Cognitive Engineering

Nasty, brutish and short or the Garden of Eden? We explore the Return to Monke meme and ask whether we are right to yearn for a more primitive lifestyle. In this podcast, we examine our origins as hunter-gatherers and explore whether things were better or worse before we became civilised. We look at food scarcity, environmental damage, child mortality rates and a whole host of other fun stuff. We also address the morality of primitivism and consider what would actually happen if we all tried to Return to Monke. A few things we mentioned in this podcast: - Know Your Meme: Return to Monke https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/return-to-monke - The Unabomber manifesto: Industrial society and its future http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf - Life expectancy in hunter-gatherers https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-3-319-16999-6_2352-1#:~:text=Excepting%20outside%20forces%20such%20as,individuals%20living%20in%20developed%20countries - Are hunter-gatherers the happiest humans to