Avatar, The Noble Savage, and why certain ideals are flawed

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Postby a happy song » 2010.02.08 (11:19)

A brief essay I wrote in repsonse to certain assertions on the IMDb board (I know...) regarding certain persectives being linked to James Cameron's Avatar. Feel free to ignore or discuss it as you choose.

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For many, the Na'vi represent the potentials of humanity. They're a spiritual people, not flawless by any means (susceptible to negative traits such as arrogance and ignorance and contexts of pride) but a race in equilibrium with their environment.

They have noble intents, they're wise, they're pure of heart, they're strong and healthy, they don't dominate their world but live in balance as part of the food chain (which heightens their physical perfection), they only hunt what they need not to survive and not what they desire for comfort.

This idealism is fine in a story book sense. In the Black and White literary devices of escapist fictions, but, in reality, it is an inherently flawed and incredibly naive perspective to latch on to as a truth.

The idea that the closer to nature we are the more inherent good we possess is a long standing fallacy, perpetuated in part by the myth of the Noble Savage. For many years, liberal leaning philosophers and thinkers considered the evils of modern progression and civilisation to be a corrupting influence on the inherent good nature of humankind. In reality, this progress was merely an inevitable part of our evolution.

Human's are born as blank slates (certain genetic prerequisites aside - factors that govern intelligence, for one, can determine the ability to reason and correlate logically), who are capable of absorbing both noble and selfish intent. These traits are determined by our experience, and, en mass, the defining traits of humanity have never been as black and white as Good and Evil.

Humans can be selfish. They can be greedy. They can lie cheat and steal and all of these traits have been our potential doom since the birth of concious intelligence. The tribal peoples of the world romanticised in Films such as Dances With Wolves, Braveheart, and now (to a certain extent) Avatar, were just as capable of these evils as modern civilised man.

It wasn't progress that corrupted us, it was our desires that corrupted progress itself!

All men started off as tribal cultures. All men were as close to the earth as the tribes being idealised. We're all cut from the same genetic template, we all learn through mistakes and trial and error and experimentation, that some peoples progressed faster and learned to dominate others simply meant they got there first due to certain variables and conditions, not any inherent predisposition to 'evil'.

Tribal people are simply those who haven't harnessed the ability to fully exploit all aspects of their destructive capability. And while you could argue that, in that state, they are purer, they are also naive and ignorant and backwards in many ways that make progression a wonderful thing.

Penicillin.
Anaesthetic.
The internet and the freedom of information.
Scientific understanding of our place in the universe.
And so on...

If the tribal peoples in question represent a purer state,they also represent childhood and all of it's flaws in terms of understanding. They were not perfect. They were not ideal. And they certainly held no more goodness than you or I do today.

I am aware that Avatar isn't making this claim, that it's first and foremost escapist fiction, but the reaction of some of the fans with their naive ideals is a marker for backwards thinking and a detriment to the true potential our race holds: progression to the point of true understanding, to the point of harmless sustainable energies, to the point of space exploration and the jump start of our evolution as a species.

Progress is about looking forward, not dreaming in rose tinted hindsights.
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Postby SlappyMcGee » 2010.02.08 (13:14)

Yeah, that movie suck! lol
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Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2010.02.08 (18:30)

a happy song wrote:If the tribal peoples in question represent a purer state,they also represent childhood and all of it's flaws in terms of understanding. They were not perfect. They were not ideal. And they certainly held no more goodness than you or I do today.
Just a quick devil's advocate here...
I think the primary view of romanticized tribal cultures is that they are at least more noble or pure or good because they were free from the "evil" values that modern humans have in their modern upbringing. It can be argued, for example, that capitalism encourages greed, selfishness, and an emotionally unhealthy conflation of material possessions and self-worth. Because children are more exposed to these more prevalent and influential "evil" values which only came about because of our advancement, then I can see how it's not unreasonable from that perspective to decry progress as a negative, corrupting process; the farther behind you are on that line, the more "good" and "pure" you are.
If you had the choice between the two extremes, which would you prefer: a utopian society with no crime but Bronze Age technology, or a society of psychopaths with superweapons?

