Public health disparities provide an important lens for understanding social and political change in the USA. Using individual-level medical data and death records, this study shows that conservative Americans experienced worsening health and higher mortality than liberals during the 2010s. Here we find evidence consistent with two potential mechanisms. First, demographic realignment within political coalitions brought less healthy individuals into the conservative camp. Yet by the 2020s, demographic change, public policy and COVID-19 do not fully account for the widening gap in mortality rates. Public opinion data are consistent with a second mechanism: declining trust in medical professionals among right-leaning individuals, including lower willingness to seek care, follow clinical advice or believe in medication effectiveness, even for issues unrelated to COVID-19. These patterns suggest that growing ideological divides in health behaviours are leaving conservative Americans increasingly vulnerable to preventable health risks. Using individual-level medical data and death records, this study finds that conservatives in the USA experienced worse health and higher mortality than liberals during the 2010s. No significant gaps in biomarkers or mortality were present before the 2010s.
That view may be outdated. I’m reading David Graeber’s and David Wengrow’s “The Dawn of Everything” where they review anthropological and archaeological evidence and argue that human societies were always very varied.
E.g. they show that this idea you cited came from contact with just three hunter-gatherer societies who already have had contact with western societies and at least one of them was started by a group of runaway slaves. Their egalitarianism was probably a reaction to western authoritarianism.
On the other hand they look at two indigenous societies on the north american west coast. Thos in today’s california were very individualist, valued personal wealth (when achieved through hard work and frugality) but hated slavery and had no rulers. Those more to the north were notorious slavers, had an aristocracy and a member of that aristocracy was considered superior if he organized the most wasteful parties.
A point they made at that point was that not only are hunter-gatherer societies not all the same, they might actually have developed important parts of their culture, including egalitarianism vs. authoritarianism in an attempt to be as different as possible from their neighbors they don’t like.
In the following chapter they then go on that the first cities in the middle east show no signs of hierarchy, including a patriarchy, and that patriarchy and a warrior aristocracy developed in that region as an answer to these egalitarian, rich cities widening their influence (trade networks, but also colonies). :(
I think there is a mixed picture. Certainly sufficient evidence to show individuals with significant injuries living to older age. Across all the primates and apes. However, not sufficiently specialist to debate the point with fine detail.
Also we struggle to create a ground level understanding of how these cultures behaved. We have lots of snapshots that we can composit into something cohesive but finer details tend to be lost.
A weird example of this is a site in Germany with direct evidence of cannibalism to such a large degree that it’s bizarre and doesn’t match up quite well with models of the cultures in the region at that time. That is until some folks remembered that these are in fact still just people so there’s a growing idea that this site may very well represent a cult that emerged from a time of struggle possibly famine.
That view may be outdated. I’m reading David Graeber’s and David Wengrow’s “The Dawn of Everything” where they review anthropological and archaeological evidence and argue that human societies were always very varied.
E.g. they show that this idea you cited came from contact with just three hunter-gatherer societies who already have had contact with western societies and at least one of them was started by a group of runaway slaves. Their egalitarianism was probably a reaction to western authoritarianism.
On the other hand they look at two indigenous societies on the north american west coast. Thos in today’s california were very individualist, valued personal wealth (when achieved through hard work and frugality) but hated slavery and had no rulers. Those more to the north were notorious slavers, had an aristocracy and a member of that aristocracy was considered superior if he organized the most wasteful parties.
A point they made at that point was that not only are hunter-gatherer societies not all the same, they might actually have developed important parts of their culture, including egalitarianism vs. authoritarianism in an attempt to be as different as possible from their neighbors they don’t like.
In the following chapter they then go on that the first cities in the middle east show no signs of hierarchy, including a patriarchy, and that patriarchy and a warrior aristocracy developed in that region as an answer to these egalitarian, rich cities widening their influence (trade networks, but also colonies). :(
I think there is a mixed picture. Certainly sufficient evidence to show individuals with significant injuries living to older age. Across all the primates and apes. However, not sufficiently specialist to debate the point with fine detail.
Also we struggle to create a ground level understanding of how these cultures behaved. We have lots of snapshots that we can composit into something cohesive but finer details tend to be lost.
A weird example of this is a site in Germany with direct evidence of cannibalism to such a large degree that it’s bizarre and doesn’t match up quite well with models of the cultures in the region at that time. That is until some folks remembered that these are in fact still just people so there’s a growing idea that this site may very well represent a cult that emerged from a time of struggle possibly famine.