Ruminations

(The following is just a bit of a thought experiment that I began sometime last spring. Overall it seems like I'm better at asking questions than answering them--TP)

     It seems like there's this tacit notion that we are somehow different than people who have come before us. As if somehow we are conscious now, and by contrast humans weren't, in the millenia preceding civilization (was this the fruit of the tree of knowledge? Or part and parcel to the formation of civil society?).
     This seems to be the rub I see when I see that a "diet suitable for evolution" may not be "a diet suitable for modern health."  The very word "modern" is beginning to take on a very relative sort of meaning. If we were to go back 20,000 years and have a conversation of sorts with our ancestors, I would assume that they also believed that they were living in "modern times" (As comedian Steven Wright said, "It doesn't matter what temperature the room is, it's always room temperature.") 
     Perhaps "modern" isn't the best term to use. Maybe something like "industrial" times is better suited to emphasize our placement in the grander scheme of things. Or perhaps "a diet suitable for the months prior to the end of the world in December of 2012", if we really wish to be specific.
     Are we changing? Do we wish to stay the same, whether we admit it or not? Are we the first age of people to think such things? It would seem we have no choice in the matter; we will change. But for good or bad, our awareness of our state of being and our frailties leads us to negotiate and dicker with biology, to try and eek out a few more years ahead, all while failing to enjoy the ones we have now.
     If we selected for shorter lives, but they were lives free of pain and chronic disease and filled with love and passions and good food, is that a failure? Do we somehow "lose"? Then who won? Again, there seems to be a debt-debtor, win-lose argument flowing beneath all the commentary. And it seems that such subtext ultimately serves to distract us from soaking in the existence we have.
      Looking at egalitarian H/G bands, they share resources and have leveling measures. Wants are inherent to our consciousness, but I cannot think that they want for things any more than we do. Perhaps even much less. They have no fear of losing their iPod, no worries about their 403b plan.
If life is marked only by the fear of loss and scores of distractions, what is that to us? Are we missing the point (assuming that there is indeed a grant point, or that one could be made)?