Generally speaking the first cultures
who settled along river valleys did so after many generations of
subsisting in a horticulture environment. Settled life gradually
adopted intensive agriculture and developed a government, some say in
order to enable people to do this. There is a loss of health which is
apparent in a comparison between hunter-gathers and their
counterparts living in cities. Historically speaking, there was
always a large mass of non-settled peoples who chose not to live in
this sort of arrangement: Germanic tribes to the north of Rome,
Laplanders in Scandinavia, or peoples from the Central Asian Steppe.
Recently, this has changed with the last hunter-gather non-settled
peoples being pushed to the absolute margins.
Benefits to living in society depend on
the specific nature of the society in question. But generally, they
are easy access to food which you do not have to kill or grow
yourself. On the other side of this coin there is a loss of
agricultural and hunting knowledge which makes on dependent on the
supply chain, and in the case of the modern West, Just in Time
delivery. This could cause problems in a crisis, for example most
Americans do not even have the relatively simple skills involved in
growing a vegetable garden which got their grandfathers or great
grandparents through the depression or that allowed people to
supplement their diet during rationing imposed in the Second World
War.
If the medieval age of faith was
overthrown, it has been replaced in turn by a level of trust unknown
in non-first world countries. The belief in the goodness of man has
enabled some to gain absolute power over the use of force, and has
led the rest to simply trust that this will be done in a just and
even handed way. Justice here is meant as a sort of impartiality and
respect for the rule of law which should be the guiding principle of
any social contract.
The question of the sacrifice of
freedoms is an old question. Thomas Hobbes viewed stateless society
as that of a war of all against all. That is, every person was
thought to be so self interested that he would simply do what he
wanted unless held down by an authority so vast and terrorizing that
he could do nothing but submit to it. Hunter-gatherers appear to have
a vast amount of free time; the sort of back breaking labor that the
peasant is subjected to in the first societies was unknown, as well
as class distinctions. The Peasants after all only existed because
there was enough food to allow them to be born and fed; the life of
hunting and gathering is one that exists on the margin of starvation.
Civilization gives humans the power over environment, and in a
time-obsessed modern society in a post Ford/Taylor world it gives the
illusion of power of the fifth dimension. Or at least, gives us the
pressing sense that the time between waking and sleeping must be
accounted for by socially acceptable behaviors such as work, school,
approved hobbies or avocations.
