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So, /a/ drawfriends made yet another Junko image:
AVckgN9.jpg
[/SPOILER]​
Shame about her left hand but.
[q] "Left hand?" ( I can't see what's wrong with the hand, what are you referring to?)
 
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Your face grimacing in concern and shock, you stopped and turned to Hitomi. "Nukes?" Your voice dripped with fear and confusion. The only times nuclear weapons had ever been used in war was in the Second World War. Of course, being Japanese, you knew too well about the history of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which had occurred roughly a century ago.

"The Syrian government detonated an atomic weapon on what they alleged was an IS stronghold. The United Nations is up in arms over it, but the Security Council has been locked in by vetoes. We can only pray for those poor souls. Casualties are estimated to be around 200,000." Hitomi's gaze turned to the ground, as though her mind was standing still... for the 200000 people who were so casually killed.

It was strange. Syria and Japan might as well have been on a different planet. However, you weren't moving. You felt a wetness on your your cheek. You wiped it and your eyes, noticing the matte texture of them, which made it obvious that they were your tears. Seeing that you weren't walking with them, Sayaka and Hitomi turned to you.

Hitomi trod lightly to you, her hand raised as if ready to reach yours.

"Sorry, I shouldn't have told you about it..."

Perhaps she was expecting you to break down in tears. However, it wasn't just your heart that was offended. Your mind was filled with indignation. It was making a judgement.

"The bombing was patently immoral. So what if it were an IS stronghold? IS isn't legitimate, so the civilians there remained citizens of the Syrian nation. A government's duty ought to be to protect or rescue their people, not kill them. Innocent women and children, killed... I don't think it's forgivable at all. And unlike our own history, I can't see how they can use the excuse of the "greater good". Absolutely unjust." Closing your wet eyes, your head turns left and right, abject moroseness coursing through your veins.

The rest of your walk to school was spent in contemplative silence, save a few gazes of curiosity at you by Sayaka and abortive attempts at smalltalk by Hitomi.

---

In an attempt to seemingly avoid the close-to-home topic of nuclear warfare, your classmates write with pens more quickly, calculate more rapidly and write more swiftly. Engrossed in their work, they use it as a way to deflect themselves from the ugly reality at hand. The echos of the screams of children and other innocents are drowned under the clicking of keyboard keys and strangely enough, by a silence so great that it stuck out like a living room.

Miss Saotome didn't even rant about men this morning.

---

School ends and the issue of the Mitakihara Transhumanism Conference comes back into your mind. Binbou-chan is probably waiting for you. You inform Sayaka and Hitomi that that you have something to do and quickly make it to the place you agreed to meet her at.

"You ready?" She asks you.

[] "Transhumanism is a meme."
[] "Who knows?"
[] "Sure, let's go evolve."

---

AMMUNITION:
  • 34:120 5.56 NATO
  • Zero incendiary 40mm grenades
---

April Saturday the 2nd, 3;00 pm

Anime timeline comparison:
  • 26th March Mami vs Gertrud
  • 4th April Mami vs Charlotte
29 days remaining until ???
 
[X] "Who knows?"
You'd think Junko would keep a closer eye on her daughter at some point.
 
[X] "Transhumanism is a meme."
-[X] "But let's go see it. I'm curious how they will explain it."
-[J] Pretend to wear Adam Jensen shades.
 
[X] "Sure, let's go evolve."
 
Side Story #009 - Proletariat and Bourgeosie
Side Story #009 - Proletariat and Bourgeosie

Sighing in pleasure, her heart felt uplifted as her eyes rolled upon the sight of the lifeless white-and-red catlike body, dangling from the lamppost a la lanterne. Pushed by the night wind, it swayed from side to side like a pendulum. Her smile stretched ever wider as she doted upon the sight of the dead form of Kyubey. Truly, it hearkened back to the beautiful paintings of the old French nobility hanging from the street lamps of late 18th Century Paris. Indeed, given that she was part of a wider campaign to cleanse humanity of a certain parasite, the comparison was all the more appropriate. She salivated as words such as "purge", "cleanse", "liquidate" and "exterminate" streamed through her head. One day, the principle that had acted in front of her would be more systemically applied. In other words, it was only a matter of time and scale.

