WH Blog #2


World History Blog #2: Intelligence, Privilege, and Morality
What caught my eye in this part of the chapter were the common patterns in all of the emerging communities during the neolithic period. Although the people lived in vastly different environments, many of them were still able to develop in similar ways. Nearly all of them were transitioning towards agriculture and domestication of animals, and nearly all of them were making technological innovations to support that way of living. Their intelligence really astounds me. They really know how to use their resources and that’s something that’s very important in any age. A knowledge of the world around us is important in order to gain advantages for things we want. In many cartoons and movies, people from this era could be depicted as idiotic. But really, they were so smart.

It was sad to see that while some areas lucked out like the fertile crescent, other areas were not as lucky. I see this as the start of inequality. While some areas were great for agriculture, some were better off used as pasture. The book said that there were times pastoral communities envied the way the agricultural communities lived, and I don’t blame them. It’s easy to get upset when you don’t have the same privileges as others. It’s okay. We have to make do with what we are given. I watched a lot of videos on privilege recently and it helped me identify with the pastoral communities’ struggles.

The last thing I wanted to comment on was our reliance. It scares me how reliant we are on such a small range of species. It looks to me like there are already so many threats to biodiversity in the world and not enough incentives made prominent to preserve it. Being dependent on a small variety of crops and animals make us susceptible to crises once an epidemic spreads because of those crop yields. We are continuously destroying pieces of land to grow crops that have sustained us, but are lessening what biodiversity we have left. These plants and animals that go extinct every year could contain the cure to the diseases we face because of our concentration on that small range of crops we grow. Of course, we need more food: it’s a necessity and I’m not ignoring that. This just goes to show the detrimental effects of our rapid population growth on the environment. Many problems could be solved with reasonable population control. Was it natural that humans multiplied this quickly? In all honestly, I wouldn’t know. But in my opinion(!), if mother nature gave us the brains to develop all these “great” societies, then we should use those brains and the morals we gained along the way to preserve her. Existentialists can fight me on that and keep saying that it’s up to the individual to decide what the correct way of living is. I have biased views on what’s right and just, as all morals do. I think I’ll end this entry now since I’m getting derailed from the text’s content.
The commentary here is scattered but I hope it wasn’t too hard to get through.Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day! :)

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