How come Humans don't use their Hunter/Gatherer instincts when they're about starve?

submitted by radicalcentristNational Centrism from self.debatealtright

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[–]NeoRail 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

How well have you researched this? Because I can tell you for a fact that in Germany during the First World War, for example, there were significant state-organised and spontaneous attempts at foraging as a result of the British naval blockade. Even children were involved in this.

[–]radicalcentristNational Centrism[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I'll admit, I base it off some local observations, as well as this animated chart that compares the prevalence of Hunter/Gathers in each nation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer#/media/File:ArchaeoGLOBE_FHG.gif

A good example is whenever I see homeless people begging outside of coffee shops, or perhaps going "dumpster diving", I always wonder why haven't they just moved back to the Forests since they're poor anyway. Or in Africa, plenty of people are still starving even though the continent is native to many Hunter/Gather tribes who are even still around to this day. Why not copy them instead of waiting for foreign organizations to deliver them food?

But I'm interested in hearing more about that German story.

[–]Node 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I always wonder why haven't they just moved back to the Forests since they're poor anyway.

Because they're malfunctioning. If they were capable of 'moving to the forest', they wouldn't be homeless in the first place.

[–]radicalcentristNational Centrism[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

IMO, I wouldn't think less of someone who lost their fortune or wanted to reject modern society and just go back to living a primitive life.

Ted Kaczynski's critiques of Industrialization comes to mind, and he was tested to be a genius.

If someone is homeless but still possesses skills, they could do what this Man does and at least build themselves a House out of mud, instead of living under a cardboard box.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCKkHqlx9dE

[–]Node 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think for most homeless, that would require a significant amount of travel to find woods they could safely squat and build a life in. What place doesn't have landowners, hunters, and pot growers?

Here in the west, there is no rain from about April to November. Extracting food and water from the environment would be a challenge, if one could even find land that remote. Then you'd have to worry about being burned to death in one of the common wildfires.

Ted had some great insights. But imo it's way too late to course correct. We're going to go fully into the boom, until our bust becomes the biggest news story of our solar system.

If that guy in the video is the one I'm thinking of, he has a good chunk of land in Oz where he does all his construction. In a lot or most places, that would mean property taxes that a forest dweller would be unable to pay.

The one place I know of where people are literally living mostly primitively in the woods is northern Russia.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcaVClI50rGZmbYMhoSSDGA

Here's a channel that covers some of that. Before I was banned, I subbed to a couple similar channels, and one had a pretty amazing documentary on the details of their lives, their motivations, and their thoughts about it all. A big chunk of one of the families had moved everything to some place like Uruguay, or nearby, but then moved it all back to northern Russia to preserve their culture.

[–]NeoRail 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A good example is whenever I see homeless people begging outside of coffee shops, or perhaps going "dumpster diving", I always wonder why haven't they just moved back to the Forests since they're poor anyway. Or in Africa, plenty of people are still starving even though the continent is native to many Hunter/Gather tribes who are even still around to this day. Why not copy them instead of waiting for foreign organizations to deliver them food?

You are neglecting three very important reasons why someone would rather be homeless and unemployed in an urban centre than take their chances with foraging in a forest:

  • They still have a much better chance to survive in a city.

  • It would be much less effort to survive in a city.

  • If they have to choose between living in a forest permanently and living in a city permanently, most will choose the latter. In other words, they don't want to leave the cities, because ideally they would want to reintegrate in those cities.

But I'm interested in hearing more about that German story.

What do you want to know? There is not much else to say. As a result of the starvation blockade, hundreds of thousands of people died. Conditions became atrocious, especially after 1916. People regularly had to butcher horses for food and often had to resort to animal fodder to survive. You might want to look up the turnip winter, if you find this interesting. Foraging was one of the many measures that German society adopted in the face of food shortages. The government introduced initiatives that made school trips to the forests and countryside more frequent and made foraging for food one of the features of those trips. It wasn't the most effective thing ever, but it got some extra food to German homes. People in need also did not hesitate to forage for themselves, if they could manage to do that effectively. As a result of the food shortages, many urban people would actually travel not to the forests, but to the farms in the countryside, where they would dig up agricultural produce before it was harvested by the peasants and take it back to the cities.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A good example is whenever I see homeless people begging outside of coffee shops, or perhaps going "dumpster diving", I always wonder why haven't they just moved back to the Forests since they're poor anyway

Panhandling pays better than most jobs. Homeless guy I used to know said he could make $65/hr on a good day. He'd "work" for a couple hours then go do whatever he wanted.

Not long ago my parent's neighbor tried his hand at it. Wore a hoodie and sunglasses like nobody would recognize him. Some guys like him panhandle then go back to their half million dollar homes in their brand new F150s.

If you want to spot the real homeless people, look for the guys who are wearing dirty clothing and smell.