"So illogical." The unpleasant presence of that white bunnycat made itself be known as it wandered near her, only a couple of lampposts away. "I know that you are trying to commit genocide, but what's the point of dangling just a couple of bodies? I'll keep on appearing to do what is necessary to preserve the universe anyway. What difference does a couple of bodies make?" At the very least, the curiosity was sincere.

"Indeed, it is on apparent sight, illogical. However, that's overlooking the evolutionary value of emotion on your part. In deriving pleasure from looking on one of your dead bodies, I secure and consolidate my own evolutionary fitness by preserving my own happiness, thus improving my quality of life and chances of reproduction, giving my genes the chance to remain in some form in this world."

"Yet, given your nature, you are functionally sterile. You probably will not have any opportunities to procreate, so hanging my dead body seems to be a bit of a waste of precious energy."

"Yes. I personally probably will not procreate. Rather, I mean to preserve the fitness of others of my species by improving my own quality of life and thus theirs by consequence. So long as I remain, I am able to serve the rest of my species. In the rest of my species, there lies genes that I have in common. Thus by preserving them, I preserve their genes and therefore part of myself."

"However, you contradict yourself with that plan of mass culling."

"That may be true. As I said earlier but, I seek to preserve only those I possess traits with in common, in effect, my own genes. Altruism, being selfish against out-groups, but selfless for the in-group, does not prevent selective breeding that denies others the chance to spread their own genes."

"Is it not clear how self-contradictory that is, given your organisation's claim to be working for all of humanity?"

"Perhaps. As a counterpoint, it must be highlighted that there are elements within humanity that ought to be eradicated for the wellbeing of the golden, optimum amount of homo sapiens, such as those exhibiting personality traits similar to yours."

"In doing that, you all undermine your argument against our symbiotic relationship, that we attack human dignity to an "immoral level". Your cabal has caused more net disutility and death to humanity than our relationship has ever caused, all to very little in favour of your ambitions."

"That's why we possess two arguments, so that if the first you discussed falls into hypocrisy, the second, an invincible and undeniable one always saves the day. To be quite honest, there really wasn't any need to delve into an evolutionary or moral dimension. The sum of all history is the conflict of classes based on material conditions, struggles over the means of production. History is not calculated over waxing such questions as "right or wrong" or "good and evil". It has been determined from the Big Bang as a never-ending spiral of matter and movement, the logical sociological stepping stone being class conflict. Human history has a goal and right now, it is the total victory of the human proletariat over the Incubator bourgeoisie, only ending in your class' utter destruction. "Why" isn't the question that should be asked, it's just "how". That "how" is simply scientific causality, leading to biological then historical determinism."

"In other words, you are evading moral questions altogether, answering on how you think the world is rather than how it should be."

"Precisely. For an alien species that so prizes logic, you should have been receptive to my "is" viewpoint rather than my "ought" viewpoint."

Exploiting the Incubator's expectation of more to-and-forth arguments, JP-122 seized him by the tail. Contorting his neck, she tied another noose to help her relax in the night at the sight of a dead Incubator body.

Her recreation was soon interrupted by the ringing of her satellite phone, its chiming reaching her ears despite the city's noise pollution.
[dice]4502[/dice]
 
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Well that was disturbing.
 
I think this highlights how fucked up the Illumanti are. They are pretty much entire organization of crazies justifying their own actions with false logic and ignoring any inconsistencies. They hide behind big words and complicated logic, unwilling to face the stupidity of their own plans and hypocrisy.

After all, all those deaths and cruelty must have been for something, right? If the Illumanti are wrong, then they did all those things for nothing. They induct new members by asking them do horrible things and using those as stepping stones to even worse things, and the worse part of it is that it is the recruits own choice, every step of the way. The only way they can avoid being eaten alive by their own guilt is by believing wholely in the rightness of the Illumanti, turning them into fanatics. They are basically the biggest, most effective cult ever.

Just think about it. The vast majority's role model is Stalin. They are not the goods guys.
 
Just think about it. The vast majority's role model is Stalin. They are not the goods guys.
Sadly the only two 'options' available to most is Illuminati or Incubators, so in a choice between Humans doing 'good' and Aliens solely wishing to exploit humanity...
 
