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I saw a bumper sticker last night at the grocery. It said ” Got Land? Thank an Indian.” My great-great-great (and so on) grandfather was savagely executed by indians. Google Colonel William Crawford. Why they killed him is interesting.
Just cited the top definition from Wiki. Otherwise, to me, “nobility” implies some sort of intrinsic goodness or superiority on some ill-defined moral plane, and that leaves me puzzled re primitive human societies.
One thing about primitive peoples is that they don’t have the perspective to develop real cruelty, although they do well enough with what they’ve got. But when your life is dependent on so many natural factors and your means of response are so limited you don’t really have time to channel your fears and terrors into a dogmatic religion that institutionalizes the murder of dissidents.
I don’t know how the term was dropped, and that isn’t the important factor here so there’s no point in pretending or denying what it is. The real question is who held the higher moral ground in this historical cultural encounter. Was it even close? Even debatable? Yet, debate apparently we must. If you can’t figure it out, you’ve got problems whatever persuasion you are.
The Arawak and Wampanoag were kind to us—and by us I mean people of European descent. We showed our thanks by sickening, subjugating and slaughtering them. And we have the gall to call them more savage than us.
I don’t know how the term was dropped, and that isn’t the important factor here so there’s no point in pretending or denying what it is. The real question is who held the higher moral ground in this historical cultural encounter. Was it even close? Even debatable? Yet, debate apparently we must. If you can’t figure it out, you’ve got problems whatever persuasion you are.
Answerer, in your conceptual world, there are comfortable “good guys” and “bad guys.” It appears primitive people mucking about looking for tubers and the occasional unwary rabbit, while dying from old age at 30, earn the title of “nobel,” while different societies living somewhat longer and using more sophisticated tools and weapons do not. I envy that comfort, while avoiding it.
I don’t know how the term was dropped, and that isn’t the important factor here so there’s no point in pretending or denying what it is. The real question is who held the higher moral ground in this historical cultural encounter. Was it even close? Even debatable? Yet, debate apparently we must. If you can’t figure it out, you’ve got problems whatever persuasion you are.
Answerer, in your conceptual world, there are comfortable “good guys” and “bad guys.” It appears primitive people mucking about looking for tubers and the occasional unwary rabbit, while dying from old age at 30, earn the title of “nobel,” while different societies living somewhat longer and using more sophisticated tools and weapons do not. I envy that comfort, while avoiding it.
What’s up with you, Dennis? How many more twists are we going to put on this thing? Ok, so in your conceptual world washing machines and air conditioning is your idea of “civilised man.” It must be his duty, then, with his superior weaponry (and religion) to annihilate into conformity for their own good those that are considered inferior, like Jews and Homosexuals say, and not be comfortable being able to discern from “good” and “bad.” Yes, I’m comfortable ... and confident.
I don’t know how the term was dropped, and that isn’t the important factor here so there’s no point in pretending or denying what it is. The real question is who held the higher moral ground in this historical cultural encounter. Was it even close? Even debatable? Yet, debate apparently we must. If you can’t figure it out, you’ve got problems whatever persuasion you are.
Answerer, in your conceptual world, there are comfortable “good guys” and “bad guys.” It appears primitive people mucking about looking for tubers and the occasional unwary rabbit, while dying from old age at 30, earn the title of “nobel,” while different societies living somewhat longer and using more sophisticated tools and weapons do not. I envy that comfort, while avoiding it.
This is a good example of people talking past each other. Of course I agree with Answerer, I don’t know why you even posted that Wiki article about nobility Dennis, that’s precisely what version of that term we are NOT talking about.
Having a ‘noble’ character is all about what kind of higher moral ground you are occupying than someone else, at least that’s the way Rousseau meant it. And I don’t understand why this idea irks some people (Americans of European descent mostly?) to try and point out that the native populations of pre-Columbian America were at least as noble as their European counterparts at that point in human history.
The main point I am trying to make here is that there was a definite influence on the moral outlook of Europeans in general with the introduction of ideas that were well established in the social culture of the Americas prior to the year 1500. I am not making a case for the Aztec being morally superior to the Romans, that’s not possible to determine really, but I would definitely say that the Romans were probably more noble in 1450 - but I could be wrong? All I am saying is that ideas about how to treat people ethically and how to make rules for a community to live in peace and prosperity, were more noble in the northeastern tribes of the Americas than they were in Europe in the 16th century. This says nothing about the technological advancement of each civilization or the sort of economic strategies they invented (except where moral values come into play, re: slavery).
