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You misjudge me, grievously
;)

I'd fully registered that Tombo wasn't of the Eden persuasion. But I was actually wanting to confront the fact that such a concept "seems to bounce round discussions of pre-monumental history all the time" not lay it on him and knock him down. It seemed to me it's such an often mentioned thing and deserved attention.

Mental and physical evolution going hand in hand - I'd have thought that's right, as evolution is powered only by survival, or more precisely, non-survival, so if a change of attitude isn't life threatening it isn't an evolutionary change, merely a societal one and liable to change back at any time.

and if a Golden Age exists, then it's now, for us here in the rich countries.

However Bronze Age culture seems to have been very stable and we'll be lucky to equal that longevity.

TomBo's quote is from Dylan's 'It's alright ma - I'm only bleeding'. When this man plugged in we thought the world had changed significantly. It had !

It wasn't a direct attack, although it was obviously 'inspired' by your comments. It was more a rambling observation in the context of parts of this amazing thread :-)

"if a change of attitude isn't life threatening it isn't an evolutionary change, merely a societal one and liable to change back at any time"

Just because its possible that it will change back at any time doesn't make the change any less real. Its just as well that it <i>can</i> change back or we really would be doomed. And the changes caused by evolution are surely not set in stone, either? I can imagine a situation where we "evolved" back to something that came earlier, if the conditions in the environment demanded it.

The changes that we NEED to make, as a species, are actually necessary because of evolution. The correcting of the Common Error is demanded by nature's necessity. This will become increasingly obvious as climate change really starts to bite, to only mention the oil the crisis in passing. Survival of the fittest demands that the illusions created by civil-ization are dispelled.

I repeat, we have not been successful in controlling our environment. We've actually made our environment less safe for us to live in.