Gettin' Back to Nature

Yesterday, as I picked up my bulk food order, the woman there handed me a little flyer entitled:

"Log Cabin Workshop, assemble an authentic log cabin with on-site, sustainably-harvested wood. Build a log cabin - learn to be self-sufficient."

My next thought was "my ancestors spend their lives trying better the lives of their children and get the hell off the farm. Why would I want to go back?"
My mother's father made the move in the 1920s, heading west off the family farm in South Dakota. He opened a drycleaning business, and I believe the rest of his 13 siblings later sold the farm to agribusiness. My father's father worked in the woods before buying an apple orchard in the mid-1930s, then opened a store in Eugene, Oregon moving off the farm and into the city before World War II started. My father's stories of living on the farm contained the words like; "no electricity, in heat, no running water, spraying arsenic on apples, mom was the doctor, no one to play with, walking to the outhouse after dark."
After years of careful observation, I believe that humans are genetically engineered to be lazy, and that this is the driving force behind our advanced civilizations. While other species may also be genetically lazy, see: housecats, they haven't yet put their laziness to work. Think of all the labor saving devices humans have created. Agriculture, tools, slavery, wagons, electricity, all the things that free up our time to do the free-time fun stuff. Because we don't have to spend all day finding food we can do art, make war, have non-reproductive sex, eat leftover pizza and blog.
And lest you think that current day humans are some sort of special exception, let me take you back 2000 years to the time of the Ancient Romans. Everyday Romans lived a life supported by the work of others, largely slaves. Romans lived a urban-based life very similar to our own, with large urban centers supplied by organized farms and international traders. Housing in Ancient Rome did not have kitchens. You bought your food from the shops and snack bars that existed on every corner. Slaves did your childcare/housework/hard labor. The local laundry did your washing. You could get your water at the neighborhood fountain, or the "water deliveryman" could deliver it to your door, the water deliveryman holding a place in Roman child-paternity jokes very similar to the modern day milkman. Goods were available from all corners of the known world. But once the consumption gene in humans gets activated, its hard to moderate. It's estimated that Ancient Romans were responsible for the extinction 3 types of North African tigers that they imported for arena games. A plant called laserpitium which was so valuable that it was harvested to extinction. The quest for more slaves took Roman Armies to the limits of their known world, while slaves in Rome were believed to outnumber citizens. Even while the Roman culture grew and expanded, there was much lamenting the passing of "the old days, when everything was much better." Cato was famous for this, but it was popular to mouth the sentiment, even while you lounged in your gilded litter, carried aloft by a matched set of Nubian slaves. "Let's get back to the Citizen-farmer, when women spent their day at the loom instead decorating themselves and reclining at banquets!"
So what happened to the Romans? I subscribe to the theory that around 500 BCE, Krakatoa volcano blew up, triggering global climate change. With this planet-wide disruption came the Fall, the barbarian invasion ("hey, Alaric, check out these women!") and the dissolution of the Roman Society. Roman society devolved into small, walled feudal towns, the forerunner of the "gated community". It was easily another 1000 years before humans were able to re-institute a cooperative society for the production of free-time. So here we are again! Huge dependent consumer society, conservative backlash, climate change in the offing. But we don't have to follow the same road as Ancient Rome. There is a middle path. Let me quote from another wise sage of our culture, my Mother-in-law: "You want to have a happy medium!"


Next time: Having Your Log Cabin and Your Bon-Bons, Too!