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[This is one of a series of meditations on what we might have learned, and might still learn, from the history of Native Americans about how to live without modern technology and industry, which we may have to do in the near future.]
This is a noble Frenchman who fought in the French and Indian War. He thought Indian culture was “far superior to anything to be boasted of among us.”
If you say anything complimentary about historic Native American life, you will be told that you are buying into the myth of the Noble Savage, you are mis-applying modern sensibilities to Stone Age history, and are thus constructing in your mind a Disney movie about a Mad Max era. It’s a hard criticism to answer. How, indeed, can we overweight, sedentary keyboard crunchers come to any valid conclusion about life as hunter-gatherers without iPhones?
Turns out, we have a few witnesses. Here’s one. “The American Indian should serve as a model for how to eradicate poverty and bring natural rights back into civilized life.” Can you hear the sneers? Obviously, this is some bleeding-heart academic New Age liberal with no knowledge of history, right? Wrong. That’s Thomas Paine, a founding father of the United States, writing in 1795 while the Indian Wars raged in the Midwest.
Paine, an Englishman, thought there was something off about his own culture. He wondered whether “civilization has most promoted or most injured the general happiness of man,” and pointed out that “the most affluent and the most miserable of the human race are to be found in the countries that are called civilized.” Obviously, Mr. Paine thought there were things we could learn from the Native Americans.
A decade earlier, the French aristocrat (!) and veteran of the French and Indian War, Michel Guillaume Jean de Crevecouer (he later anglicized his name) observed of the natives, “There must be in their social bond something singularly captivating and far superior to anything to be boasted of among us.” So here we have a contemporary noble calling the savages superior.
What gave rise to his comment was a long-standing concern of white European settlers in the New World. The kind of concern they did not even like to talk about, for it struck at the very roots of their perception of themselves.
[Although I have been reading and writing about this period of history for decades, I had never come across a discussion of it until Sebastian Junger’s excellent new book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging. Here it is on Amazon. Read it.]
The problem emerged practically on contact. In 1612, just five years after the founding of Jamestown in Virginia, authorities noted with dismay that fully 40 or 50 white settlers, all born in Europe, male and female, had chosen to marry into an Indian tribe. Efforts to prohibit and punish these choices, to forcibly return those who had made them to their “civilized” homes, were many; attempts to understand why they made such choices were few.
But one colonial woman told a French questioner: “I am the equal of all the women in the tribe, I do what I please without anyone saying anything about it, I work only for myself, I shall marry if I wish and be unmarried again if I wish. Is there a single woman as independent as I in any of your cities?” Is there, in any civilized city, today?
The most well known of the women who voted with their feet for Native American life was Mary Jemison. She actually was abducted as a teenager from her family’s Pennsylvania farm during the French and Indian War. But soon after she was adopted by a Seneca family, she realized she was where she wanted to be, and actually hid from a posse sent to bring her back.
Why? She explained to a minister who wrote a best selling book about her: “We had no master to oversee or drive us, so that we could work as leisurely as we pleased. No people can live more happy than the Indians did in times of peace…their lives were a continual round of pleasures.” Mary Jemison remained, by her choice, a Seneca until she died at the age of 90.
How many Mary Jamisons were there? There is no way to know, but according to Jean de Crevecouer, writing in 1782, “thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no example of even one of those aborigines having by choice become European.”
Another Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, agreed. “When an Indian child has been brought up among us,” he wrote to a friend in 1753, on the eve of the French and Indian War, “taught our language and habituated to our customs...if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return.”
In their own words, from their own time, the people who knew best both the white settlers and the native tribes will tell us if they are consulted that there are indeed ways to live well without technology, that the tribes knew many of those ways, and that we could still learn them.
A few times in this series you have remarked on the ability of assorted groups’ abilities “to live well without technology.” But none of the groups were without technology, even those who lacked metal. Teepees, flaked stone tools even pointed sticks are all technologies, albeit simpler than ours, yet usually requiring a higher level of skill to execute than ours. Consider the level of skill required to hunt, kill, dress and preserve an animal on foot, with bow or spear, with flaked stone knife you made, and smoke or sun, compared to by quad-finding your way home with GPS, with rifle and scope, stainless knife and into a freezer, all purchased.
