ADVANTAGES OF PRIMITIVE SOCIETY

Humans have been on this earth for around 70000 years. By human I mean the modern developed human species present today is genetically identical to the humans living on earth since 70000 years ago.

For a large part of this 70000 years, for 60000 years humans have been living as hunter-gatherers. During the last 10000 years, a series of new discoveries made our lifestyle evolve from living as hunter-gatherers, to villages and finally to the urban environment that we know today.

But we still are genetically the same people as back then because scientifically 70000 yrs is a very short time for genetic adaptations to happen.

What I am trying to imply is that even though we invented cities, we haven't evolved to live in cities. our natural habitat is still the forests and we are still genetically adapted to have a life of a hunter-gatherer. Imagine a wild animal put into a zoo. It has to live the artificial way, it is fed food instead of hunting it himself, it is well taken care of and in most cases, it lives longer than it would have in the jungle. But we all know that a large number of animals go crazy in zoos and this proves that they are not living a healthy life even though their physical health is well taken care of.

But we humans aren't just any other animal. humans are a highly intelligent species that can understand and adapt to any environment. That’s why the negative effect of moving from our natural habitat to the artificial world of cities is much less in us compared to other animals. But even humans are hardwired to their original lifestyle to some extent.

Our urban lifestyle deprives us of some of the crucial things that were present in our natural lifestyle and which we need for living a healthy life. I will be discussing them now.

First I want to state the simple fact that we humans are social creatures. As hunter-gatherers, we lived in groups of 20–50 people, and we spent our entire time socially. You knew every single person in your group and had really close bonds with everyone. Every single job would be done in groups — from hunting expeditions and making tools to painting caves.

Thus we can say that social life is an integral part of our sense of well-being and it is something that we instinctively seek.

But today it is becoming increasingly difficult to form a close social group, due to the changes in our culture.

One of the reasons is the increasing use of social media. I believe social media is thoughtfully built to be addictive but it misdirecting and warping the social lives of today’s youth who now seek quantity rather than quality time with friends.

At the same time, certain categories of society experience an unusually large amount of isolation. The women who act as housewives stay inside the house and maintain it all day face loneliness and isolation.

So do the youth of today who study for a competitive exam and spend their entire day studying alone.

Schools prevent children from any interaction with their classmates in the name of discipline, thus children come out of schools with extremely poor social skills.

It is also harder today to form meaningful relations. You know that you get closer to people when you face hardships together . The humans back in the old age literally depended on each other for their life, so it was easy for them to form deep bonds with everyone.

Today society is extremely divided.

And we can hardly experience such deep bonds except with the people within our nuclear family. These were a few of the many reasons why social life has deteriorated today and I hope we will work towards changing this situation

The second reason that deprives us of another crucial human requirement is based on our organization.

You know our goal as a hunter-gatherer was simple. You felt strong hunger, you arranged hunts, you ate food and you felt happy.

The organization today has become so much more complicated.You work for money, you may work for your boss, or for your passion.And this just seems pretty confusing at times.

We are creatures that used to work in groups of 20, in the old age. Remember groups of 20 together did all the work required for their survival- we created plans for the hunt, made clothes , tools , houses, weapons,and raised children.This means every individual in this group held a major responsibility and his performance had a huge effect on the team.

But today we live in Cities hosting a million people. And because the focus is on a world class competition, a vast majority get to contribute only a small part.Their jobs have a little freedom to create major changes

But our old way of living implies that we enjoy taking the executive role in our hands and doing things our own way so although the city organization is great for the advancement of human society as a whole, personally very few people get to take the wheel. And this is why the personal lives of a vast number of people are left unfulfilled.

Back in the day our everyday life was filled with stuff like exploring new territories, discovering new plants, and creating a hunting plan or a weapon, all on our own and we instinctively seek those levels of freedom in our jobs, schools, and colleges, and I hope we achieve that.

I don’t believe that we need to revert back to living as primitive hunter-gatherers. But we do need to make small changes in our lifestyle by understanding our true nature and it will make your life more fulfilling.