And to deliver this profound message of “people are inherently distrustful” they needed 20 panels.
They could have done this in one. Have each caveman holding out one hand to pass food and the other hand holding a club behind their backs.
Want to really illustrate the groundbreaking idea that people don’t trust each other? Make a second panel with knights replacing the cavemen and swords replacing clubs, then a third panel swapping in businessmen holding pistols.
If humor wasn’t the goal that’s… fine, but being long-winded in a format based on brevity undermines the message. Using 20 panels guarantees that half of the people who bother to look at the comic won’t finish it. Those that do will probably be bored or even resentful that their time was wasted, making them less receptive to the message.
I find it interesting that your takeaway was “people are inherently distrustful.” While there is truth to that, my interpretation was that “progress can be slow, but it is progress nonetheless.” In this case the “slow” of the message was communicated through the panel count.
I don’t think they told “a joke”, nor intended to. This was a humorous exchange as well as a commentary on human nature. My day is better for having read it.
Bill Watterson is one of the greatest comic artists ever, and even he said (paraphrased) “I enjoy a funny conversation more than just one punchline”.
Another great person, Empricorn said “let people enjoy what they like”.
I’m sorry but how is this extremely amarican. Like the Japanese also assist echother the Russians assist echother. I’m sure people in China and north Korea have friends that assist echother.
This is a load of shit. Why it has up votes blows my mind.
Do some reading or watching of hunter gatherer societies and you’ll see lots of group survival activities. Teamwork in hunts, in preserving food, in crafting tools, and making shelter.
If we were this self-centered, we wouldn’t have such advanced communication, which is how we were able to do all those group activities.
Survival of the fittest is survival of those that cooperate.
Say what you will about the game, but IRL does a decent job of switching up the meta on a regular basis. Though it’s pretty frustrating when you figure out a decent strat, and then next season it’s useless.
It’s a comic about cavemen. It can be entertaining and interesting without being a complete representation of early human society. That said afaik there is evidence people in prehistory killed each other a lot.
Its part of the lemmy meta-game at this point is to take a joke super seriously and go on a psudo-intellectual rant about how the contents of the joke are the sum of everything wrong with humanity. Everyone needs their 5 minutes on the high horse
It’s normal for males, even in social species, to bully food from members weaker than them. Sharing food is a sign of accepting a lower status and avoiding conflict.
I kind of read it more as the cavemen slowly coming to realize that they are both better off with mutual co-operation rather than that they are better off by simply being greedy, because the risk of the greed was too big. It was in their best self-interest to work with one another, i.e. they were both self-centered, and were still able to co-operate. Sort of some selfish gene type stuff, I guess.
It’s so funny to me (in the positive way!) that your comment actually transforms this comic into a piece of art by giving it a social commentary (and by interpreting its meaning). And by making it art, you basically give the best counterpoint against “it’s not historically accurate” .
So let me get this straight your angry that this comic about cave men learning that being selfish doesn’t work. Has people that don’t understand that being selfish doesn’t work.
They went from threatening to kill each other to sharing food, then contemplating trading more food in promise of later trades. This is a message of progress and cooperation. Extrapolating this forward, I have no doubt that this is the groundwork for the teamwork you describe. Any hesitancy along the way seems like no big deal to me.
Modern technological human history is only about a hundred years … we were cavemen and acting like scared children for about 50,000 years before and like frightened monkeys for 2 million years before that … we may have landed on the moon but we are closer to our ancient ancestors than to any futuristic highly evolved human society.
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