What each of the groups lacked was not technology but hierarchy. It is an important difference and does not mean that there were no leaders, only that their leaders did not expect to be extravagantly supported just because they were leaders, unlike our own.
Nor were the Americas homogeneously without hierarchy, there were also plenty of empires pre-contact. I have heard of no record of Spaniards running away to become Incan subjects.
I thought it was obvious that I meant modern technology, but I will be more rigorous in qualifying. I have not said that there were no leaders, I have said that there were in the tribes under discussion no people whose job it was to order other people around. I think the testimony of the two women quoted here bears that out. And I have said repeatedly that my subject here is North America. And I don’t think I have written or implied that any behavior described here is true of every tribe that ever lived in North America.
Is it really necessary to attack and ridicule liberals at every turn? I happen to agree with a lot of what I read here and I consider myself liberal. In fact, I argued many of the above points with a conservative friend who considered Native Amercans barbaric because they didn’t have modern plumbing.
I don’t think putting labels on people really helps anybody. Why not welcome anyone who is willing to consider what you have to say?
The reference to liberals was ironic, and was meant to be critical of knee-jerk attacks on liberals. I guess I should have inserted an irony alert.
Mr. L.,
In my previous comments, I have questioned the practice of elevating what is essentially a mirror to an ideal. We have no record of early Indian society stemming from that society, so we must rely on outside-read European sources. I submit that as such, the documentation available serves to reflect back those issues of European intensity, not necessarily those of Indian society.
I never meant to portray European Christian society as one without fault, or a dark side. European society was and is highly stratified, with desperate poverty written into the script. It had to be so, for the ruling class to live in ridiculous excess.
However, it is vitally important to realize that this Christian society was the winner of a struggle that lasted over 1500 years.
Now, before my critics parade the voices praising this society, it should be patently obvious that the best soldiers are hardly the best keepers of freedom, and that just because Christianity won the war doesn’t mean it won hearts. Today, Europe has rejected Christianity, a predictable outcome for a people forced to adopt it.
In a similar vein, a people forced to forsake their freedom can only be expected to gaze wistfully at those who never lost it.
Of course Europeans would awaken to their slavery when presented with alternatives, and determine to escape it. The ugly secret of colonial America is that it was founded by slaves, and that these slaves were white.
Anthropological study of Indian societies across the Americas reveals that just like us, Indians built societies with active dark sides. Examples include societal leaders as the strong man, where the guy with the most murders gets the girls. Mound Builders, where agriculture failed in the face of growing population and depleting soil, and let’s not forget the Aztecs, who sacrificed untold thousands to their bloodthirsty gods.
If one can glean anything from this record, it might be something like this; humans are contradictory creatures whose behavior spans the spectrum from dark to light, and so it is for their societies.
Thanks for another adventure in what could have been, Mr. Lewis.
As Guy McPherson said about wild nature – it’s (not only) irresistible, but (my add-on)also where we belong(ed) NATURALLY, so it isn’t surprising that, given the chance, most people brought up under then European society would have “jumped ship” when in the new America. I’ve read accounts where the first settlers could drink from any stream or river and that the wildlife was unbelievable in all sizes and types of creatures, trees, plants, bugs and birds.
What’s baffling to me is that no one saw the pollution problem that civilization creates, all the way from (long before) the creation of European cities to the current day. We continually use(d) our biosphere as a trash dump – spewing at first only our waste and rubbish, but as society grew “more civilized” (and complex), chemicals we created were also so disposed with not a thought to consequences. People like Henry Ford and A. G. Bell are lauded as “pioneers” and creators, when they were actually, by their inventions, destroyers of our planet! Yes, drive your own personal pollution devise! Electricity is wonderful – don’t worry about the fish (or anything else)!
I don’t know if it’s a biological imperative or just the trajectory of humanity, but becoming ever more intertwined, complex (technologically) and further from nature has not benefitted mankind. Oh sure, medical advances are looked upon as “wondrous” and have extended human life, but at what cost? OVERPOPULATION and RESOURCE SCARCITY. Whatever it is that we’re doing here on this planet, cultivating life isn’t one of them – we destroy it with practically every action we do, and most have no idea or concern. They will before long.