Now, naturally, the ethical ideas that existed in the pre-Columbian cultures were transplanted into the minds of the Europeans in the early part of the 16th century (say from 1500-1530) when many native leaders were taken to Europe and invited to meet with and speak with the elite and educated classes of the European nations. These ideas concerning egalitarianism, gender equality, negotiation and compromise, non-ownership were actually foreign to the ruling mindset of Europe at the time. These ideas became part of the radical social changes that took place in Europe during the renaissance, but we are only now discovering those connections that have mostly been lost in our history because we (people of European heritage) wanted to claim all these noble human advances for ourselves. Christians want to claim this progress came from their creed and their scriptures. Naturally, all of these things work together to instill the immense changes that have taken place in Western civilization over the last 500 years, but to deny any impact whatsoever to the moral perspectives of the pre-Columbian civilizations is to essentially deny the actual facts of historical progress.
People like Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and others who founded the United States of America were certainly influenced by ideas that had already existed in the native cultures for many centuries before. And some of those ideas are what made the American political system the most advanced civilization of its time. Of course I am not giving exclusive credit to the pre-Columbian ideas, but even Adam Smith and John Locke were already influenced by these same native preconceptions of human collaboration and noble moral precepts. It’s really impossible to say who deserves credit for what, but to deny any influence at all from the “savages” in the Western continents is to deny reality. I am not trying to denigrate the founders of America, so please don’t take my thoughts in that direction.
If intelligent beings with superior technology arrived on earth tomorrow and decided that they needed our land and resources and began to systematically wipe us out in vaious ways would they be morally justified. I mean, they may have better washing machines. And they may be able to make more efficient and producvtive use of the planet. In which cas who are we to argue with progress?
I don’t know how the term was dropped, and that isn’t the important factor here so there’s no point in pretending or denying what it is. The real question is who held the higher moral ground in this historical cultural encounter. Was it even close? Even debatable? Yet, debate apparently we must. If you can’t figure it out, you’ve got problems whatever persuasion you are.
Answerer, in your conceptual world, there are comfortable “good guys” and “bad guys.”
From where did you get this notion? Is it connected to applying an inappropriate form of “noble” to the topic at hand, perhaps—a misfire, basically?
Answerer, I don’t know if I shall ever risk meeting you in person because I think you may fall in love with me. I inherited the Walt Whitman genes from my mother’s side, but, there is injun blood from my father’s side. Yep…I am part Shinnecock. My high cheekbones might throw you into a tailspin.
What’s funny is that in my childhood, it was something that was whispered. But, fifty years later, we brag about it. When my cousin died, he had a Native American ceremony at his funeral. This is absurd. Knowing my relatives, they probably swindled the Native Americans and raped the women.
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Rob) - 05 February 2012 11:34 PM
If intelligent beings with superior technology arrived on earth tomorrow and decided that they needed our land and resources and began to systematically wipe us out in vaious ways would they be morally justified. I mean, they may have better washing machines. And they may be able to make more efficient and producvtive use of the planet. In which cas who are we to argue with progress?
Are you saying that a better washing machine indicates the moral superiority of its owners? Ha!
That’s an interesting observation and question Rob, because progress does indeed have moral implications. I wonder how Sam Harris would “untie” those overlapping magisteriums?
In my own view, the alien arrival scenario just doesn’t qualify for such an analysis. Whether they would be morally justified to wipe humans off the planet or not, is simply an incomprehensible concept. It just seems that a species of creatures who could invent the means (or discover it?) to travel from some other interstellar planet to visit this earth, would not be interested in wiping another species out of existence. The thought itself is the same feeling that I got when I went to see the original Star Wars movie in 1977 and was forced to suffer through watching a startling variety of weaponry being detonated aboard the confines of a spaceship. But I guess what I’m saying is that, in effect, technological progress is by some necessity tied in with ethical considerations, and that separating the two actually leaves us vulnerable to visions of creature wars among the stars, and that is surely crazy!
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Rob) - 05 February 2012 11:34 PM
If intelligent beings with superior technology arrived on earth tomorrow and decided that they needed our land and resources and began to systematically wipe us out in vaious ways would they be morally justified. I mean, they may have better washing machines. And they may be able to make more efficient and producvtive use of the planet. In which cas who are we to argue with progress?
Might does not make one morally superior, or inferior. Lack of might does not imply some nobility or moral superiority. The 3rd Reich was highly technological, and, by its definition, moral and noble; they lost the war so we can claim them immoral. Those primitive tribesmen in I forget what African country who chopped off a lot of heads of a different tribe I’d expect considered they were doing the right thing. I cannot associate some implied morality or nobility as a function of either technological sophistication or relative lack of it. It may(?) be a function of how secure and relatively well off a populace is, but that’s just my conjecture at the moment.
It’s so mightiliy refreshing to see such arduous disagreement.
A few comments.
