that. What do you think of this?

@kavolis 4 года назад

@@nectarcape Google yourself about Mongols. It's you who intentionally put Mongols among ancient civilizations. Christ.

@nectarcape 4 года назад

Deividas Kavoliunas Sure there were mongols who were hunter gatherers too but I’m refering to the mongol empire. I maybe just confused and filling the gaps automaticly in my head because I recently read the book and have a wider grasp of the info than comes out in the interview.

@kavolis 4 года назад

@@nectarcape Mongols always were nomads. Even today there's plenty of nomads in Mongolia. Back then, in times of Genghis Khan they were a tribes of hunters who keep horses, they didn't practiced agriculture. They constantly attacked China (this is why they built the great wall of China) And when the number of individuals became too large, they began their conquests to the west because Genghis Khan managed to unite all the tribes. They were nor civilized nor practiced agriculture, and it's not the only one case with "noble savages" who attack and slaughter anyone who have more goods in written history of humanity (Beduins, Touaregs, tribes of Northern America - those were the "noble savages" too), but Christopher Ryan intentionally ignores these examples from history. What is false in the book is that, according to Christopher, hunter-gatherers and nomads would never reach a certain (too big) number of individuals (what is the evil thing, according to Christopher) in their society to become a threat to neighbor tribes/communities, because they are not practicing agriculture. What at BS. Christopher failed to acknowledge directly that the main problem with human societies is exactly the same as with any species in nature - when you are numerous enough you HAVE to expand to feed yourself and your descendants. Period. It has nothing to do with evil. It's a simple mechanism of survival. Only in the end of the books Christopher mentions once or twice that people should stop to reproduce themselves. Finally. Sure, it won't solve the problem, but other ways to solve the problem of over-population are not so humane and we all know that (genocidal wars between tribes happening even today in Africa). No one want's to be as that girl in discussion with AOC who screamed "we have to eat babies" (you can find that on youtube easily).

@nectarcape 4 года назад

@@kavolis Ah! Ok. I understand, so the mongols spread from nomadic small tribes into a big organized group of armed soldiers without ever having agriculture. This is interesting. I wish Chris would answer to these questions. Thanks for explaining this!

@patmoran5339 4 года назад

Here is my "nuanced" understanding of the "cradle" of human existence in equatorial Africa: It was and still is a death trap.

@tophersonX 2 года назад

As far as I remember, the Capuchin monkey who gets the grape does not complain when their fellow monkey gets cucumber. So he must be referring to another experiment, with some other primate? Or is this exaggeration?

@feralandroid 2 года назад

Great discussion but I don’t understand the conclusions and solutions. Hunter/gatherers have great lives but for us we need more centralized solutions and bigger governments to solve our problems?

@theshirehighlander7292 4 года назад

Great content Doctor... Following from Malawi Central Africa.

@thiennganguyen 4 года назад

Listened for 15 minutes and still don’t have a good idea for what are the key points from the book and what makes them a good argument? Bad interview as we don’t understand the point and not making it interesting enough

@nefaristo 3 года назад

Oh, just seen this message... As I've just written: up to 22:00 one very unclear hypothesis, and no data to support it. If somebody wants to update that further...:)

@johnnycharisma162 3 года назад

@@nefaristo basically he wants everyone to be North European

@bbcarbo9251 3 года назад

I challenge this two to go to the dentist without anesthesia

@davidanderson9664 4 года назад

Despite his interesting talk, I'll take today's world with all its conveniences and joys. Mr. Ryan is 100% right regarding psychedelics and Shermer (while not a tripper himself, I believe) is always refreshingly open minded on the topic. D.A.

@yoso585 4 года назад

David Anderson Perhaps, without the “experience” of yesterday’s world we are incapable of deciding either way. If I bear right at the fork in the road I have no expwrience with the left. And “conveniences and joy” is a particularly big assumption.

@DomFortress 3 года назад

"Convenience and joy", or do you mean yourself being comfortably numbed?

@cyberiadiscordia389 4 года назад

Michael is harboring a secret fantasy of being cancelled👻

@Hashishin13 4 года назад

We are not very impressive as a mammal our one saving grace is community? How about intelligence?

@reinforcedpenisstem 4 года назад

Mr. Ryan is taking self-reported data for more than its worth. It's human nature to report things as worse than they are individually, and if you correct for that (and add today's benefits), you don't get the picture he's enamoured with.

@Picasso_Picante92 4 года назад

Michael “my wife is from Cologne Germany “ Shermer

@drygulch1000 4 года назад

The bad luck of domesticability...

@Twobirdsbreakingfree 3 года назад

How about let's not live in a zoo at all? We need to rewild the planet and ourselves.