Although for the record, I do agree with you that this is not an accurate model. I see the choice as being closer to "psychopaths with superweapons vs psychopaths with Bronze Age weapons," where it's important to note that with progress (an extremely loaded word in this context), it becomes increasingly difficult for a psychopath to both carry out and get away with his shenanigans.
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Postby otters~1 » 2010.02.09 (00:29)

Tsukatu wrote:It can be argued, for example, that capitalism encourages greed, selfishness, and an emotionally unhealthy conflation of material possessions and self-worth.
I agree with this. Won't bother citing anecdotes; suffice it to say that anyone who's lived in America for a reasonable time can't /not/ agree.
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Postby Skyling » 2010.02.09 (01:38)

Tsukatu wrote: I see the choice as being closer to "psychopaths with superweapons vs psychopaths with Bronze Age weapons"
This right here exactly.
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Postby a happy song » 2010.02.09 (13:04)

Tsukatu wrote:
a happy song wrote:If the tribal peoples in question represent a purer state,they also represent childhood and all of it's flaws in terms of understanding. They were not perfect. They were not ideal. And they certainly held no more goodness than you or I do today.
Just a quick devil's advocate here...
I think the primary view of romanticized tribal cultures is that they are at least more noble or pure or good because they were free from the "evil" values that modern humans have in their modern upbringing. It can be argued, for example, that capitalism encourages greed, selfishness, and an emotionally unhealthy conflation of material possessions and self-worth. Because children are more exposed to these more prevalent and influential "evil" values which only came about because of our advancement, then I can see how it's not unreasonable from that perspective to decry progress as a negative, corrupting process; the farther behind you are on that line, the more "good" and "pure" you are.
If you had the choice between the two extremes, which would you prefer: a utopian society with no crime but Bronze Age technology, or a society of psychopaths with superweapons?

Although for the record, I do agree with you that this is not an accurate model. I see the choice as being closer to "psychopaths with superweapons vs psychopaths with Bronze Age weapons," where it's important to note that with progress (an extremely loaded word in this context), it becomes increasingly difficult for a psychopath to both carry out and get away with his shenanigans.
Of course, it's easy to see how people are enthralled by the concept. Especially when Costner, Gibson, and now Cameron back it up with their romantic visions. And I'm not saying it's an awful device in a literary sense, nor that the model itself holds absolute zero merit in reality.

It's just that when people hold the ideal as a marker for some kind of pinnacle, that we've evolved beyond our potential, that we're corrupted indefinitely by our modern progression, that the indigenous tribal peoples are the poster children for pure hearted goodness and innocence... well, that's when it gets ridiculous.

Cheers for the response, I wasn't expecting anyone to bother.
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Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2010.02.10 (04:49)

a happy song wrote:Cheers for the response, I wasn't expecting anyone to bother.
You know me -- I have something to say about damned near anything. :p
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Postby otters~1 » 2010.02.10 (15:27)

a happy song wrote:It's just that when people hold the ideal as a marker for some kind of pinnacle, that we've evolved beyond our potential, that we're corrupted indefinitely by our modern progression, that the indigenous tribal peoples are the poster children for pure hearted goodness and innocence... well, that's when it gets ridiculous.
You've just described the plot of a very famous and insightful book.
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Postby a happy song » 2010.02.10 (16:22)

flagmyidol wrote:
a happy song wrote:It's just that when people hold the ideal as a marker for some kind of pinnacle, that we've evolved beyond our potential, that we're corrupted indefinitely by our modern progression, that the indigenous tribal peoples are the poster children for pure hearted goodness and innocence... well, that's when it gets ridiculous.
You've just described the plot of a very famous and insightful book.
Yes, a work of fiction that claims we're on a downward spiral.

For all our destructive capabilities, we've the potential to evolve past our petty consumerism and war if technology provides the means to leave them behind.

Regardless of this, the idea of the Noble Savage is still a ridiculous one.
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Postby SlappyMcGee » 2010.02.10 (17:44)

Oh, regardless of my previous dumb post, let me thoroughly disagree with you here.

Your belief is that the idealized Noble Savage is a ridiculous concept, and in a way, I agree with you. The fact is, thousands of years ago, pre-society tribal living was not necessarily more noble than today. We were the same species, mostly. But I think the type of society idealized in Avatar and other escapist fiction is not pre-societal humanity, but rather, post-societal.

There is something to be said for all of today's modern advances, certainly. You singled out some important knowledge and great medical advances. Let me point you to Star Trek: Insurrection. In the film, there is a simple society that can live forever because the waves coming off of the planet keep them alive. This both invalidates the need for medicine and allows th retention of knowledge to be indefinite. Certainly, you can agree that their lives, without technology, are much improved? They had no atom bombs (until, of course, the Enterprise showed up and fucked everything.)