We’ve lost our spiritual connection to not only the biosphere, but now to each other also. Our ideas and philosophies have continually changed, taking us ever farther from the source of the miracle of being alive and conscious. Instead of looking inward and finding “ourselves” we’ve been led astray and beguiled by society (especially since Ed Bernays developed propaganda as a tool to influence people) and all its trappings (there’s an apt word) to seek money, fame, and prestige among our ranks, to be “individuals” and to compete rather than cooperate for a common good.
Well, since we can’t keep sustaining the unsustainable, ‘the end’ is on the horizon. Enjoy what time you have left, everyone.
Very nice post, Tom. Yes,human behaviour is baffling, especially when one considers just how technically proficient we are. Big complex brains, but apparently incapable of solving the problems that that brain creates, the problem of ourselves. And time is definitely running out to do this.
I think we should consider the possibility that somewhere in the evolutionary journey, mankind has take ‘a wrong turn’. And that wrong turn was everything to do with thought. I mean thought itself, not any particular ideas thought might create. Thought was and is an amazing tool, But it has entered areas where it has no place whatsoever, and is in fact very destructive in those places.
Yes. Which the Bible says is why we got kicked out of the Garden of Eden, for appropriating to our own use the knowledge of good and evil, lest we then lay hands on the Tree of Life itself. God seemed to think we’d screw it up.
Sorry, I also screwed up – my first comment was directed to ‘the other Tom’ :-). Not that it matters in the least.
Yes Tom (Lewis), I have often pondered this amazing biblical story (not that I am a Christian or anything). It seems to me to show incredible insight into the human problem, an insight not generally felt by most people today. The fact that these tribal people thousands of years ago seemed to understand the essence of the human problem lends a lot of support to your recent articles claiming that tribal people quite recently showed (and perhaps still do) far more intelligence in their relationships (with each other and with nature) than “civilised man” (excuse the term).
Yes, as I see the story, knowledge, instead of being a simple, useful, practical tool, entered the realm of psychological knowledge, a realm where it is entirely destructive – knowledge in the form of images of oneself, images of others, I like this but don’t like that , psychological desire and fear, the very concept of the “me” and the “you”
Clive: thanks for the comment; there’s no solution for the predicament we’re in.
Mr. Lewis, here’s a great example:
Dream people of the Amazon – the world view and dream life of the Achuar tribe
https://www.inverse.com/article/16713-the-amazon-tribe-that-dreams-of-the-future-fears-sex-welcomes-panthers
Tom, I never said above what you attribute to me with your quote:
“Clive: thanks for the comment; there’s no solution for the predicament we’re in.”
Now we are waxing biblical, and reverse attributing the familiar biblical formulas with all sorts of connotations and significance.
I challenge anyone to take this revisionist pontificating to any practical application.
Just like the feels good homage toward a fictional view of primitive societies, the endless “discovery” of the “worth” of the biblical narrative is just useless.
Hi Mike
Perhaps it is true that it has no practical application. Certainly not practical in the generally accepted use of the word – which accepts such things as war and producing cigarettes and junk food, commodifying the natural world, etc, as ‘practical’.
In fact it is true that ANY knowledge is of no use in solving Mankind’s fundamental problems, and that is implied in my original post. Trouble is, people THINK that knowledge (which is basically thought) can solve their problems, and concentrate their energy into that. So hardly any energy goes into investigating if there is anything of significance BEYOND Knowledge.
Mike,
Probably whether there were Utopian societies in the past, or even now in remote villages, is immaterial to our present situation. For one thing, mankind never really learns from experience, fundamentally. He has waged untold wars, caused uncountable suffering, and never learnt the futility of it (he may have learnt how to produce more destructive weapons)
And also I doubt a good society could ever come about through any sort of imitation. Imitation is one of our basic problems, imitating some political leader, following some guru or so-called religious figure. If there is ‘salvation’, it can only lie in thinking for ourselves, putting aside all influence, all conditioning, and examining the issues, the problems, oneself, with a fresh mind. Anything else is just second-hand living, lazy living, thinking someone else, some expert, can solve our human problems. They never will.
Perfect! You absolutely nailed the white-European attitude I’m writing about. Even if it was intended as satire. Perfect.