@chb762 4 года назад

While I haven't read his book, I don't agree with this guest. The average mid-level office worker today has a better quality of life than a Medieval King did. We have electricity at the flip of a switch, hot and cold running water, drainage plumbing, a roof over our heads, heating and cooling of our houses. We travel; both locally and worldwide, in cheap reliable forms of transportation, on a well-maintain system of roadways and highways, and on airplanes that cross the Oceans in a matter of hours, not days or weeks. We have an unprecedented level of free and easy access to information and knowledge, as well as instant worldwide communication networks. We don't need to have 10 children, because 4 of them will die before their 2nd birthdays. 30% of us don't die from violent tribal conflict anymore. The existential angst he mentions is, IMO, a by-product of all the progress and prosperity we enjoy. We don't have to worry about what I mentioned above, and so our focus has shifted towards other areas. I'm also not sure that an aggregate claim of people having more existential angst now than before is something that can be quantified at all, in any case. Finally, I don't agree with his advocacy of UBI. The welfare state has completely destroyed black America. Having your entire country on the dole will be a catastrophe. People need "self-actualization", as per Maslow. Sitting on your couch and waiting for your monthly stipend to arrive in your mailbox will result in an existential crisis far worse than what we see people go through now...

@semarugaijin9451 2 года назад

Yes, Yes and yes, There are places where he can live his values and forgo his material possessions and live in the primitivist agro-communist society he is recommending for us. But like all people of his ilk, he lives in an upscale home and has several luxury cars while telling us to go back to the bush. What else is new.

@BrianBattles 4 года назад

Buncha observations and general complaints, no root causes identified or solutions proposed

@kavolis 4 года назад

Because the problem is overpopulation (you can replace the word "civilization" with word "overpopulation" in the book and everything then makes a perfect sense). And how in the world you can fight overpopulation? A genocide? War? Famine? Pandemic disease? If (according to Chris) the best system to a human being is a community of up to 150 individuals (since humanity evolved in such conditions for 98% of it's existence, therefore it's natural and civilization is unnatural), then there's simply no other solutions. This is why you will not find any solutions proposed in the book. Who in the world want's to be called Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin or Mao? And who would buy such a book?

@BrianBattles 3 года назад

Ryan sounds like someone who's not happy for some reason, like a glass half full person

@inthepipe5by549 3 года назад

I think you re really an empty glass, in all possible senses.

@BrianBattles 3 года назад

@@inthepipe5by549 Thanks!

@AntonioGarmsci-cy5vt 4 года назад

Fuckhead, working people, the source of wealth, can't just change the shit system. Capitalism is the crisis!!!

@thetruthoutside8423 3 года назад

Well, clearly without addressing the problems with capitalism nothing would be going forward. Profitability has been a major problem. You right about the great Campbell but also he added the state is going to crush humanity or save humanity. America does not have the great system, you right.

@LibertarianRealist 4 года назад

Get to the point

@LughSummerson 4 года назад

He sounds like an angel whining about too much harp music in Heaven. If you know a better way to live, go ahead. Show us with books and documentaries about you actually doing it. I don't think he believes his own work. In reality, progress has taken us to this point where Michael, Christopher and most of us watching are concerned about how to enable every human being to live a long, happy and fulfilled life. Not just our immediate tribe, which is how we evolved. Thank you, Civilization. Thank you, Progress.

@DomFortress 3 года назад

Care to reflect on your own symbolic immortality project called "progress of civilization", at the cost of yourself confronting your own dragon of grandiosity?

@nowaout8014 4 года назад

500 million people is the number of perfect population on Georgia Guidestones

@danielteivelis 4 года назад

There is a little (I'm joking here) detail that you both seen to disregard when talking about how this and that services are provided for free in some countries: As a matter of fact, they are not free. What happens is that someone else (usually offshore) has to pay for them and, in countries as developed or industrialized as those mentioned it is the explotation of other economies that sustain such a high standard of living. There are many mechanisms for this: patents, copyrights, high technology products/business/sales/services, etc. But, it must be made absolutely clear that there is always someone who will have to pay for anything that has a value (and thus a cost). To hide (or forget to mention) such reality is to try to paint a make-believe scenario that does not serve any other purpose than to play in favor of a political agenda.

@jaketapper1953 4 года назад

this guy is a creep that frequents rub and tugs ... pretty sad

@philosopher0076 4 года назад

Jake Tapper. So? That's his business. Who are you to judge? Is he hurting anybody? Worry about yourself instead of concerning yourself with the personal details of an author you don't know from Adam. Judgemental clown. smh.

@JM-fo1te 4 года назад

What's a rub and tug?

@5driedgrams 4 года назад

@@philosopher0076 just a typical random frustated guy on the internet. The peak of his day is making others feel bad. Nothing new here.

@jaketapper1953 4 года назад

@@5driedgrams Actually he's one of those guys that acts like a feminist and justifies his perversion.

@jaketapper1953 4 года назад

@@philosopher0076 Nah, any guy not honest with themselves and justifying his actions looking at how less educated people are ... is sad. He's a feminist predator.