The Garden Of Eden

There are a variety of theories, stories, and fantasies which I'll refer to as stories of the Garden of Eden. These stories revolve around a reconstructed past which was vastly more spiritually wealthy: more peaceful, wholesome, trusting, integrated with the earth, healthy in diet, etc.

As fantasies or imaginal background, I have no real objection, but as actual depictions of the past, I believe these are broadly false. Furthermore, insofar as we're concerned with actually trying to understand our own species, and especially what ought to be possible for the future, we should not be using stories like these to guide us.

I have a few claims here:

1. The lives of most humans who have ever lived have been uncomfortable, difficult, vulnerable, and often brutal, much more than we in the 21st century West usually imagine.
2. The kinds of stories about the history of our species which circulate in pop discourses, especially in hippy circles, are very often based on a combination of sparse anecdotes and fantasy or imaginative elaboration from anthropological and archaeological evidence.
3. While "traditional societies" are well adapted to their contexts in many ways, many features of their cultures look more like a random hodgepodge—some of them delightful or curious, and many dysfunctional or harmful, but mostly just not particularly well optimized for anything.

Beyond these, my claim is that from my (sparse) reading of anthropology, I haven't seen evidence of societies¹ which display overwhelming spiritual integrity, righteousness, or robustness. In general, ethnographies feel like they're describing the inheritors of a lineage of adaptation, trauma, dysfunction, ignorance, and authentic human spirit, muddling through with what they have at hand.

How bad was it?

Pop-spiritual pseudoanthropology

Adaptation and optimization

It is our birthright to adapt and be joyful

Footnotes

1. Mostly I mean before contact with the West, but largely the same after also. ↩