The story of the Fall predates the Bible by many thousands of years, is thought to have arisen as a cautionary tale about the same time as the rise of agriculture. Its significance is neither increased nor decreased by its inclusion in the Bible. The great majority of professed Christians, in my experience, have no idea what this familiar tale actually says.
Clive: I was making an independent statement – commenting that we’re screwed no matter what the origins, trajectory, mistakes, or successes humanity has had along the way. No accusation of anything, sir (sorry it came off that way). I appreciate your insight into the “thought” problem – it appears as if somewhere along the way of our collective history we lost our spiritual connection to the planet and universe (and therefore any “meaning”) in our lives. Perhaps it’s as simple as humanity following the Second Law of Thermodynamics (like all other species) and using maximum energy until it’s used up and then we die off. That may be the physical description of what “life is about” but does nothing to address what “thoughts” (and consciousness) are. This subject is a rich vein to be explored at a later time.
Tom,
It would be insane not to recognise that we are on a steep downward slide, and a serious collapse is imminent. I cannot see any real basis for optimism.
The only thing that could possibly divert man from destroying himself and perhaps most of life on Earth is a fundamental change in human consciousness. But thought cannot bring this about.
I think it is fairly clear what thought is – it is the response of memory. And it is a material process, taking place in the brain cells. There is nothing spiritual about thought, although it can, and has, invented religious beliefs and concepts of god. And what conflict and suffering that process has caused, and continues to cause!
Clive,
When I write that the abrahamic creeds are not practical, I am referring to the fact that they were created as temporal political ideologies, to serve as a method to force control and conformity.
A practical faith features healthy mysticism first, and a template to define that mysticism in everyday life. The abrahamics are not practical because they have rejected this role.
Now, this doesn’t mean they stopped pretending to this role, just that they have no understanding of mysticism, actively distrust it, and find it a barrier to their control programs.
Mr. Lewis is correct when he states that the biblical stories predate the onset of the abrahamic ideologies. Every significant biblical narrative was ripped off from an older source, first by the Jews, then the Christians. In fact, the entire story of the origin of these ideologies, and here we must include Islam, is just one fictional stitch up after another. Thus, I take a completely different track than you. I don’t view thought as the problem, I view intentionally crafted control scams hidden from examination by violence and force to be the problem.
Hi Mike
I have no knowledge of the history you and Tom refer to, and I do not find the details important. I was simply touched by realising ancient people were trying to find meaning in their existence, and seemed to have insight into the basic cause of man’s ongoing strife.
So you don’t see thought as the problem? But thought has created the self, the ego, and no matter which human problem one examines, the root cause is this ego, is it not?
Clive,
Interesting question, regarding the Ego.
Ego is little more than the seat of differentiation. The “not I”. Thus, ego is the source of the experience of duality. One can understand that ego is utterly necessary to function as an individual.
I don’t believe the problems you cite are so much due to ego, as they are to one mistake; that ego is accepted as the core of human consciousness. This mistake is continually, stupidly propagated by abrahamic religion, modern science, and the cult of transhumanism, to name a few.
The stunning realization that ego dies drives all kinds of aberrant behaviour, moral relativism, and nihilistic materialism across the spectrum of human endeavor.
Worse, this leads to sheer lies about the human condition that pave the way for the unbridled exercise of Evil.
A balanced, functioning ego is an asset to the human condition, but getting there is quite the battle after 2,000 years of abrahamic mind control and propaganda.
Mike wrote: Interesting question, regarding the Ego.
Clive: A very fundamental question indeed, and it is incredible that so little attention is paid to it, since it is destroying the planet and causing immense turmoil in every individual on it.
Mike wrote: Ego is little more than the seat of differentiation. The “not I”. Thus, ego is the source of the experience of duality.
Clive: That is basically so. Ego separates the me from the you. It separates us from everything else in fact. And perhaps that is why we can destroy and hurt so readily.
Mike wrote: One can understand that ego is utterly necessary to function as an individual.
Clive: Well, I cannot understand that, I do not accept that. If it is true that it is utterly necessary, then we are doomed. Why should I “function as an individual” at all? Why should we not cooperate? Why should we not put aside all the ideas (which are completely imaginary) that separate us? We have built a society based on the concept of “individuality”, on ‘mine’ and ‘yours’, and it is chaos.
