Check out this short video, via SpaceCollective.
What I got out of it: The neolithic farming mentality produced dualism. The neolithic society began, basically, as a religion. (By the way, check out the June 2011 National Geographic, which also touches on this.) And the religion grew into an effective way to manage society. People planted what they wanted near their homes, and groups eventually formed around those food sources, and then villages, to keep out predators, enemies, and pests in order to preserve the village. What was inside the village had to be protected from everything that was outside the village. So “Inside”–within our control–was “Good” and “Outside”–beyond our control–was “Bad.” This social and ideological structure and dualistic thought resulting from the neolithic age is the pattern humanity has followed for thousands of years, but it’s time that changed. Because, with the birth of the Information Age, we now have safe access to everything outside of our own village.
We are struggling to evolve outside of such notions, to move beyond the neolithic and into something more advanced. But perhaps that something more advanced is and should be informed and deeply, existentially influenced by something far more ancient than the neolithic. Its predecessor, the non-dualistic hunter-gatherer. While one would have perceived a predator as a threat to be feared, one also recognized the value of that predator. There was an idea that one wanted to also take on the desirable traits of the predator. Everything, even danger, was seen more as balancing parts of a greater whole. And the terms “Good” and “Bad” were not so abruptly codified, defined, or controlled.
Here are some interesting lines from the guy in the video: “…The notion of nation-states was the last [beneficial] outcome of the farming mentality. …For the first time, you could organize entities, maximized for administrative purposes. …We don’t need that anymore. It’s all in the computer [internet]. …It’s much easier for us, as inhabitants of the 21st century, to identify with hunter-gatherers than it is to identify with somebody from 100 years ago. But the way we have set up society and the way we have organized ourselves come from the neolithic [farmer] mindset. There is a reason why so many people in modern society are on anti-depressants. This is the reason.”
Brilliant.