Now, I hate Dances with Wolves, so I'll leave that alone, but Braveheart never romanticized an era for me, so much as told a fantastical story using a different time period. The same story could be futurist, so I'm not sure why you think that promotes the idea of the Noble Savage.

Point being, if you believe that people had the same motivations thousands of years ago as they do today, then how can you possibly argue that technology has improved us in anyway? If medicine has increased our lifespan, it has also increased the risk of overpopulation. If the internet has let us communicate with everybody, then it has given us a million more people to fight with. Technology has done nothing to fix the problems of tribal civilizations. It has merely provided us with newer more global ones. The Earth could die in the next few decades, and yet, a tribal society without cars or computers would never have that problem.

What I'm observing here is not that savages are more noble than our society, merely that they lack the tools to do the same amount of damage as we do. There's a portion of the world that is radioactive. Do you realize that? Your tagline of progress not corrupting us is right, but you're wrong about desires corrupting progress. They haven't corrupted progress, they've merely taken that technological progress and put our planet at serious risk.

So, in conclusion, to make everything I've said clear, I agree that we're all cut from the same cloth, but one of these cloths has a much bigger gun, and has kind of lost sight of the needle and thread. The concept of a Noble Savage is false, but I think you should realize that the benefits of technological advancement do not necessarily outweigh their detriments. Penecillin (I'm allergic.) is great, unless everybody is fucking dead.
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Postby otters~1 » 2010.02.10 (18:00)

a happy song wrote:
flagmyidol wrote:
a happy song wrote:It's just that when people hold the ideal as a marker for some kind of pinnacle, that we've evolved beyond our potential, that we're corrupted indefinitely by our modern progression, that the indigenous tribal peoples are the poster children for pure hearted goodness and innocence... well, that's when it gets ridiculous.
You've just described the plot of a very famous and insightful book.
Yes, a work of fiction that claims we're on a downward spiral.

For all our destructive capabilities, we've the potential to evolve past our petty consumerism and war if technology provides the means to leave them behind.

Regardless of this, the idea of the Noble Savage is still a ridiculous one.
In my opinion, humanity could still yet go either way -- utopic or dystopic -- though I think that dystopic is the more likely at this point. But the idea of a Noble Savage is indeed entirely ridiculous, because the Noble Savage never existed. We've never been great as a species, therefore we're not on a "downward spiral." (What Slappy said in his first paragraph, actually.)

I disagree about technology, however. The benefits clearly outweigh the consequences at this point. (In fifty years? Who knows.)
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Postby a happy song » 2010.02.10 (18:11)

flagmyidol wrote:
I disagree about technology, however. The benefits clearly outweigh the consequences at this point. (In fifty years? Who knows.)
I think you misunderstood. I meant if technology and science provides us with such things as perpetual energy or some kind of medical wonders or a fix for food shortages etc... then many imbalances will be restored and our focuses on development can move away from pretty conquests.
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Postby otters~1 » 2010.02.10 (22:46)

a happy song wrote:
flagmyidol wrote:
I disagree about technology, however. The benefits clearly outweigh the consequences at this point. (In fifty years? Who knows.)
I think you misunderstood. I meant if technology and science provides us with such things as perpetual energy or some kind of medical wonders or a fix for food shortages etc... then many imbalances will be restored and our focuses on development can move away from pretty conquests.
Sorry, that was directed at Slappy's point more than yours. To respond anyway, I think that science has already provided us with more than enough wonders to be getting on with. Hopefully we haven't seen the end of medical advances (in fact, we haven't), but still, our "development" should've done that a long time ago, regardless.
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Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2010.02.11 (05:51)

Slappy,

Clearly there's a point in bringing up over-arching problems like overpopulation, proliferation of nuclear weapons, and skullfucking Gaia, so I'm not at all saying this is a black and white issue. But when I think of a low-tech society and what effects technology can provide, my mind immediately goes for the local and the practical. I really doubt that many of our earliest civilized ancestors were interested in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, because they had more immediate concerns in their day-to-day. Small things like figuring out that clay can keep the rain from soaking through your straw ceiling, or finding a particular shape is better for carving wood than another, or noticing that aloe relieves pain from burns, are all advances in technology that a society is better off with than without. The technological advancement of a society necessarily follows these incremental, practical, and universal improvements. And more monumental advances bring with them an unpredictable tradeoff. Advanced agriculture, for example, obviously helps feed a society as well bring it expand its options for trade, but it could also be the reason that that society can dedicate more of its focus on its military and march around annihilating their neighbors, erasing their cultures from history forevermore. My point revolves around the fact that the improvement itself doesn't bring with it any greater incentive to do evil, but that that's a different problem altogether. Good people will find productive uses for new technology, and evil people will find destructive uses for it. It can't be avoided.