First, I find that I disagree with burt for a change. I think that cruelty is part of the nature of human beings that we are all capable of. Reading some of the accounts of pre-European Americans’ treatment of each other shows that. What I think is missing from “savages’s” societies, at least relative to industrial societies, is anonymous cruelty, by which I mean that which regards others’ individual suffering as inconsequential in the pursuit of one’s own greater goals. Aztecs and Mayans were cruel, but were not oblivious to individual suffering. Instead, individual suffering seems to have been deemed necessary for preserving the order of the world. Each of those sacrificed lives mattered to them. The situation is far different with respect to modern attitudes toward collateral damage.
Second, I don’t think it is accurate to portray all Europeans’ attitudes in the same light. Just as there were some who strived to exploit whatever and whomever could be exploited, and to exterminate anyone and anything that could not, there were those who attempted compassionate acts. As in the present day, exploitation and extermination proved more profitable, and therefore more politically influential, than compassion.
Third, I’ve got a particular dislike of Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a person, who IMO was as far from personally noble as anyone can be without being a criminal or head-of-government. I much prefer Hobbes, whose foundational assumptions about human society are equally wrong, but who showed how the rule of law (and, by extension, the habit of compassion) may emerge from a condition of unregulated self-interest.
It’s so mightiliy refreshing to see such arduous disagreement.
A few comments.
First, I find that I disagree with burt for a change. I think that cruelty is part of the nature of human beings that we are all capable of. Reading some of the accounts of pre-European Americans’ treatment of each other shows that. What I think is missing from “savages’s” societies, at least relative to industrial societies, is anonymous cruelty, by which I mean that which regards others’ individual suffering as inconsequential in the pursuit of one’s own greater goals. Aztecs and Mayans were cruel, but were not oblivious to individual suffering. Instead, individual suffering seems to have been deemed necessary for preserving the order of the world. Each of those sacrificed lives mattered to them. The situation is far different with respect to modern attitudes toward collateral damage.
Your statement on “anonymous cruelty” does indeed ring true, in that the death of other lives are just seen as numbers and even the demise of innocent lives are viewed as accidental. I read recently that in the tribes that we refer to as the Aztec those who were sacrificed were not the criminals or captives, but were in fact brought up as privileged children who were brainwashed into a belief that the sacrificing of their lives was necessary and essential to the continued health and prosperity of the entire community. These youths were, in that context, completely willing and in fact perhaps proud and eager for their turn to be the sacrificial saviours of their people. (If one happened to see the immense out-pouring of grief in the streets of Pyong Yang at the death of their imperial and divine sovereign last month, it’s easy to imagine people willing to be sacrificial lambs being led to their own slaughter.)
Second, I don’t think it is accurate to portray all Europeans’ attitudes in the same light. Just as there were some who strived to exploit whatever and whomever could be exploited, and to exterminate anyone and anything that could not, there were those who attempted compassionate acts. As in the present day, exploitation and extermination proved more profitable, and therefore more politically influential, than compassion.
Yes.
Third, I’ve got a particular dislike of Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a person, who IMO was as far from personally noble as anyone can be without being a criminal or head-of-government. I much prefer Hobbes, whose foundational assumptions about human society are equally wrong, but who showed how the rule of law (and, by extension, the habit of compassion) may emerge from a condition of unregulated self-interest.
Here again, I feel much as you do knowing full well the debaucherous life of Jean-Jacques, although perhaps in a moment of self-reflection, he too would not call himself noble in the least. Rousseau is fascinating as a personality because he wrote that incredible account of how a child should be raised and taught without punishment and basically treated as a moral equivalent of an adult, and then he basically abandoned his own brood of children into poverty and neglect, ultimately going bankrupt and fancying himself as a criminal sought after by the elite forces of the French Government. Apparently he went to England and tried to live with David Hume (who kindly took him in) only to be disgustingly thrown out shortly after?
It is silly to be so fixated and frozen on the final moments of Pre-Columbian history. If Europeons had crossed the ocean a few centuries earlier, they may have found the continent a little harder to conquer. Bad fortune and bad weather had brought down some robust societies that could have put up more of a fight.
Before that was 15 to 20 thousand years of time in which people speard across two continents and whose population grew and peaked at maybe a hundred million or more. I’m sure there was much diversity in culture and morality both regionally and temporally. Think of all the drama filled dynasties that will never be dramatized. Those strutting Euro Sapiens had a least 35 thousand years of their own history they could not account for and likely would have denied.
Imagine if the snooty Euros had realized that they looking at what their own vast history must have been like?
