No Free Lunch

"Progress is our most important product."

            In the late 50's and early 60's, that slogan helped General Electric and its spokesman Ronald Reagan to sell countless washing machines, refrigerators, and light bulbs. 

   
            GE was on to something here, maybe more than it realized.  Its slogan embodied a deep-seated Western idea:  that "progress" is an autonomous propellant rocketing us through time toward a brighter (no pun intended) future.  This idea is firmly anchored in the conviction that history represents the unfolding of a divine plan, or the working out of natural laws toward specific ends.  That can be an ethereal heaven, an earthly utopia, or both, depending on one's personal proclivities.  Every day in every way, things will get better and better, so long as we act according to divine precepts or, in the secular version of things, natural laws. At least we hope(d) so.

          

But dial back about 10,000 years to history's most influential illustration of progress:  the food-producing revolution, when humans switched from hunting and gathering their food to producing it.  Any textbook on World History or Western Civilization will (and should) proclaim in celebratory detail what this revolution made possible:  food surpluses that supported all sorts of specialists--entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, mathematicians, healers, writers, priests, politicians, soldiers, artists, poets, philosophers, and musicians, and so forth. 
All of whom created "Civilization."   
Huzzah! 

            But here's where things get interesting.  Food production also entailed radical environmental changes and enormous collateral damage.  Like any revolution, say 1789 France, food production created its own version of The Terror.  It brought a poorer diet (from high-calorie/low nutrient foods) and chronic arthritis (from prepping fields).  It concentrated excrement where people lived.  Rodents infested food storage sites.  Waste from animals, relatives, friends, enemies, and neighbors permeated homes, streets, agricultural areas, and water supplies. It made possible our most highly contagious, terrifying diseases: domesticated animals transmitted smallpox, influenza, measles, tuberculosis and whooping cough.  It brought epidemics and massive die-offs to densely-populated communities with already compromised immune systems.  It brought trade, communication, warfare, empire building, and exploration, all of which exacerbated the damage.

Danse Macabre, M. Wolgemut, 1493

            This was Pathogen Party Time.

            And the Party flourished while Athenians democratized, Mozarts composed, da Vincis painted, Michangelos sculpted, Newtons and Einsteins calculated, and Kochs, Pasteurs and Flemings experimented (producing, by the way, even more massive environmental changes than the agricultural revolution). 

           In contrast, the Pathogen

San Hunter-Gatherers, Southern Africa

Party by-passed nomadic hunter-gatherers with their "poop-and-go" lifestyle.  They lived in smaller communities, had no domestic animals, ate a healthier diet, didn't suffer from arthritis, and had lots more leisure time than their "civilized" counterparts.   No wonder Jared Diamond published a 1987 essay on the food-producing revolution with this in-your-face title:  "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race." 
           
            In short, disease was the "inconvenient truth" of the revolution that gave us civilization.  Great progress meant great trouble, yet I doubt we'd give up the former to avoid the latter. In fact, it's civilization itself that provides the tools to even entertain such a notion.  Indeed, the food-producing revolution shows that humans adapt--often involuntarily and painfully, sometimes with foresight and ingenuity, sometimes with courage or cowardice, sometimes with all the above.

              Progress may well be our most important product, and pursuit of its benefits seems entrenched in our intellectual DNA.  But when viewed through history's wider lens, "Progress" as our most important product looks pretty spooky. Its creative and destructive elements are inseparable and interdependent. Welcome to one of history's profound ironies.