"civilization": how advanced are we really?

in archaeological terms, homo sapiens is a really young species. for 90% of our existence we got by hunting and gathering, living the simple, egalitarian life. then about 10,000 years ago (yesterday by archaeological standards) we decided to embark on a grand experiment: agriculture. sure, it was a necessary experiment;mammoths and other big game that used to be hunted and barbequed on the recently mastered firesides were becoming few and far between. so 10 millenia ago, those lucky bastards living in the "fertile crescent" lands (modern day turkey and iraq) figured out how to domesticate crops and and a few animals. thus was born agriculture, the very basis of civilization.humans no longer needed to forage for food all day, they had time for leisure; sure enough, they passed the time in the most human of ways (fiddling with stuff and procreating) and the subsequent population explosion lead to the development of our ingenuity and creativity, as shown in our propensity for invention. these conditions also lead to the inception of social structures such as politics, religion and justice.

fast forward to today. mankind has "advanced" at such a breakneck pace due to our "superior intellect". we have learned to manipulate any and every facet of this planet for our own benefit, and as such, our civilization has grown leaps and bounds. we can now talk to people who are thousands of miles away, walk around in outer space, and manipulate almost any material for our convenience. we have great cities and societies, and our cultures are diverse and complex. hell, we think we're so clever, don't we?

as it turns out, we're pretty damn stupid. we revel so much in our own "advancement" that we don't realize our ideas of "modernization" and "civilization" that seem pretty kool in the short are actually colossal failures.

"civilization" was our gift to opportunistic and relentless pathogens that cause most communicable disease. our reduced mobility and extended contact with domesticated animals were the main avenues for the development and spread of almost every communicable disease known to man. what's more, even though our "advances" in medicine have supposedly improved the health of populations, we know that this is a farce. lifestyles diseases still ravage us, and the majority of these are caused by modern lifestyle and by stress; for those of you who read my posting about stress, you will recall that stress is the thing that was supposed to help us survive as wild animals, but which now kills us, because it is activated needlessly by our own ridiculously complex social conventions.
and not to be too cynical, but even though hunter-gatherers had no cars, cable tv or air conditioning, they were a happy, classless, equal people. in our "impressive" modern civilization, so many are still hungry, sick, marginalized, neglected, abused, mistreated, exploited and forgotten.

"Advanced" are we? its seems we are inexplicably blind to the damage we cause to our planet; we seem not to believe that our actions are leading towards climatic and energy crises that could end the way of life we all enjoy so much; the earth was doing fine for billions of years, and then a few thousand years ago we come along, and like a bad bout of h1n1, threatened its very existence and livelihood. and even if we manage to find some way to keep the icecaps frozen, fix the ozone, re-grow the forests and re-fuel our cars in a safe way, all it will take is some trigger happy world leader to launch a few nukes and send humanity into thy kingdom come.

its time the human race learns its place and plays its proper part in the grand scheme of things. we need to deflate our egos and open our eyes to the truth. we must realize that the only time we will deserve a pat on our backs is when we learn to appreciate and preserve the systems that got us here, because these systems are the only ones that can take us forward.....and just like us, they are not infallible........