Mike: I don’t believe the problems you cite are so much due to ego, as they are to one mistake; that ego is accepted as the core of human consciousness.
Clive: What do you see as the difference between the two? The ego IS at the core of human consciousness, is it not? It is what drives every individual.
I cannot follow the rest of what you say, ie :
Mike said: “The stunning realization that ego dies drives all kinds of aberrant behaviour, moral relativism, and nihilistic materialism across the spectrum of human endeavor. Worse, this leads to sheer lies about the human condition that pave the way for the unbridled exercise of Evil”
Clive: But the ego is not confined to any one condition, to any particular culture, it is universal. Maybe a few people have gone beyond it, and that fact may be immensely significant.
Mike said: “A balanced, functioning ego is an asset to the human condition, but getting there is quite the battle ….”
Clive: So what is “a balanced functioning ego”? Where does it exist? How can a mental construct, one that in essence regards itself as separate from everything else on the planet and in the universe, be “balanced”?
Looking forward to your response, Mike.
How is ego essential to the individual? The very definition of individual requires separation. Without separation, there is no meaning to the concept of individual. Ego is the experience of separation.
Ego dies. It is not eternal, but transitory. Ego develops as the human matures. Thus ego is not consciousness, it merely adapts consciousness to the individual experience.
Neither science or religion can explain consciousness. Indeed, such is not their purview. Science is a tool, and religion is a control apparatus. Thus the confusion with ego as an aspect of consciousness, a reflection, but not the totality of
consciousness itself.
Let us choose an allegory. The mast is a part of the ship, but it is not the ship in totality.
The mistake of equating ego with consciousness relegates the totality of yourself to the dung heap. The mistake ensures that you must either accept your extinction, or choose some irrational means to try to escape it. It justifies a terror of death, and an equating of life as philosophically meaningless. Not one of these responses will lead to responsible, sane actions.
The balanced ego is aware of it’s impermanence without losing sight of a higher calling. It is similar to riding a bicycle in that it is a dynamic state, and that when you fall off, you need to get back on again or you never will ride again.
The Native Americans had mystical teachings too, mind you. And you might like to ask yourself if your constant putting down of them might not be your own ego at work.
Every culture has its plus and minus points, as you acknowledged in an earlier post above. And I would think that an individual (using this word in the common colloquial sense) who has truly seen the limitations of his/her ego, if not left it behind, would view all life as one and hence celebrate what is good in everyone and everything, rather than playing the usual ego-ridden game of ‘I am better than you’ — especially by inflating this ego by identifying it with some racial or cultural group.
On my part, *I* acknowledge that *MY* ego is still very much alive and well. That’s why you don’t find me bringing in the issue of mysticism and the ego in the first place, even though I know much about it — I just don’t think I’m good enough to talk about such things as an authority yet.
And as I see it, Western culture was so heavily dominated by the Abrahamic narrative that all of the spiritual eggs of the Western mind were placed in the Christian basket, so that when this basket broke the white man was suddenly left facing an utterly disenchanted and hence meaningless world — and has desperately sought ever since then to assuage this existential terror through the pursuit of the thousand-and-one pleasures and distractions offered by the material world. Hence the global predicaments of resource depletion, environmental degradation etc that we now all face. What piques my understanding was why the West allowed itself to be dominated by Christianity for 1,500 years.
S.I.A.,
I cannot respond to criticism that comes from someone who either didn’t read what I wrote, or who misconstrued my intent. Nowhere have I demonized, or put down Indians. Perhaps you conflate a refusal to worship with a “put down”. Frankly, I have already exhaustively covered this topic, so I will not be revisiting it. I suggest you go back and actually read what I wrote, not what you imagine I wrote.
The issue of Indians is far more complex than your attempted criticism belies, reaching into the American character both as a morality play, and as a reflection of that character. It seems you missed that.
Perhaps you decide to take offense over the stone age society meme. For that I can’t help you, best refer to the historic record.
I find your words on ego empty and arrogant. However, it’s not my ego that leads me to my current perspective, it is the realization that a people have a unique perspective, and that the salvation of a people will never be found in self flagellation, or in futile attempts to adopt the essence of others, but in understanding and illuminating that essence within itself.