Wednesday 14 September 2011

Go stone age

I’ve been maintaining radio silence for a wee while now, but today I’m free to wax lyrical. Well, I say I’m free, but I suppose I’m only as free insomuch as anyone is truly free, given the behaviours we must forgo in order to participate in a social community. For instance I’m not free to murder, maim or create mayhem. Alas.

On the plus side I get to reap the benefits of participating in civilisation, and this should not be underestimated. Imagine a world where there was no cooperation, where it was each person for themselves. You could take what you want from anyone else, as long as you had the might to take it, and the strength to keep it, but would there be anything worth taking in such a world?  

We cooperate on a massive scale to produce even the most humble of objects. A door is simple thing, but if I had to make a door from first principles with no assistance how would I fair? I’d need to chop down a tree, so first I’d need to make an axe. 

I could go stone age, and track down flint to shape into an axe head. I suspect this would be challenging, but perhaps not as impossible as finding and mining iron ore, building a furnace to smelt it, then converting it to steel to make an axe head. 

Once my tree is chopped down I’d need to cut it into planks, not so easy with the stone-age axe, but if I’ve been able to make steel perhaps I might be able to make a suitable saw. Assuming I’ve gotten as far as producing planks, I reckon I’d be able to manage the rest fairly easily, but frankly I’d be amazed if I got as far as the plank stage.

We are all so blasé about the society we live in, but the simple fact is that without civilisation we’d be in mud huts struggling to feed ourselves and stay warm. So let this be my ode to cooperation, and the willing surrender of a few absolute freedoms in order to sit in a cosy warm home tapping away at my computer.

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