ifest some evidence of consciousness, I said, “What does it signal, then?”
“It signals the occurrence of a mind change—a new vision of the world and our place in it.”
“How do you conclude that a mind change occurred?”
“I conclude it from the fact that a revolution occurred,” B replied. “Revolutions don’t occur among people who are thinking in the same old way.”
“Can’t changed social or economic conditions produce a revolution?”
“Surely you don’t mean that. People produce revolutions, not conditions.”
“I mean, can’t people react in a revolutionary way to changed social or economic conditions?”
“Of course they can. But the question is, can they react in a revolutionary way without first thinking in a revolutionary way?”
I had to admit that I couldn’t imagine revolutionary action taking place in the absence of revolutionary thinking.
B said, “I have heard naive thinkers suggest that our agricultural revolution came about as a response to famine.”
“Why is that naive?”
“It’s naive because starving people don’t plant crops any more than drowning people build life rafts. The only people who can afford to wait for crops to grow are people who already have food.”
“Yes, that makes sense.”
“You will also hear it conjectured that agriculture was pretty much an inevitable development, because it makes life so much easier and more secure. In fact, it makes life more toilsome and less secure. Every study of calories spent versus calories gained confirms that the more your food comes from agriculture, the harder you have to work for it. The first Neolithic farmers, who probably only planted a few crops and depended largely on foraging, worked much harder to stay alive than their Mesolithic ancestors. Later farmers, who planted more crops and did less foraging, worked even harder to stay alive, and completely modern totalitarian farmers, who depend entirely on crops, work harder to stay alive than anyone else. And famine, far from being banished by agriculture, is actually a by-product of agriculture and is never found apart from it. Travel to the most inhospitable desert of Australia during the most horrendous drought—and you won’t find a single starving aborigine anywhere.”
“Okay,” I said. “I guess I see what you’re doing. You’re answering all the objections before they’re raised.”
“All the objections to what?”
“To your thesis.”
“Which is what?”
“Which is that our agricultural revolution signaled the appearance of a mind change. It wasn’t just starving people trying something new out of desperation. It wasn’t just people looking for an easier life. It wasn’t just people looking for more security.”
“That’s right. Far from having an easier life or increasing their security, they actually worked harder and were less secure than their hunting-gathering ancestors. So there’s no question here of people doing something just because it was more comfortable.”
It seemed to me that B was in danger of defeating himself with his own arguments. I said, “To hear you tell it, our agricultural revolution had so little going for it that it’s a wonder it happened at all.”
“It truly is a wonder that it happened,” B said emphatically. “That’s precisely what I want you to see. And when you see it, your vision of human history will be changed forever.”
The peace-loving killers of New Guinea
“I find at this point that I need a mosaic piece with a particular feature that will be supplied by the Gebusi of New Guinea.”
“Okay,” I said.
“It’s become popular in recent decades to speak of ‘demonizing’ people who are especially feared or hated, turning them into monsters of depravity. I’ve never actually heard the opposite tendency mentioned, but of course it’s equally possible to ‘angelize’ people who are especially admired or revered—to turn them into perfect beings who embody all desired qualities. For example, there’s been a recent tendency for people to angelize Leaver peoples wherever they’re to be found, to imagine them as infinitely wise, selfless, farseeing environmentalist saints who practice perfect gender equality and never speak in contractions. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Certainly. I don’t live in a refrigerator. I’ve seen Dances with Wolves.”
“Good,” B said. “Since angels are more or less all the same, the process of angelizing these peoples—call them Leavers or aborigines, it doesn’t matter which—tends to make them out to be all more or less the same as well, which is as far from the truth as you can possibly get. This is where the Gebusi of New Guinea come in. I’d like to take a few minutes to describe them to you.”
“Okay.”
“The Gebusi are one of those agricultural peoples whose agricultural style owes nothing at all to our revolution. In fact, it would make better sense to call them hunter-gardeners than farmers. They’re villagers who love to socialize, celebrate, and party with a lot of shouting, singing, and joking. Two thirds of them die of what we would call natural causes, and one third are murdered by friends, neighbors, or relatives. Murder is male business, and at any given time, two thirds of the men have murdered someone.”