Civilization has given us great gifts. Infectious diseases rarely kill us anymore. We have hot running water that’s safe to drink (usually). We can go down to the market and buy a thousand different foods. Things are, for the most part, safe and comfortable. Of course, many of the benefits of civilization have been solutions to problems it introduced. That we rarely die from infectious disease is significant because the high population densities of early civilizations created such high infectious disease burdens; nomadic hunter gatherers didn’t have that issue. But there are benefits.

(This Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Leaman)