We have our advanced medicine to thank for our overpopulation, but it's important to realize that we didn't have problems with overpopulation before our medical advancement took off because we were dying painful deaths in droves of all the medical conditions we can now treat. Broken limbs, diarrhea, flu, measles... these were all death sentences back then. All's we knew was most people made it to their mid to late 20's before life circumstances kicked them in the nuts, they bled from some combination of orifices for a while, rolled around screaming until they passed out from exhaustion, and then stopped moving altogether, and that was it. No rhyme or reason to it, and no way to help it once it starts. Every now and again someone would live through it, but more often than not they died in pain. These conditions strike me as far less desirable than problems due to overpopulation. And as we start finding solutions to dealing with these problems, such as the use of contraceptives, sterilization (voluntary, hopefully), and, heck, one-child-per-family laws, the problems caused by overpopulation seem to be to be much more tolerable than random, untreatable, horrifying deaths at a young age.

There was a TED talk I'm unable to find at the moment that addressed the topic of prevalence and intensity of violence in human history, and its conclusion was that even today with our wacky worldwide wars and our violent TV shows, the amount of international and societal violence has seen more or less monotonic decrease throughout recorded history. With increased standard of living and better education comes the greater likelihood that problems will be handles without violence, and that xenophobia is taken off the table entirely. As far as I'm concerned, I get a look back into the past every time I hear about some terrible event in a third-world countries. I get news items in my newsfeeds every now and again about some woman in Uganda being stripped and publicly beaten, then paraded around town and burned alive, all because her neighbor accused her of witchcraft. This kind of shit actually happens today, and it invariably happens in cultures that are, through no fault of their own, ignorant. With ignorance comes intolerance and a default to resolving conflicts the way our enlarged adrenal glands tell us to. What would you prefer -- a few years in state prison, or crucifixion? A stressful day job, or the daily struggle to keep your life until the next sunrise? Time in court and legal fees, or trying to talk a violent mob out of public humiliation, beating, and stoning? Would you rather be shot with a gun, or torn apart with teeth and claws? And which would you rather have at your side when attacked: a gun, or a spear?

I think Hollywood has done too good a job of romanticizing primitive societies. They didn't live all happy and healthy. They weren't tolerant and benevolent. Most of them were suffering some kind of health complication that you'd call in sick for, dying slowly of multiple infections in their gums and wounds, stunk to high heaven, lived in constant fear of the weather and of their natural predators, and sentenced each other to torturous deaths for paranoid, superstitious reasons. These were not happy societies. Your typical Noble Savage is dirty, with lice in his hair, ticks in his back, and fleas all over his body, paranoid, hungry, and totally clueless, in his late teens, waiting for death from the gangrene that spread through his leg and into his pelvis from the time he happened to step on a pointy rock one day. It's quite far from the clear-skinned, vivacious, and wise Hollywood glamorization, like Pocahontas or something.

I really am full-on rambling by this point, so let me summarize in one statement: To blame on progress the evil, the unfair, and the unfortunate in the modern world is to lose sight of the fact that things were never less evil, unfair, and unfortunate than today to begin with. At least in first-world countries.
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Postby SlappyMcGee » 2010.02.11 (14:30)

I agree, for sure, I'm just thinking, hey, for all of them savages evil bullshit, they still managed to push out a long lineage of chillin's. And them same chllin's might not be able to do that.
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Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2010.02.11 (23:13)

SlappyMcGee wrote:I agree, for sure, I'm just thinking, hey, for all of them savages evil bullshit, they still managed to push out a long lineage of chillin's. And them same chllin's might not be able to do that.
Seems to me that their chillin's been doing that far, far too well.
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Postby otters~1 » 2010.02.12 (02:06)