I think the back to nature crowd was most impressed by the native’s ability to narrate and have very organized lives amid what appeared to be squalor and historical meaninglessness. It took generations of invaders just to discover all the diverse populations let alone ruin them. Many native societies were in ruins already. Some were thriving. The heart-grabbing Aztecs we see dramatized on TV stole those cities from the culture that built them. The land was already full of really big stories before the Euros got here. Maybe a few messiahs… a ressurection here and there… whole civilizations born from one weird chat with a talking cactus…
If only the Euros could have realized just how routine and mundane all the bullshit is, including their own kind.
In my opinion, native americans definitely have the upper hand on the moral superiority scale as compared to european/new world invaders when you look at it from the perspective of present day. Do you have to spend much time on what’s left of a native american reservation before you realize these cultures were destroyed (often on purpose), the people and their communities shattered, and very little of them remains? How many stories do you have to listen to about native american children being taken from their families and placed in white foster homes before you realize these people are still being mishandled and have no value to most of “western” society? It’s pathetic. Will we ever have a native american president? Is that even conceivable?
I don’t care how many hearts were “eaten” or buried or where, a culture that has the organization and technology to eradicate its competition is never required to do so, and fails the most basic moral litmus test when it elects to exercise that power for its own gain or glory. Since when has genocide (effectively) been a subject for moral equivocation simply because the population up for razing “has done bad stuff too”?
If only the American Indians, instead of the colonists, had had firearms and smallpox and ocean-traversing ships at their disposal. I’m sure the world would have been a far more peaceful place.
If only the American Indians, instead of the colonists, had had firearms and smallpox and ocean-traversing ships at their disposal. I’m sure the world would have been a far more peaceful place.
If only the American Indians, instead of the colonists, had had firearms and smallpox and ocean-traversing ships at their disposal. I’m sure the world would have been a far more peaceful place.
OK. My first thought was to agree, but then I became convinced that Asd was being sarcastic/facetious. In the end I figured that this sort of statement was like throwing a ball on the roulette wheel . . . the ants sir are blowing in the wind.
If only the American Indians, instead of the colonists, had had firearms and smallpox and ocean-traversing ships at their disposal. I’m sure the world would have been a far more peaceful place.
OK. My first thought was to agree, but then I became convinced that Asd was being sarcastic/facetious. In the end I figured that this sort of statement was like throwing a ball on the roulette wheel . . . the ants sir are blowing in the wind.
Yeah, can’t agree. They didn’t have the same Gods and customs, if that’s any indication.
If only the American Indians, instead of the colonists, had had firearms and smallpox and ocean-traversing ships at their disposal. I’m sure the world would have been a far more peaceful place.
OK. My first thought was to agree, but then I became convinced that Asd was being sarcastic/facetious. In the end I figured that this sort of statement was like throwing a ball on the roulette wheel . . . the ants sir are blowing in the wind.
Yeah, can’t agree. They didn’t have the same Gods and customs, if that’s any indication.
Of course I was being sarcastic! Just listen to yourselves: there’s no way to know how the Indians would have behaved if they’d had the technology of the Europeans and faced the same degree of competition for land and resources as the Europeans did. Claiming otherwise is laughable. The “nobility” of the savages is just as likely to have stemmed from their lack of technology and the lack of competition for land and resources as from some presumed cultural or genetic “nobility.”
When I was a child, I was taught that Columbus was a brave and courageous hero. Now, he is perceived as a villain by many children because textbooks emphasize how the Native American culture was viciously destroyed by the arrival of the Europeans. In a town near to my own, Port Jefferson, the residents wanted to erect a statue of Thomas Jefferson, They changed their mind because there were so many protests from various groups claiming that Jefferson should not be honored because he had sex with his mistress, who was his slave.
Human beings are not this OR that, they are this AND that, and, in Uncle Walt’s words, “contain multitudes”. History, which is composed of people, is not only multi-layered, but contains as many facets are there are perspectives.
The labeling of people…and ourselves…as if we possessed unified personalities is not only ignorant, but unjust and dehumanizing. I wish we were taught this from an early age. If we recognize that our brains contain a team of rivals and that who we are is contingent upon many factors, it would help us view ourselves and others more clearly and understand that morality is often murky and complicated. If we were taught to strive for objectivity, we would be better able to distinguish “moral” from “immoral” behavior and make choices that were more realistic, humane and compassionate. Otherwise, truth gets lost in the clash of illusions.
Of course I was being sarcastic! Just listen to yourselves: there’s no way to know how the Indians would have behaved if they’d had the technology of the Europeans and faced the same degree of competition for land and resources as the Europeans did. Claiming otherwise is laughable. The “nobility” of the savages is just as likely to have stemmed from their lack of technology and the lack of competition for land and resources as from some presumed cultural or genetic “nobility.”
Well said. Nobility seems attributed more when we don’t know what we’re talking about.
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