In an old post I touched on Tolkien's Elves and Orcs as a metaphor for the world of nature and the world of man.
The world of man is a paradoxical world. A man tills the soil so he might have a reliable source of food, but he steadily and inexorably reduces the ability of the world to supply his own needs and simultaneously kills other species. Rather than make more, he's actually made less and stolen from others. He ruined his home.
It seems almost impossible to believe, but there's possibly greater security and leisure in the hunter gatherer, or pastoralist lifestyle. When man lives as an animal it's very possible the capacity of the Earth to support life is much higher. Living as a man does in a city, with roads, large buildings, infrastructure and agriculture might severely impair its ability to do so. Our systemic thinking might be the real culprit.
Cro magnon (ice age) man had a skull capacity that was approximately 20% larger than modern humans. What if symbolic reasoning, agriculture, language, laws and the city ate our brains? Maybe that's what turned us into the 'borg.
There's no systemic thinking that gets me to the Elf World.
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