WHY I THINK THAT THE DISCOVERY OF AGRICULTURE WAS A GOOD THING. I posted here on Professor James Scott’s argument that it was a great mistake for humans to become farmers. James Scott is not alone in his regret that humans adopted agriculture. Jared Diamond is one of several recent historians who share his feelings. (Here is an article from 1999 by Diamond calling agriculture “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race”). I have not yet been persuaded enough by the arguments to read any of their books.
The first stumbling block is that people today are at liberty to adopt a hunter-gatherer life style or an approximation of one, and I see few examples of people doing so.
The second stumbling block is that without civilizations we would have no William Shakespeare and no iPhones.
The third stumbling block is that the hunter-gatherer life style without agriculture would support only a small fraction of the people now alive. I am biased. Without agriculture, I wouldn’t exist and the majority of the people in the world would not exist. I am in truth uneasy at the thought there are a number of scholars and thinkers who prefer a thought experiment that finds attractive a world with most of the people in the world not around.