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From: jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: New Chernobyl figures [hunter-gatherers]
Message-ID: <469@hadron.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 9-Jul-86 15:14:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: hadron.469
Posted: Wed Jul  9 15:14:59 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 11-Jul-86 21:47:08 EDT
References: <684@bu-cs.UUCP> <927@mmm.UUCP> <186@stracs.cs.strath.ac.uk>
Reply-To: jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Organization: Hadron, Inc., Fairfax, VA
Lines: 69
Summary: *sigh*

Not to intrude on a private conversation (wish it were), but:

In article <949@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> cda@ucbentropy.UUCP () writes:
>In article <884@kontron.UUCP> cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
><I didn't say "all" hunter-gatherer societies.  But just about all American
><Indian cultures fit into this category of sexual oppression.
>Please tell me what you've read that indicates American Indian cultures
>were predominately patriarchial and patrilineal prior to the arrival of
>the French, English, and Spanish in the New World.  

If I remember rightly, CC said that males were hunters, females
stayed home and did all the work.  And so it was.

><As for what kind of health they enjoyed:  You are incredibly ignorant
><if you think the health problems were a function of how well they could
><support a hunter-gatherer economy.  I'm really disturbed at how incredibly
><ignorant the "Let's all live with nature" sorts are about the health
><advances made just in the last two centuries.  ...
>In spite of the fact that the use of C-sections has increased rapidly in
>this country in the past ten years, we have a higher mortality rate for
>births than many countries in Europe where home deliveries
>are the norm.  ...

We also tabulate the mortality rate quite differently, too.  This
has been discussed in net.med.  Please go read.

>	   ...  I don't consider myself especially ignorant about medical
>advances, I just don't consider all of modern medicine an advance.
>...
>I have to wonder if the human race as a whole is any healthier (it's certainly
>not happier) than it was in a "primitive" state.

While that first sentence is a tautology (I'm not sure that, in
this world, all of  a n y t h i n g  is an advance), that last
is most questionable.  Those humans living in a "primitive" state,
much as they were centuries or even millenia ago, are usually
less healthy:  specifically, less long-lived, and less able to
fend off disease and injury.  There are communities in Nebraska
and Russian Georgia, though, where people routinely live to the
age of one hundred.  As far as "happiness":  people in a "primitive"
state need to concentrate a majority of their energies to survival.
People in a technological culture have leisure to do other things.
Like scrawl on walls or computer nets.  The happy ones are those
who learn to enjoy and/or be one with what they're doing, if that
is possible.  This is true in either society.

><< <The Indians also didn't pay taxes.
><< One more argument in favor of abandoning our present lifestyle...
><No, one more argument in favor of abandoning government.
>An excess of government IS our present lifestyle....

Hmm, CA & CC seem to agree somewhat.  But people do need some
kind of government, although the present one is a bit too ...
involved for my liking.  In fact, it is "the worst form of
government ... except for all the others!", eh?

NOW:  looking at this:

<684@bu-cs.UUCP> <927@mmm.UUCP> <186@stracs.cs.strath.ac.uk>
<945@mmm.UUCP> <885@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <147@cstvax.UUCP>
<931@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <875@kontron.UUCP> <937@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
<884@kontron.UUCP> <949@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>

May I suggest to both parties that you take this PRIVATE
CONVERSATION off line?  Thank you.
-- 

	Joe Yao		hadron!jsdy@seismo.{CSS.GOV,ARPA,UUCP}
			jsdy@hadron.COM (not yet domainised)