There's a great one hour documentary about the war in Afghanistan made by National Geographic called Restrepo. In one scene, a young, enthusiastic US Army captain meets with a group of Pahstun village elders in the Korengal region to convince them to allow civilization into their valley in the form of roads, electricity, education, hospitals, jobs, and communication. The elders are all older men of course, and they stroke their hennaed beards and sip boxes of juice and say nothing. You can see the wheels turning in their heads though, wondering how they could kill this guy. Civilization would mean that they would lose power, and Allah forbid that their women would learn how to read and not be chattel anymore. Who knows what evil things they might learn in a school or a hospital?

This wonderful pre-civilization world that some people imagine could only be conjured up by someone who has never known real hardship. If someone really wanted to learn what hunter-gatherer life was like, there are plenty of examples in anthropology to study. None of them seem very appealing, unless you believe that ignorance is bliss, and of course that is discussed in the article.