We’ll probably talk about this on my podcast, Mostly Free Podcast on Episode 27.

The note:

The Neolithic Faustian Bargain: Re-evaluating the Agricultural Revolution

The prevailing historical narrative, often championed by modern libertarians, frames the Agricultural Revolution as the ultimate catalyst for human flourishing. By transitioning from nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled farmers, we supposedly traded the “nasty, brutish, and short” life of the wild for the security of surplus and the eventual comforts of the Industrial Revolution. However, a closer analysis of the biological and psychological delta suggests this may have been a tragedy rather than a triumph.

The Myth of Scarcity

The core justification for agriculture is survival. Yet, observation of the natural world contradicts the idea that pre-agricultural life was a state of constant starvation. Wildlife—deer, raccoons, birds—evolve to fit their environment and rarely appear “stressed” or “starving” in their natural state. Humans, similarly evolved for the hunter-gatherer niche, may have lived in a state of biological equilibrium that agriculture permanently disrupted.

The Psychological and Political Delta

The shift to “sedentary”civilized” life introduced a host of “mismatch diseases” and psychological pathologies. Drug addiction, alcoholism, and chronic stress are not features of the nomadic life; they are the byproducts of the industrial and agricultural structures we’ve built. Furthermore, the move to settled society created the infrastructure for political elites to dominate the masses. We traded the freedom of the nomad for a system where society is increasingly crushed by the depravity of those in power.

Me: The agricultural revolution enabled a transition from the meritorious elites of the hunter-gatherer era to the pathological political elites of the modern era.

The Question of Mortality and Mindset

A common counter-argument for modern society is the dramatic reduction in infant mortality. While the data shows higher death rates in prehistoric times, it raises a profound question about the human psyche: Was the prehistoric mindset more akin to the animal kingdom? Just as a sheep continues its business after losing a lamb, perhaps prehistoric humans possessed a psychological resilience or a different “mode of being” that allowed them to process loss without the debilitating depression seen in modern, hyper-introspective society.

Me: Modern society, especially in urban settings, is more and more removed from the environment we evolved to inhabit. As we become more disconnected from reality, psychological and physiological pathologies increase. Nature never intended for us to live like this and, just like with our diets, modern diets can be tolerated, but they inevitably lead to physiological pathologies and our psychology follows the same path in response to our unnatural way of life.

Open Questions

• The Resilience Gap: To what extent has our increased intelligence and capacity for introspection actually reduced our ability to handle natural biological setbacks (like mortality) compared to our ancestors?
• The Elite Dependency: Is it possible to maintain the benefits of the Industrial Revolution without the centralized political “depravity” that agriculture seemingly enabled?
• Biological Equilibrium: If we were to measure “success” by lack of stress and addiction rather than caloric surplus, how would the last 10,000 years be graded?

Blind Spot Counterpoints

The Mortality Distinction: Comparing human grief to that of sheep may overlook the unique depth of human social bonding. It’s possible prehistoric humans suffered just as deeply as we do, but lacked the recorded history to express it.

The Scale Trap: While wildlife may not appear “stressed,” their populations are kept in check by brutal natural mechanisms (predation, infection, and exposure) that humans have successfully mitigated. Is the “stress” of a mortgage truly worse than the “stress” of being hunted?

The Romanticization of the Nomad: There is a risk of “Noble Savage” bias. Prehistoric life lacked the “depravity of elites,” but it also lacked the capacity for large-scale cooperation, medicine, and the very intellectual sparring we are engaging in now.