Industrial society?

Question

industrial society has increased production and made material goods much more widely available.But in comparison with hunting and gathering societies,does this abundence of material goods mean a better quality of life....

does anyone know where i can get applying anthropology :an introductiorary reader .author is podolefsky and p.J brown(2nd edition) I think its appendix B .can i read it online for free anywhere?

Answer 1

You certainly live far more healthily and for far longer.  Less danger of hunger or water-born or food poisening diseases.  Life of ease for a multitude.  Safer environment to raise children and sleep at night.  More recreation and knowledge and adventure and interaction with the world!

Answer 2

Yes. There is no question here. However, you missed a step. From hunter/gatherer societies, we moved to agricultural societies before becoming industrial societies.

Answer 3

Only potentially. In practice, not by much. The quality of life

of humans is determined much less by the level of technology

and infrastructure than by the social, economic, and educational

policies of the society. Actually, our technologies and industrial

infrastructure have in fact made things worse in a secondary way.

In the past, when we were hunter-gatherers, the worst wastefulness

that the fanatics could impose on other people was to burn some

food as a sacrifice rather than eating it. Today, with all of our great

wealth, we are still sacrificialy burning food metaphorically. However,

our modern wealth has allowed us to implement far more extreme

methods of fanatical symbolic wastefulness than merely burning

some food. The largest such symbolic sacrifice is the modern

so-called 'educational' system, which is deliberately extremely

inefficient. The epitome of such inefficiency is the practice called

'homework'. Really, modern first-world humans should be put in

siberia for a while, with no technology or industry, such that we

will have to give up our precious homework, or else die from the

pressures of nature.