Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Living in Harmony With Nature:
[1]Don Boudreaux (Cafe Hayek) has a post on this (thanks to [2]Gil
Mlibauer (A Reasonable Man) for the pointer). Here's an excerpt
(paragraph braeks added) that I especially liked:
Pre-Columbian peoples lived simply, to be sure, but let�s stop
mistaking ignorance and poverty with harmony. It�s an utter myth �-
we might say an urban myth -� that primitive peoples lived with
nature harmoniously.
Nature devastated them. Nature battered them into early graves.
Their ignorance of nature prevented them from achieving much
material wealth. To dance to imaginary rain gods or to chant and
pray for a child dying of bacterial infection is not to live
harmoniously with nature; it is to live most inharmoniously. Nature
is doing its thing -� failing to water the crops, growing bacteria
within a child�s lungs -� while human beings who are as ignorant of
nature as nature is of human beings, moan, chant, pray, dance,
build totems, burn leaves and twigs, all in fruitless, inharmonious
efforts to solve the problems. . . .
References
1. http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2005/04/living_in_harmo.html
2. http://areasonableman.com/2005/04/in-harmony-with-nature.html
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