Yesterday I finished reading The Alexander Trilogy by Mary Renault, three works of beautifully researched, written, and imagined historical fiction about Alexander the Great. I think I am a little in love with the title character, a person with enormous acumen in military strategy and leadership skills, as well as tolerance and vision rare in those violent times. He died at the age of 32 having never lost a battle. His story still moves, enchants, and astounds us more than two millennia later.

The trilogy depicts the customs and rituals of the time in lavish detail. The clothes, jewelry, furnishings, and decorations of the royal courts would surely surpass those of today in most western capitals, while their assiduous personal hygiene would be similar. The crafts, resources, and people of central Asia were largely at the disposal of ruling families, and sumptuous trappings were indications of status together with prescribed obeisance. Alexander himself disdained such comforts in the field, but used them as evidence of strength and success when conducting state business.

Their civilization appealed to me, and many aspects seemed familiar.

Later I read a review of Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen, by anthropologist James Suzman, who studied and lived with that African tribe for over two decades. The oldest extant tribe of humans, Bushmen can be traced back an amazing 150,000 years, only 50,000 years after the appearance of homo sapiens. Happily for science, though perhaps not for the tribe, one group of 10,000 was divided into  two parts, one of which continues the traditional way of life, and the other of was resettled into a modern lifestyle. The modern group is dispossessed and suffering. The traditional group is thriving, with an average work week, including food acquisition and domestic chores, of 36 hours, and a reliable 2300 calories daily for everyone, year-round. They get what they need, then stop; they do not accumulate.

Apparently, the required knowledge and flexibility for the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is mentally much richer and more complex than that of the domestic agriculture lifestyle. The Bushmen have nothing except lots of leisure time, plenty of food, interesting and complex work, and egalitarian self-government.

Their civilization also appealed to me, though it was not familiar.

Suddenly I realized that all the beautiful material items I admired from Alexandrian times were available because a lot of people were slaves, or otherwise expending their own energy to enrich others. The accomplishments of Alexander himself, winning wars, creating trade agreements, setting up governments and legal codes, were only sources of better lives for the average human who is intent on accumulation and hence a possible victim of theft, or in danger of enslavement.

If we could eliminate accumulation, that is, greed, could we eliminate hunger, overwork, stress, even war? Good luck with that. It does seem as though most humans have been making choices contrary to our self-interest long before the current era of politics.