Sadly the only two 'options' available to most is Illuminati or Incubators, so in a choice between Humans doing 'good' and Aliens solely wishing to exploit humanity...
The Illumanti are literally worse the Kyuuby. They have actually hurt humanity more. This is outright stated (and then mostly ignored/glossed over) in the last side story.
 
The Illumanti are literally worse the Kyuuby. They have actually hurt humanity more. This is outright stated (and then mostly ignored/glossed over) in the last side story.

Yes, but the Illumanti being "worse" is based on the emotional attachment that "greater than X amount of deaths is bad, regardless of if it is necessary for those deaths to happen".

And the Illumanti is so shattered that I'm sure some actually believe that they're doing good while some are just like the side-story.
 
Yes, but the Illumanti being "worse" is based on the emotional attachment that "greater than X amount of deaths is bad, regardless of if it is necessary for those deaths to happen".

And the Illumanti is so shattered that I'm sure some actually believe that they're doing good while some are just like the side-story.
Yes, of course. But, well, the Illumanti idea of nessicary is a lot different from a normal person. In the last thread... *shudder*

Shit was not good.
 
Side Story #010 - Pointlessness
Side Story #010 - Pointlessness

Mami's long unending march through the twisted landscape continued in spite of her leaden legs. Her shoulder, oppressed by an invisible force of gloominess bearing down on her, slumped down.

Mami Tomoe was a Magical Girl. Having formed a Contract with the magical creature Kyubey for the sake of one wish, it had become her duty to fight awful and terrible abominations which lurked away from human eyes. Spreading negative emotions and destroying minds, these creatures lived inside Barriers. Called Witches, and their servants, Familiars, they posed a threat to humans if they were not kept in check.

An exhausted breath rasped out of her mouth. The most daunting aspect of this duty was that it would never end, not until she died. That in itself was something that pulled down her heart. She had grown accustomed to that fact of her life, however. That her only release would be found in sweet, distant death, she acknowledged it every time she drew a blanket over herself. Even as it bore down on her, a strange fatalism softened the impact of that truth.

Most concerning for her however, was not that she would have to fight Witches and Familiars on and on until the day she passed. What truly loomed over her head, was that over the last six months, she had to drag herself out more often to fight the Witches. Patrols, which on average, brought her into combat with one or no Witches at all, became longer, ever more repetitive and alienating.

Worst of all, most of the Witches she had fought within the couple last months had been of the same variety. In other words, Familiars were eating people more frequently. Maturing faster, they then formed their own Barriers, becoming Witches of their own right. When they did, the most telling information about them was the form they took. Thus, despite all her efforts, Familiars were getting past Mami's patrols at a rate more then she could handle. In other words, although she did not want to consciously admit it, her measures amounted to nothing more than temporarily pain relief for the city.

Forcing herself ever deeper into the barrier, despite the heaviness of her own body, Mami Tomoe continued to press on, driven by a duty that had been internalized as an instinct.

---

As she made her way though into the next section of the barrier, her tired eyes caught sight of something that she really did not want to see.

Usually, if there remained anything, there was only one or two. It was different in this case.

Spread all over the ground, femurs, humeruses and a smorgasbord of blood and intestines painted the floor of the Barrier. Shreds of torn clothing were scattered about like old rags. The occasional spine decorated the graveyard.

Vomit rose from her stomach, but Mami kept it down, for in this vista reeking of death, she could not help but to instinctively force herself to remain calm. Even then, she retched again.

When a barrier disappeared, so did the contents. A bloody mess it all was, but scattered about were the last pieces of evidence that the victims ever existed.

At that moment, memories from long ago, memories she did not want to surface, came back to her anyway. An image of the young boy she could not save flashed over her eyes.

---

A trembling mess in a fetal position, Mami placed her hat before her. Practically as dark as obsidian, only a hint of bright yellow remained on her Soul Gem. Having shed enough tears to relief herself of the pain, she drew a Grief Seed from her pocket. Slowly, but so relievingly, her heart and mind were lightened of the burden of fear. At the touch of a Grief Seed, strength and comfort flowed through her veins once again.

---

There had been roughly 31 skulls, so at least 31 people had gone.

