Good morning Hank, it's Tuesday.
So I think one of the great unanswered questions
of world history is, "why cities?".
Like, for 95 percent of human history basically everyone was a hunter-gatherer
Living in a small band of maybe a few dozen people.
And then around 12,000 years ago communities started to get bigger with the
advent of agriculture and domesticated livestock.
Suddenly, one person could harvest and/or slaughter more than one person's
food needs, meaning that not everyone had to be in the food acquisition business.
And that allowed for specialization of labor; professional priests, and scribes, and soldiers, and so on.
But how and why that happened is the subject of much debate among historians,
not least because the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture seems to have been
completely irrational.
For starters, hunter-gatherers seemed to have been healthier than early agriculturalists;
like, analysis of human remains and archaeological sites show us that famine and
starvation were much more common among early settlement dwellers.
Also, hunter-gatherers were less likely to die of disease pandemics because, you know,
cities meant lots of people living together, and getting each other sick, and also living with livestock
so diseases could cross the species barrier.
So, living in early agricultural settlements was bad for your health.
It also probably meant more work. Like, studies of 20th century hunting and gathering communities showed that
members of those communities work on average less than 20 hours per week acquiring food.
And also less than 20 hours per week on so-called "domestic labor",
which is everything from preparing food, to tool and shelter maintenance.
Everything we can gather about early agricultural life is that it was a lot more labor-intensive,
and certainly contemporary life is a lot more labor-intensive.
Like Americans for instance work on average 40 hours a week, and spend another
36 hours per week on domestic labour.
So why would anyone want to live in a city where your life is harder, but also shorter?
Well, there are many theories about this. Some people think the chicken of state power came first;
that like the moment there was a surplus it was taxed by the state and then the power structure became
inescapable for the people living under it.
Others think the egg came first; that people chose to use the surplus to create a state that
could protect them from outside attack.
Some theorized that then, as now, cities were just more exciting places to live with more connections to make.
Others argue the relative equality of hunter-gatherer communities was unattractive to those who
wanted power, and that the drive to concentrate power drove the growth of cities.
But whatever happened, it does seem like cities were not in these short or even medium term interest of those who
lived in them.
Now, it'd be easy to say and, many have, that this was all a mistake, and we should have just remained
hunter-gatherers. Certainly agriculture, and the ensuing human-centric planet has been very bad for biodiversity on earth.
But we also shouldn't romanticize pre- agricultural communities where infanticide was usually
common and rates of death by violence were usually much higher than they are now.
And while settlements do seem to have been initially disastrous for those who lived in them,
they did eventually lead to better lives for humans by almost any measure.
We are less likely to die of infectious disease, or malnutrition, or violence than ever,
and while as I mentioned earlier, we do work more than hunter-gatherers,
we also work less than we have at any point in the last 150 years.
Meanwhile, absolute poverty is declining dramatically and median US household income is at its
highest point ever.
But I'd actually argue the greatest benefit of cities has been reading and writing which have allowed us to
speed our accumulation of knowledge, and fuel discoveries in science and technology, and which could
only be invented in big communities with specialization of labor.
But there were trade-offs to the choices our ancestors made, and there are trade-offs to the choices
we're making today.
To live intentionally I think you have to bear in mind what you believe to be the ground of meaning in life.
Like if the point of life is to preserve biodiversity on our home planet then hunting and gathering is the way to go.
If the point is to seek an understanding of the universe and our place in it, then specialization of Labor is a
necessity.
But I have to say that while I understand much has been lost, I am grateful to live in a world with
telescopes, and vaccines, and YouTube, and books.
Late update! Speaking of books, Hank, I am so incredibly excited!
You are publishing a book next year! Fancy New York Times article in the doobly-doo below.
I continue to be awed by your ability to do so many things so well.
It is An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. That is the title but it's also how I feel. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.