Diogenesister - I agree. Rousseau's myth of the noble savage seems to have regained popularity in the green movement. Steven Pinker does a good job of showing that pre-state society was 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short' as Hobbes claimed.
I'm really curious to know exactly what people like Joel mean when they harp back to some mythical time 'before the fall'. They never seem to be willing to be specific.