【高级听力】（文末附视频）The Evolution of Man

The Evolution of Man: How Man Went from Freedom to Corporate Slavery

《文 末 附 视 频》

This may not be a word-for-word transcript.

The shrill of your alarm clock jolts you awake at 5 in the morning. You can feel the warmth of the sheets wrapped around your body – this cocoon of absolute comfort. So you extend your hand and hit the snooze button. Thirty minutes later, after hitting the snooze button a couple more times, you drag yourself out of bed begrudgingly, but only because you are afraid that you will get fired if you don’t. This whole time, you are cussing out everything and everyone because you did not choose this life. You just want to sleep some more.

The problem is, to put clothes on your back, food on your table and a roof over your head, you have to get out of bed and go to your office to work. This is the nature of the life we live today. Most of us are corporate slaves. And while we might blame recession or the lack of viable alternatives for this, we really should be blaming the guy who started agriculture.

To understand this journey from our freedom to corporate slavery, we need to go way back, back to the time when we couldn’t even walk straight.

Before Agriculture 

Charles Darwin, in his book, “On the Origin of Species”, theorizes that man went through a number of distinct stages. His theories have been expounded by many scientists and supported by discoveries of anthropological items all around the world: from Africa to Australia. The theory is that man went through seven distinct stages: Hominidae, Ardipithecus Ramidus, Australopithecus Afarensis, Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, Homo Heidelbergensis, and Homo Sapiens. These early Stone Age periods involved man basically just finding what they needed to survive.

The earliest tools were the stones whose edges were sharpened to enable them (the chimpanzees at this point) to crack nuts which they would then eat. Shelters would be found in caves modeled by nature and until Homo Erectus, man was yet to discover fire.

The reason all this inconsequential information is being presented to you is so that you can appreciate the ease of lives these guys were living. They did not worry about tomorrow or when they retired. They worried about getting food in their stomachs and finding a place to sleep that is safe from their enemies and wild predators.

Hunting and Gathering 

Okay, let us now move to Homo Erectus: the man who not only discovered fire but also started hunting and gathering. The theory is that before hunting and gathering, man was a scavenger. He would, therefore, feed on the carcasses of animals that had already been killed by other animals or ones that had died of natural causes. At this time, man lived in sparsely-wooded areas and avoided dense forests, and he was likely to encounter predators there.

Around 1.8 million years ago, hunting and gathering became a subsistence strategy employed by Homo Erectus in a bid to replace the less reliable scavenging. This practice involved hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants and any edibles one could come along. At the same time, man discovered fire, making it possible for him to come up with tasty delicacies – well, as tasty as possible – since this was the age before culinary experts.

Hunter-gatherers got enough for their needs of the day. Even though they might be viewed as poor through the eyes of the modern world, in terms of well-being, they were absolutely rich. Thinking about tomorrow was not part of their plan: if they got what they needed before 10 am on a Monday, they were good for the rest of the day. This definitely sounds like freedom.

Later, it made sense for man to store the excess, especially when the game hunted was big. Also, the varying climatic conditions and inconsistency of the availability of food led to the rational decision that man should store food for the future. Another reason for this could be that man wanted to settle down in one spot, as when food ran out in one area, they had to move to where there were greener pastures.

To Agriculture and Industrialization 

In 1987, Jared Diamond wrote a revolutionary article, in which he said that the worst mistake in the history of the human race was the advent of agriculture. What do you think? Is this true? 

Agriculture, according to the historical records, started between 12,000 and 15,000 years ago. The hunter-gatherer communities started trying their hand at agriculture in an attempt to ease the burden of foraging for food. This began through the growth of a number of crops like lentils, barley, and peas. Similarly, man began to keep animals like wild oxen and goats. Years later, man would fully switch to farming as the main source of food and the heart of the then economy. He was also able to migrate outwards to Asia and Europe.

With time, through experience and experiments, man was able to come up with new varieties and breeds of both animals and plants. The animal breeds were better adapted to the climate of the areas in which they resided and were more domesticated than their wild ancestors. At the same time, as migration was now possible, these practices moved outwards from South Asia into Africa, Europe and the rest of the world.

Now, let us look at the validity of Jared Diamond’s arguments.

When man moved from scavenging to hunting and gathering, the purpose was to make his work easier. Similarly, the move from hunting and gathering to agriculture was aimed to ensure that man had an easier time getting food to eat. Therefore, as a plus, man was able to spend less time looking for food, hence allowing creativity. On the other hand, concentrating fully on farming meant that man had to spend a lot of his time during the day on the farm. This is particularly so because of the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the tools which were being used in the farms. Gradually, the well-being of human beings, in terms of their fulfillment, started decaying.

As mentioned, most initial methods of farming were ineffective and inefficient. Therefore, industrialization was the next natural step as human beings attempted to make work easier. It started with simple tools like a hoe, which eventuated in more complex farming equipment like tractors. Now, while some people stayed in the farms to complement the machines, others had to find something else to do.

Urbanization and rural migration, together with the increase in white-collar jobs because of specialization, were just some of the resultant effects. These kinds of jobs are characterized by a constant routine with regards to what is to be done, the time it is to be done and in what way it should be done.

Corporate Slavery 

Most people who are in employment today are in the rat race. 

The rat race is a form of corporate slavery. The idea is usually the same: make money; spend a decent percentage on your monthly needs, save a good chunk of it for emergencies or for future use, pay for life insurance (in case you die), save for retirement, save for a vacation, start investing and pay for your mortgage. Therefore, even if you don’t want to, even if you don’t need to, because your savings can feed, dress you and shelter you for a year, or even ten, you get up in the morning and go to the office in order to ensure that you can feed yourself in the next two years. We are enslaved to our need to be able to control the future.

The advent of technology has definitely been good for us, as we are now able to do a lot of things with so much ease. Similarly, it has come with a lot of anxiety about the future: what is going to happen? When is it going to happen? How can I control it?

Did civilization ease our lives? Yes, in a lot of unfathomable ways. Is Jared Diamond right when he claims that agriculture was the biggest mistake ever made by humanity? Possibly not the biggest mistake we have made. Are we happier or freer because of civilization? Well, that really depends on what you feel is your ideal kind of life. 

In the morning, when you are cussing out your alarm and your boss, you may feel that maybe hunting and gathering wasn’t such a bad idea. However, in a cold winter evening, with your feet nicely tucked into a blanket in your heat-controlled environment, you know for sure you are better off.

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