Tsukatu wrote:
SlappyMcGee wrote:I agree, for sure, I'm just thinking, hey, for all of them savages evil bullshit, they still managed to push out a long lineage of chillin's. And them same chllin's might not be able to do that.
Seems to me that their chillin's been doing that far, far too well.
For now.
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Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2010.02.12 (05:58)

flagmyidol wrote:
Tsukatu wrote:
SlappyMcGee wrote:I agree, for sure, I'm just thinking, hey, for all of them savages evil bullshit, they still managed to push out a long lineage of chillin's. And them same chllin's might not be able to do that.
Seems to me that their chillin's been doing that far, far too well.
For now.
How very ominous.
Give supporting arguments or leave.
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Postby SlappyMcGee » 2010.02.12 (15:57)

Tsukatu wrote: Give supporting arguments or leave.
I think flag was just stating what was implicit in my post.

Supporting arguments is that the whole world is going to die soon and nobody cares.
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Postby otters~1 » 2010.02.12 (16:12)

Tsukatu wrote: Give supporting arguments or leave.
Oh, fuck off. I gave some arguments above; not my fault you didn't respond. And, yes, I was just emphasizing that you may've missed Slappy's point.
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Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2010.02.12 (17:40)

Far as I know, the deceleration of the global human birthrate is a new conversational topic, besides being completely false.
I said we've been reproducing quite excellently since the Bronze Age, and you're telling me that that's going to reach a peak at some point -- why? Your stated reasons of "the world is becoming a less moral place," "we're becoming dystopic," and "the world's going to hell in a handbasket and no one seems to care" are not valid reasons for believing the rate of human reproduction will be curbed.
If your point was to say that I missed one of Slappy's, it couldn't have been about population growth because that's one I most definitely did talk about at length. And what else could you have meant by, "[we're far too good at reproducing...] for now."
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Postby otters~1 » 2010.02.12 (17:48)

Tsukatu wrote: I said we've been reproducing quite excellently since the Bronze Age, and you're telling me that that's going to reach a peak at some point -- why? Your stated reasons of "the world is becoming a less moral place," "we're becoming dystopic," and "the world's going to hell in a handbasket and no one seems to care" are not valid reasons for believing the rate of human reproduction will be curbed.
If your point was to say that I missed one of Slappy's, it couldn't have been about population growth because that's one I most definitely did talk about at length. And what else could you have meant by, "[we're far too good at reproducing...] for now."
At some point we'll reach "critical mass," right? We're doing okay procreation-wise right /now/, but when we fill up the earth with people (and pollution etc), what then?

"The world's going to hell in a handbasket and no one seems to care" is certainly a valid, if poetic, reason for believing humanity's screwed. We can't live in a fucked-up world, and we're fucking up our world more and more every day.
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Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2010.02.12 (17:55)

flagmyidol wrote:At some point we'll reach "critical mass," right?
We hit critical mass decades ago.
flagmyidol wrote:We're doing okay procreation-wise right /now/, but when we fill up the earth with people (and pollution etc), what then?
Then the children will die. It's happening right now in Africa, China, and India -- people are having loads of children, but they don't have resources to support them, so the children die. That don't stop 'em from having children all the same. It's like there's just nothing else to do in those places.
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Postby SlappyMcGee » 2010.02.12 (18:40)

I never meant to emphasize population growth. What I'm saying is, is that, the so-called Noble Savage never risked destroying the world with pollution. We definitely do. Whether they were equally or less moral than us is largely speculative. The point is that, whether or not they were more technically moral, they're simple tools and reliance on nature means that they could never do the damage we've done to the Earth. Earth might be fucking dead in a hundred years. -Earth-. -Dead-. Whether or not we're good at fucking is irrelevant if the whole planet has rotted through because we needed big cars.
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Postby otters~1 » 2010.02.14 (01:58)

Tsukatu wrote:
flagmyidol wrote:At some point we'll reach "critical mass," right?
We hit critical mass decades ago.
No. What I mean by critical mass here is, everything dead boom.
flagmyidol wrote:We're doing okay procreation-wise right /now/, but when we fill up the earth with people (and pollution etc), what then?
Then the children will die. It's happening right now in Africa, China, and India -- people are having loads of children, but they don't have resources to support them, so the children die. That don't stop 'em from having children all the same. It's like there's just nothing else to do in those places.
I would argue that there are still many places in the world that aren't filled with dead kids. For every Africa there's an Italy, where population is dropping. (I agree that the goddamn Indians who have nineteen kids and then get foreign aid are fucking leeches on society. Abstinence or at /least/ condoms.)
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