After watching Matt Ridley’s talk, How Ideas Have Sex on TED, I’ve been thinking just how interdependent we are.
I remember when the first Gulf War started in 1990 I thought “OhOh here it is, Armageddon, nuclear war, WW3, what ever” and I started to wonder if it was possible to run somewhere and go 100% self sufficient. What would we take with us? I composed a long list of what I thought was important and contemplated that for a while. Fortunately it never came to pass and we all went merrily on our way.
But this talk has just made me realise that I was completely fooling myself. There is no way I would have been 100% self sufficient. I was taking society with me and eventually if we were the only community(for argument sake) we would have consumed and exhausted what resources we had taken with us.
Matt mentions that today no one knows how to make anything. Bold statement I thought. I know many people who know how to make things, I include myself amongst them, then I got thinking…
Take a piece of timber furniture. Sure I know how to build a stool but do I know how to cut the tree or mill the timber? What about the tools that I would use to cut, mill and dress the timber? What about the chisels and hammer for cutting the joints and that is assuming that I don’t use any fixings or glue.
Try and think of one thing in our society that we can make 100% ourselves, without the input of someone else. Anything that you do think of will be using the technologies of the stone age. Spear, bowl, stone axe, that sort of thing. Grow something and make a stone age meal sure but no more – fascinating!
I’ve heard it said that civilisation started with the advent of agriculture but this talk has made me realise that agriculture came about due to the exchange of ideas and that it was the trade of those ideas that was the start of civilisation.
Just today I heard of a new lost tribe living in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Hunter gathers from the stone age. I’m not sure if they have traded from outside of their society but the limitation of exchange of their ideas has definitely maintained their existence in the stone age. This is exactly what we would be like today without the huge interdependency that we have around us and our society.
Causes me to appreciate the web of influence that we all share. Thanks 🙂
