repeating patterns

We could all be San Bushmen, right now. In a way we once were according to analysis of our MtDNA. I once saw an episode of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" where he ate an Ostrich egg with some Bushmen prepared in the traditional way.

I'm pretty sure it tasted like shit. It had sand and bits of ash in it. He said as much but was careful to say he had respect for their traditional way of life and so forth, which I do too.

The fact remains though, that these people are not Epicurians. You aren't going to find many of the "finer things in life" like Literature, Fine wine, gourmet food, High culture, among the Bushmen.

So where do all these things come from?

It comes from the development of an Aristocracy through the development of intensve Agriculture. Basically feudalism.



There is no doubt in my mind that a cultured Feudal lord lived a better life than a bushman and that a peasant lived a far worse one.

Sure a Bushman owns little, but he has the freedom to do as he pleases. He is a free man living with dignity, beholden to no one. He eats a healthier more diverse diet then the gruel that was peasant fare. Weston A Price proved that hunter gatheres the world over enjoyed superor health from their varied diets than the western starch based diet.

So I am sure that was even moreso, in midieval Europe. But the point I am trying to make here is that the majority of people took a step down from how they lived as hunter gatherers in order for an elite to make advances that eventually filtered down to a broader segment of mankind.

The Old regime of Tibet seems to have been a form of the Midieval Period of Europe, frozen in time. The many slaved away in lives of hunger, toil and deradation so that a privelidged few could live lifes of high culture gorgeously attired in Saffron robes playing with Gold trinkets raping the woman and young boys. See Buddhism is Corrupt

They Monopolized the Literacy and knowledge and trade with outside world.

They obviously had some kernel of Knowledge. This is What Spiritually curious Westerners have been all excited about learning.

But there have been lots of statges of development beyond fudealism that happened outside of Tibet prior to the 1950's such as Human rights, democracy, industrialization, that have brought freedom and prosperity to porportionately greater numbers of people.

There is an Hegelian Dialetic with this stuff, with relative freedom vs. relative servitude going back and forth through history. In many ways Advanced Corporate capitalism resembles Fuedalism. On a Global scale it, perhaps be argued that the billions of people subsisting on less than a dollar a day are serfs to powerful Wealthy Interests in the West. The World Bank and the IMF emplot debt slavery to create uneven trade balances and siphon wealth from the third world.

Still I think on balance there is progress.