Noble Savage myth covers up truth
David Deming - November 28, 2008
The late Joseph Campbell maintained that civilizations are not based on science, but on myth. “Aspiration,” Campbell explained, “is the motivator, builder and transformer of civilization.” Our technological society has been built on Francis Bacon’s myth of the New Atlantis.
Competing with Bacon’s vision of a scientific society based on intelligence, knowledge and innovation, is an older, more persistent fable: the Noble Savage. The Noble Savage is not a person, but an idea. It is cultural primitivism, the belief of people living in complex and evolved societies that the simple and primitive life is better. The Noble Savage is the myth that man can live in harmony with nature, that technology is destructive and that we would all be happier in a more primitive state.
Before Christ lived, the Noble Savage was known to the Hebrews as the Garden of Eden. The Greeks called it the lost Golden Age. In all the ages of the world, otherwise intelligent and learned persons have fallen swoon to the strange appeal of cultural primitivism. In the 16th century, French writer Michel de Montaigne described Americans Indians as so morally pure they had no words in their languages for lying, treachery, avarice and envy. And Montaigne portrayed the primitive life as so idyllic that American Indians did not have to work, but could spend the whole day dancing.
In 1755, Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that what appeared to be human progress was in fact decay. The best condition for human beings to live in, according to Rousseau, was the “pure state of nature” in which savages existed. When men lived as hunters and gatherers, they were “free, healthy, honest and happy.” The downfall of man occurred when people started to live in cities, acquire private property and practice agriculture and metallurgy. The acquisition of private property resulted in inequality, aroused the vice of envy and led to perpetual conflict and unceasing warfare.
According to Rousseau, civilization itself was the scourge of humanity. Rousseau went so far as to make the astonishing claim that the source of all human misery was what he termed our “faculty of improvement,” or the use of our minds to improve the human condition.
Since Rousseau wrote, more than 250 years of archeological and ethnographic research have shown that most of the imaginative conceptions associated with the Noble Savage are simply wrong. Archeologist Steven A. Leblanc wrote that “warfare in the past was pervasive and deadly.” Conflict between bands of hunter-gatherers was universal and intense, and the practices of cannibalism and infanticide were common.
Before the Industrial Revolution disease and poverty were endemic, even in civilized societies. In 18th century Europe half of all children died before their 10th birthday, and life expectancy at birth was only 25 years.
Neither did pre-industrial civilizations live in a state of ecological harmony with their environment. Their exploitation of nature was often destructive. The Mediterranean islands colonized by the ancient Greeks were transformed into barren rock by overgrazing and deforestation. The Bay of Troy, described in Homer’s Iliad, has been filled in by sediment eroded from surrounding hillsides destabilized by unsustainable agricultural practices.
All of this would be of academic interest only, were it not the case that the modern environmental movement and many of our public policies are based implicitly on the myth of the Noble Savage. The fountainhead of modern environmentalism is Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.” The first sentence in “Silent Spring” invoked the Noble Savage by claiming “there was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings.”
But the town Carson described did not exist, and her polemic, “Silent Spring,” introduced us to environmental alarmism based on junk science. As the years passed, Carson was elevated to sainthood and the template laid for endless spasms of hysterical fear-mongering, from the population bomb, to nuclear winter, the Alar scare and global warming.
The truth is that human beings have not, cannot, and never will live in harmony with nature. Our prosperity and health depend on technology driven by energy. We exercise our intelligence to command nature, and were admonished by Francis Bacon to exercise our dominion with “sound reason and true religion.”
When we are told that our primary energy source, oil, is “making us sick,” or that we are “addicted” to oil, these are only the latest examples of otherwise rational persons descending into gibberish after swooning to the lure of the Noble Savage. This ignorant exultation of the primitive can only lead us back to the ages when human lives were “nasty, brutish and short.”
DAVID DEMING is a geologist and associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma.
Tags: Adam Weishaupt, Francis Bacon, Montaigne, New Atlantis, Noble Savage, Primitivism, Rousseau
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December 13th, 2008 at 5:35 am
Deming’s conclusion is wrong because when “rational persons” argue that oil is “making us sick,” they are not “swooning to the lure of the Noble Savage” but showing that our present circumstances are just as bad as the past that he describes!
January 13th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
There is a balance between the two that is missed, and as many movements in one direction and then the other, the place between the two positions is where mankind will find rest. Technology is not the beast, it is the ego mind of man that is the driver of destruction. It seems the writer here has a loathe of naturalists and this movement, and believes that nature is here only for our domination of it. The permaculture movement is showing how mankind can indeed work “WITH” nature rather than against it. In fact, if it were not for “Society” and the structure of control in which we all live under, money and the desire to accumulate and maintain reserves of it, would no longer get in the way of progress. Since time immemorable, that greed and network of controlling factions has sought to destroy progress in the name of maintaining that system of control. The only progress that is allowed, is that which can be controlled. Free Wireless Electricity broadcast across the globe was possible in the early 1900’s, but because the source of the energy comes from a source that cannot be controlled and sold for a price, the technology had no future, and was suppressed with feverish intent. The source of energy was to create standing waves or resonance inside the earth, which amplified and created a source of free energy. Tesla’s Wardenclyff tower amplified that energy, and could broadcast it over amazing distances. This is one example of thousands of technologies that have been suppressed. These frequencies could also generate healing energetic waves rather than the 60 Hz frequencies that tear down our bodies.
My point is that you do not have to sacrifice technology to get back to a natural way of life. You do not have to descend into savagery to live in harmony with the earth. Generally when I hear a rant like this, I think of the way that Nature is demonized and how religious institutions have sought to convince us that Nature is an Evil that must be tamed, and that our civilization is the exalted institution. I would ask those people why this approach has brought us so much heart ache and suffering? Mankind has had little chance to escape the Institutions of man, and therefore has lost all understanding of how to be connected with the natural systems that have existed here on earth for millenia. And if we strip this planet of all biology, then I would imagine those minds that are still not free, will continue to trumpet the horns of progress which is driven for the good of a few, and not the good of the many.
A hunter gatherer model of existence or mono-culture cropping are both outdated models of natural existence. The way of abundance has yet to be realized as people are distracted with the forces of control that keep their attention and direction. By mimicking nature, we can learn how to create true abundance, and abundance generating technologies. That sacred teaching exists all around us, and has been realized by many inventors only to be destroyed by the drivers of civilization. The poverty that was spoken of in this article was caused by these controllers throughout the centuries, and mankind has not had the opportunity to utilize the new insights and understandings in a way that can create a sustainable future for us all.
The author stated: “The truth is that human beings have not, cannot, and never will live in harmony with nature.” This is simply a false statement, and can be easily disproven with a reference to many cultures throughout history, one example being the Hopi. Although I agree that the current difficulties are being used as political tools and that there is some junk science out there, that does not mean that we are not experiencing this shift away from nature and a loss of our natural resources. Only a foolish man would truly believe this, do you not see the natural lands around you disappearing? Do you not have appreciation for life and all it’s expressions? Or are those just for us to chop down, eat up, and use for our pleasures without attention to replacing the abundance from which we came? Careful the balance you sway towards denial of the richness that nature provides, that life gives life, and it can be taken away.
June 22nd, 2011 at 3:56 am
The Professor links pre-industrial with “hunter-gatherer.” All hunter-gatherer societies are pre-industrial. However, not all pre-industrial societies are hunter-gatherer. Thus, the hardships of life in the agricultural period are not the same as life in the hunter-gatherer period.
Odd that he would mention Francis Bacon as some kind of counterpoint to Rousseau, since Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis was itself essential a Utopian vision and not a realist blueprint.