We experience that pain whether or not the worst happens, because we know there is a much higher likelihood that it will. We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction, and restlessness. For example, food is shared with everyone, even those who had nothing to do with gathering or hunting it. was to question the racial superiority of Europeans and the fundamental legitimacy of colonialism and the will of the Christian God as interpreted by men with vast armies at their disposal. They happily shared property, had access to all they needed, did not discriminate on the basis of gender, and eased their way to death by imbibing psychedelics.

She repeatedly notes areas in which she didn’t always get it right, because any educational process entails imperfect humans helping imperfect humans to learn. The book is riddled with conspiracy theories throughout, such as the idea that no one is trying to cure cancer because the treatments cost more than a cure would. The results are disastrous: patriarchy, war, high-carb diets, cancer, sexual repression, environmental destruction, tooth decay, “rich asshole syndrome,” overprotective parenting, and toilets that thwart humans’ natural squatting posture. But we do seem to be destroying the basis upon which our lives on this planet can be sustained, and if that is as good as civilisation gets, you do get to see why ‘primitive’ peoples might look at us 'civilised' people as if we were insane when we tell them how much more ‘advanced’ we are compared to them. More significant than the abrupt and ill-supported ending is the means by which Ryan supports his argument.And while prehistoric lives were short, data shows that today’s longevity is a net loss from that period in terms of functional longevity; we are simply expanding the amount of time we spend suffering as we die.

By pre-civilised, I mean that literally, that is, human life prior to the agricultural revolution of the fertile crescent and elsewhere that lead to us living in cities. Society tends to benefit at the expense of the individual, and functions on the assumption that money and time are somewhat interchangeable.They also struggled to understand why the majority of the people allowed a tiny minority to dominate so much of the wealth of society – given that sharing is so fundamental to hunter-gatherer society. We no longer live on what we have, but on promises, no longer in the light of the present day, but in the darkness of the future, which, we expect, will at last bring a proper sunrise.