Readying her mind again, Mami Tomoe advanced ever deeper into the barrier, powered mechanically by a strange cocktail of apathy and false courage.A piece of gnarled rope, soaked in blood, uncoiled from its thickness as she moved on from the scene.
 
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Vote Tally : Mater Malum Illuminata Junko (PMMM) | Page 21 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.5.9

[X] "Who knows?"
No. of Votes: 2
Slith10
Dark Ness

[X] "Sure, let's go evolve."
No. of Votes: 2
Snake/Eater
Skelm

[X] "Transhumanism is a meme."
-[X] "But let's go see it. I'm curious how they will explain it."
No. of Votes: 1
Adyen

Total No. of Voters: 5
[dice]4521[/dice]
 
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She was not physically tired, for such a state could not have been possible for a person like her.
This isn't actually correct. MG's bodies are still their bodies, and can still get tired, hurt, etc. They can heal them with magic, but it isn't like they stop being bodies. Only the soul moves.

And while MG's can disconnect and ignore their bodies pain and such (like Sayaka) Mani doesn't know about the lich bomb in order to do it (unless you changed that?)
 
vFBUqDT.jpg

Article:
The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race

By Jared Diamond
University of California at Los Angeles Medical School


To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn't the center of the universe but merely one of billions of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we weren't specially created by God but evolved along with millions of other species. Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.

At first, the evidence against this revisionist interpretation will strike twentieth century Americans as irrefutable. We're better off in almost every respect than people of the Middle Ages, who in turn had it easier than cavemen, who in turn were better off than apes. Just count our advantages. We enjoy the most abundant and varied foods, the best tools and material goods, some of the longest and healthiest lives, in history. Most of us are safe from starvation and predators. We get our energy from oil and machines, not from our sweat. What neo-Luddite among us would trade his life for that of a medieval peasant, a caveman, or an ape?

For most of our history we supported ourselves by hunting and gathering: we hunted wild animals and foraged for wild plants. It's a life that philosophers have traditionally regarded as nasty, brutish, and short. Since no food is grown and little is stored, there is (in this view) no respite from the struggle that starts anew each day to find wild foods and avoid starving. Our escape from this misery was facilitated only 10,000 years ago, when in different parts of the world people began to domesticate plants and animals. The agricultural revolution spread until today it's nearly universal and few tribes of hunter-gatherers survive.

From the progressivist perspective on which I was brought up, to ask "Why did almost all our hunter-gatherer ancestors adopt agriculture?" is silly. Of course they adopted it because agriculture is an efficient way to get more food for less work. Planted crops yield far more tons per acre than roots and berries. Just imagine a band of savages, exhausted from searching for nuts or chasing wild animals, suddenly grazing for the first time at a fruit-laden orchard or a pasture full of sheep. How many milliseconds do you think it would take them to appreciate the advantages of agriculture?

The progressivist party line sometimes even goes so far as to credit agriculture with the remarkable flowering of art that has taken place over the past few thousand years. Since crops can be stored, and since it takes less time to pick food from a garden than to find it in the wild, agriculture gave us free time that hunter-gatherers never had. Thus it was agriculture that enabled us to build the Parthenon and compose the B-minor Mass.

While the case for the progressivist view seems overwhelming, it's hard to prove. How do you show that the lives of people 10,000 years ago got better when they abandoned hunting and gathering for farming? Until recently, archaeologists had to resort to indirect tests, whose results (surprisingly) failed to support the progressivist view. Here's one example of an indirect test: Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called primitive people, like the Kalahari bushmen, continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One Bushman, when asked why he hadn't emulated neighboring tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, "Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?"

While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice and potatoes, the mix of wild plants and animals in the diets of surviving hunter-gatherers provides more protein and a bettter balance of other nutrients. In one study, the Bushmen's average daily food intake (during a month when food was plentiful) was 2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein, considerably greater than the recommended daily allowance for people of their size. It's almost inconceivable that Bushmen, who eat 75 or so wild plants, could die of starvation the way hundreds of thousands of Irish farmers and their families did during the potato famine of the 1840s.

So the lives of at least the surviving hunter-gatherers aren't nasty and brutish, even though farmes have pushed them into some of the world's worst real estate. But modern hunter-gatherer societies that have rubbed shoulders with farming societies for thousands of years don't tell us about conditions before the agricultural revolution. The progressivist view is really making a claim about the distant past: that the lives of primitive people improved when they switched from gathering to farming. Archaeologists can date that switch by distinguishing remains of wild plants and animals from those of domesticated ones in prehistoric garbage dumps.

