De Novo

Two items from the last week:

This photo depicts the Mars Phoenix lander in descent, as shot by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.  Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing says: “How badass awesome is it to be a human? Super badass awesome.”

This is a view of a group of “uncontacted” indigenous people in the Amazon, who were photographed last week from a plane flown by Survival International, a group that advocates for indigenous rights.

While I sit and type on my Macbook Pro, others of my culture are busy sending machines to investigate another planet.  And here on our own planet, we investigate each other: Westerners, using advanced technology, to look at other human beings who have a radically different (but no less “human”) experience of the universe.

Amazingly, this is also the dawn of the first time in Western history when we might be able to actually begin to treat these folks with some respect and dignity – by leaving them alone and preserving the ecosystem upon which their lifestyle depends.  Where previously Europeans might have invaded with hostility and taken their land by force, or, more recently, killed them with kindness in a misguided attempt to “rehabilitate” or “assimilate” the “natives” into a “modern” lifestyle, we are beginning to have enough understanding to be humble about our relationship toward others with an autonomous, self-sufficient way of living.

At Sentient Developments, George Dvorsky ponders the ethics of leaving them in the wild, untouched by the wonders of Western civilization.  He raises the following “ethical issues”:

What if some of these people need medical help and medicine?

Is it ethical for us to not let them know about the greater world around them?

How could we ever have consent for contact and/or cultural uplift? Should it be assumed? Why? Why not?

Are we sufficiently justified in keeping this tribe in a zoo-like scenario?

If eventual contact is unavoidable, why wait until then? Would contact with the modern world ever be ‘on their terms?’

How would we feel if we discovered that we were being observed and purposefully held-back by a more advanced civilization?

Is this the kind of cultural diversity that we want to preserve? If so, why? To what end? Does cultural diversity benefit the lost tribe?

What does it mean to say that we risk their “extinction?” Is it accurate to equate the extinction of a culture with that of a species? What are the consequences of a lost cultural mode for a) those who used to participate in it and b) for those who will never be a part of it? What are the consequences relative to the benefits of adopting a new culture?

First of all, let’s dispense with the notion that by leaving them alone, we’re somehow confining them to a zoo.

This is the wild world, you know, the world that predates our civilization and will outlive it.  It couldn’t be more different from a zoo. Animals in zoos are transported from their natural environment into an extremely confined cage, where they are fed processed food and monitored round the clock. If anyone’s in a zoo, it’s us out here in the “modern” world.

Secondly, it’s telling that Dvorsky’s first impulse is to assume there are people needing medical help and medicine among them.  Probably so, but tell that to the millions of impoverished third-world people deprived of access to traditional medicines AND modern medicine.  The warriors in the photographs look plenty strong and healthy.  Any group of people that can survive in the jungle – surrounded by insects, snakes, wild cats, poisons and dangers of all kinds – is going to have ways of coping with them.

The rest of the questions are amazingly condescending in their premises, assuming that “we” in the civilized world have knowledge to share with them, and that this knowledge only goes one way: that their understanding of the world is necessarily incomplete or naive.  How would we know that?  Presumably, they’ve developed a mythological/religious framework that is well-suited to their environment.  We’re not “holding them back.”  They’re doing what they want on their own terms.

Consider for a moment the possibility that human knowledge exists outside the published canon, and that there are paths to spiritual fulfillment that are outside of the realms of typical Western experience. We’re looking at a tribe which doubtless has a complex system of myths and rituals, replete with oral history, magic, storytelling, probably music and dancing, and (since the evidently have paint) possibly also art. Self-fulfillment is not contingent on a Western lifestyle. In fact, one could argue that the comforts of a Western lifestyle are an obstacle to be overcome.  An intimate familiarity with the bounties and dangers of one’s own environment and an understanding of one’s place within it is a treasure we often just don’t have in cities.

There’s nothing that Westerners can do to “help” these people. They’ve been doing quite well for millennia, and their culture – which includes amazingly advanced technologies for survival wholly incompatible with a Western worldview – would be utterly shattered by any contact with Westerners.

No, we have nothing to offer them. Nothing. Before extolling the benefits of Westernization, let’s see if we can’t clean up its record first by making life better for the millions of impoverished people already living under the grip of industrial society in slums around the world. Then – MAYBE – we can talk. Until then, Godspeed, indigenous people. May this be the last anyone in the West ever sees of you.

UPDATE:

Check out Werner Herzog’s heartbreaking documentary on a well-meaning first encounter gone horribly wrong:

Part one

Part two

Part three

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 31st, 2008 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Anthropology, Colonialism, earth, Mythology, Science, space, Technology, Transhumanism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.