Is it good?
In the article "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race." Jared Diamond explains about the consequences of agriculture on the human race. And switching from hunters and gatherers to being farmers-settlers. I think Jared Diamond might be onto something with certain parts of his article. But I think he's over-exaggerating to call civilization the worst mistake in history. And yes, there are a lot of problems in the world but the achievements that the human race has made overpowers the problems by a great amount. Farming is a topic that is commonly argued about in this article, because a lot of people say that it was what made us what we're today. Others say it was just a way to bring starvation, disease, deep class division, and a lot of negative environmental effects. Agriculture began almost 10, 000 years ago and since then, it has changed society in two ways. Equality for everyone, and it has changed the environment we live in today.
Diamond does have a few points in his article that make enough sense to make an argument. Such as how farming has caused problems such as disease. Because it's true, animals carry lots of diseases. But how did we fix that? We created a facility where you could go and get treated for those diseases, and vaccines you could take to help you prevent getting sick. Diamond also says farming cause starvation, this is a very debatable topic when it comes to farming. Because farming did bring a lot more people into this world. And the people the harder it is to feed everyone. Let's say we were to put ourselves inside the shoes of the hunter-gatherers. What would you choose if you were them, continue to hunt and gather but have the population go out of control? Or start to create civilization and agriculture so we could handle the things that we have adapted to handle now. Diamond should have supplied us with more examples and explanations.
Another thing that Diamond does is that he is extremely bias throughout his article. Whenever he makes a comparison between hunter-gatherer and farming societies, he shows all the positives for hunter-gatherer and the negatives for farmer societies. For example, when Diamond is comparing the nutrition of the two societies, he talks about the balance of nutrients and diet, he tells us that the Kalahari Bushmen eat a variety of over seventy five different wild plants and receive much more calories than needed. But on the other hand, he mentions the fact that thousands of farmers died during the potato famine during the 1840's.
In my opinion Jared Diamond's article does not compare both the positive and negative sides to the hunter-gather time period and the farming time period. Also Diamond is so sure that without civilization we would be a perfect society. None of us would know exactly what would happen if agriculture had never taken its turn.It's easy for us to look back and say "Civilization was a horrible mistake." But maybe it wasn't, we could only wonder what society would be like if hunter-gatherers would have continued to rain on. The human race might not even be here!
Civilization has changed our society today because it's created equality for everyone, and it's changed the environment we live in today. So in conclusion, what I'm basically saying is that we shouldn't judge agriculture just because it has led to some bad things such as starvation, disease, environmental problems. But I try not to focus on the negatives, civilization has also brought us everything we love today. Such as iPhones, iPads, the internet, democracy, science, algebra, justice. Sometimes, you just have to look at the positives.