How can one deduce the health of the prehistoric garbage makers, and thereby directly test the progressivist view? That question has become answerable only in recent years, in part through the newly emerging techniques of paleopathology, the study of signs of disease in the remains of ancient peoples.

In some lucky situations, the paleopathologist has almost as much material to study as a pathologist today. For example, archaeologists in the Chilean deserts found well preserved mummies whose medical conditions at time of death could be determined by autopsy (Discover, October). And feces of long-dead Indians who lived in dry caves in Nevada remain sufficiently well preserved to be examined for hookworm and other parasites.

Usually the only human remains available for study are skeletons, but they permit a surprising number of deductions. To begin with, a skeleton reveals its owner's sex, weight, and approximate age. In the few cases where there are many skeletons, one can construct mortality tables like the ones life insurance companies use to calculate expected life span and risk of death at any given age. Paleopathologists can also calculate growth rates by measuring bones of people of different ages, examine teeth for enamel defects (signs of childhood malnutrition), and recognize scars left on bones by anemia, tuberculosis, leprosy, and other diseases.

One straight forward example of what paleopathologists have learned from skeletons concerns historical changes in height. Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the average height of hunger-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages was a generous 5' 9'' for men, 5' 5'' for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, and by 3000 B. C. had reached a low of only 5' 3'' for men, 5' for women. By classical times heights were very slowly on the rise again, but modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the average height of their distant ancestors.

Another example of paleopathology at work is the study of Indian skeletons from burial mounds in the Illinois and Ohio river valleys. At Dickson Mounds, located near the confluence of the Spoon and Illinois rivers, archaeologists have excavated some 800 skeletons that paint a picture of the health changes that occurred when a hunter-gatherer culture gave way to intensive maize farming around A. D. 1150. Studies by George Armelagos and his colleagues then at the University of Massachusetts show these early farmers paid a price for their new-found livelihood. Compared to the hunter-gatherers who preceded them, the farmers had a nearly 50 per cent increase in enamel defects indicative of malnutrition, a fourfold increase in iron-deficiency anemia (evidenced by a bone condition called porotic hyperostosis), a theefold rise in bone lesions reflecting infectious disease in general, and an increase in degenerative conditions of the spine, probably reflecting a lot of hard physical labor. "Life expectancy at birth in the pre-agricultural community was bout twenty-six years," says Armelagos, "but in the post-agricultural community it was nineteen years. So these episodes of nutritional stress and infectious disease were seriously affecting their ability to survive."

The evidence suggests that the Indians at Dickson Mounds, like many other primitive peoples, took up farming not by choice but from necessity in order to feed their constantly growing numbers. "I don't think most hunger-gatherers farmed until they had to, and when they switched to farming they traded quality for quantity," says Mark Cohen of the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, co-editor with Armelagos, of one of the seminal books in the field, Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture. "When I first started making that argument ten years ago, not many people agreed with me. Now it's become a respectable, albeit controversial, side of the debate."

There are at least three sets of reasons to explain the findings that agriculture was bad for health. First, hunter-gatherers enjoyed a varied diet, while early fanners obtained most of their food from one or a few starchy crops. The farmers gained cheap calories at the cost of poor nutrition, (today just three high-carbohydrate plants -- wheat, rice, and corn -- provide the bulk of the calories consumed by the human species, yet each one is deficient in certain vitamins or amino acids essential to life.) Second, because of dependence on a limited number of crops, farmers ran the risk of starvation if one crop failed. Finally, the mere fact that agriculture encouraged people to clump together in crowded societies, many of which then carried on trade with other crowded societies, led to the spread of parasites and infectious disease. (Some archaeologists think it was the crowding, rather than agriculture, that promoted disease, but this is a chicken-and-egg argument, because crowding encourages agriculture and vice versa.) Epidemics couldn't take hold when populations were scattered in small bands that constantly shifted camp. Tuberculosis and diarrheal disease had to await the rise of farming, measles and bubonic plague the appearnce of large cities.

Besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases, farming helped bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions. Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: they live off the wild plants and animals they obtain each day. Therefore, there can be no kings, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from others. Only in a farming population could a healthy, non-producing elite set itself above the disease-ridden masses. Skeletons from Greek tombs at Mycenae c. 1500 B. C. suggest that royals enjoyed a better diet than commoners, since the royal skeletons were two or three inches taller and had better teeth (on the average, one instead of six cavities or missing teeth). Among Chilean mummies from c. A. D. 1000, the elite were distinguished not only by ornaments and gold hair clips but also by a fourfold lower rate of bone lesions caused by disease.

Similar contrasts in nutrition and health persist on a global scale today. To people in rich countries like the U. S., it sounds ridiculous to extol the virtues of hunting and gathering. But Americans are an elite, dependent on oil and minerals that must often be imported from countries with poorer health and nutrition. If one could choose between being a peasant farmer in Ethiopia or a bushman gatherer in the Kalahari, which do you think would be the better choice?

Farming may have encouraged inequality between the sexes, as well. Freed from the need to transport their babies during a nomadic existence, and under pressure to produce more hands to till the fields, farming women tended to have more frequent pregnancies than their hunter-gatherer counterparts -- with consequent drains on their health. Among the Chilean mummies for example, more women than men had bone lesions from infectious disease.

Women in agricultural societies were sometimes made beasts of burden. In New Guinea farming communities today I often see women staggering under loads of vegetables and firewood while the men walk empty-handed. Once while on a field trip there studying birds, I offered to pay some villagers to carry supplies from an airstrip to my mountain camp. The heaviest item was a 110-pound bag of rice, which I lashed to a pole and assigned to a team of four men to shoulder together. When I eventually caught up with the villagers, the men were carrying light loads, while one small woman weighing less than the bag of rice was bent under it, supporting its weight by a cord across her temples.

As for the claim that agriculture encouraged the flowering of art by providing us with leisure time, modern hunter-gatherers have at least as much free time as do farmers. The whole emphasis on leisure time as a critical factor seems to me misguided. Gorillas have had ample free time to build their own Parthenon, had they wanted to. While post-agricultural technological advances did make new art forms possible and preservation of art easier, great paintings and sculptures were already being produced by hunter-gatherers 15,000 years ago, and were still being produced as recently as the last century by such hunter-gatherers as some Eskimos and the Indians of the Pacific Northwest.

Thus with the advent of agriculture and elite became better off, but most people became worse off. Instead of swallowing the progressivist party line that we chose agriculture because it was good for us, we must ask how we got trapped by it despite its pitfalls.

One answer boils down to the adage "Might makes right." Farming could support many more people than hunting, albeit with a poorer quality of life. (Population densities of hunter-gatherers are rarely over on person per ten square miles, while farmers average 100 times that.) Partly, this is because a field planted entirely in edible crops lets one feed far more mouths than a forest with scattered edible plants. Partly, too, it's because nomadic hunter-gatherers have to keep their children spaced at four-year intervals by infanticide and other means, since a mother must carry her toddler until it's old enough to keep up with the adults. Because farm women don't have that burden, they can and often do bear a child every two years.

As population densities of hunter-gatherers slowly rose at the end of the ice ages, bands had to choose between feeding more mouths by taking the first steps toward agriculture, or else finding ways to limit growth. Some bands chose the former solution, unable to anticipate the evils of farming, and seduced by the transient abundance they enjoyed until population growth caught up with increased food production. Such bands outbred and then drove off or killed the bands that chose to remain hunter-gatherers, because a hundred malnourished farmers can still outfight one healthy hunter. It's not that hunter-gatherers abandoned their life style, but that those sensible enough not to abandon it were forced out of all areas except the ones farmers didn't want.

At this point it's instructive to recall the common complaint that archaeology is a luxury, concerned with the remote past, and offering no lessons for the present. Archaeologists studying the rise of farming have reconstructed a crucial stage at which we made the worst mistake in human history. Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.

Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we're still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it's unclear whether we can solve it. Suppose that an archaeologist who had visited from outer space were trying to explain human history to his fellow spacelings. He might illustrate the results of his digs by a 24-hour clock on which one hour represents 100,000 years of real past time. If the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 p. m. we adopted agriculture. As our second midnight approaches, will the plight of famine-stricken peasants gradually spread to engulf us all? Or will we somehow achieve those seductive blessings that we imagine behind agriculture's glittering facade, and that have so far eluded us?


Article:
Nature of primitive communist societies


In a primitive communist society, all able bodied persons would have engaged in obtaining food, and everyone would share in what was produced by hunting and gathering. There would be no private property, which is distinguished from personal property [6] such as articles of clothing and similar personal items, because primitive society produced no surplus; what was produced was quickly consumed. The few things that existed for any length of time (tools, housing) were held communally,[7] in Engels' view in association with matrilocal residence and matrilineal descent.[8] There would have been no state.

Domestication of animals and plants following the Neolithic Revolution through herding and agriculture was seen as the turning point from primitive communism to class society as it was followed by private ownership and slavery, with the inequality that they entailed. In addition, parts of the population specialized in different activities, such as manufacturing,culture, philosophy, and science which is said to lead to the development of social classes.[7]
 
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Don't worry. I'm sure we'll get killed from diseases that are immune to everything before that! ^^^
 
So, back to the topic of voting:

Vote Tally : Mater Malum Illuminata Junko (PMMM) | Page 21 | Questionable Questing
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[X] "Who knows?"
No. of Votes: 2
Slith10
Dark Ness

[X] "Sure, let's go evolve."
No. of Votes: 2
Snake/Eater
Skelm

[X] "Transhumanism is a meme."
-[X] "But let's go see it. I'm curious how they will explain it."
No. of Votes: 1
Adyen

Total No. of Voters: 5
 
[X] "Who knows?"
You'd think Junko would keep a closer eye on her daughter at some point.

"Who knows?" You reply. You weren't convinced by the utopian promises of transhumanism. The core idea behind all of this was that stronger people led to a stronger world, where the assumption was that strength was inherently good. But what if the people were absolutely ruthless? Does giving them more power lead to a better world?

"What do you mean "who knows?" It's the thing of the century, you've got to have an opinion." Hopefully, you wouldn't be accidentally shot in the face.

"As much as transhumanism promises us more strength, intelligence and speed, I'm not yet convinced that it will make the world a better place." As the two of you make your way through the streets of Mitakihara to the bustle of the Conference, a kaleidoscope of hair colours, its seemed that you were the only one who wasn't smiling at its wonders.

"But better people lead to a better world. If we could draw strength and productivity from within ourselves more, conflicts over raw materials should surely cease. If we can work harder and stronger more easily, poverty will be conquered, crushed by our own efforts." Binbou-chan raised her eyebrow at you, as if doubting the sincerity of the meaning behind your words.

"That's what technological progress is about? Conquest and power? To draw power from the self and to use it to "conquer" and "crush" poverty? If that's the nature of technological progress, we ought to be careful. What if that power of conquest is turned onto people instead?" In other words, transhumanism was both sword and ploughshare, a sword to destroy scarcity, a ploughshare to bring plenty. Yet, the very nature of a sword is to kill.

"Oh, right. The nuclear bombing." Binbou-chan looks away from you, her hair covering her eyes in shame.

"Sorry, that wasn't what I meant!"

The two of you continue to the Conference in a relatively gloomy manner, although Binbou-chan makes an effort at small talk to lighten up the mood.

It worked somewhat.

---

Although it was only in its opening stages, the Conference was already crowded.

Binbou-chan tried talking to you, although you couldn't hear her. Pointing to your ears, you motioned for her to speak more loudly.

"DO YOU WANT TO SPLIT UP, OR GO TOGETHER?"

[] Together.
[] Split up.
-[] "I wonder if there is an electronics stall."
-[] Look for nootropics.
-[] Look for bionics.

---

AMMUNITION:
  • 34:120 5.56 NATO
  • Zero incendiary 40mm grenades
---

April Saturday the 2nd, 3:30 pm

Anime timeline comparison:
  • 26th March Mami vs Gertrud
  • 4th April Mami vs Charlotte
29 days remaining until ???
 
Hmm. Staying together gives us more chance to keep an eye on her in case they tried to pass something to her. But splitting up gives us more chance to 'explore' behind the scenes.

[X] Together.
 

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