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There’s no way humans didn’t have human problems. This seems like an extension of the “good ol’ days” that views the past with rose tinted glasses. There absolutely would have been theft, murder, laziness, have-nots…whatever. People are people.
Ninja edit: found this.
Banishment, execution, murder, and theft among other things were absolutely a thing.
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I would go so far as to say this is some classic “noble savage” bullshit that only serves to dehumanize people.
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Yeah, in a big way. The European colonists committing genocide on the Native Americans does not have to have the Native Americans as inhuman angels to be a massive atrocity and grievous wrong, and trying to take the position that the Native American societies were is nothing more than a xenophilic form of cultural conservatism and chauvinism.
Native American peoples were people, like any other, with human problems common to any society, unlike what this quote implies. They do not have a 'magic' history for outsiders to aspire to become 'as good as', they do not have the secrets to the elimination of the dastardly social ills of 'civilization'. They're people. They're people who deserved better than the atrocious treatment that they got, but the 'Noble Savage' stereotype is no more humanizing or acceptable than the 'Ecological Indian' stereotype.
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It kind of goes both ways. Just because "people are people" doesn't mean any comparison of the savagery of two cultures is suddenly invalid. Native Americans had war, rape, disease etc. but then they got colonized by one of the most brutal, violent cultures in the world at the time.
If I lived with a spouse and kids in the suburbs and a murderer came in and killed my family. It would be pretty silly for my friend to say "stop trying to paint your old life as perfect. You and your wife were people. You fought often and you were hiding a gambling addiction. I swear this "noble domestic bliss" stuff is really not helping your cause."
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but then they got colonized by one of the most brutal, violent cultures in the world at the time.
The past is filled with cultures which commit genocide, mass mutilations, torture, systemic rape, etc. The Europeans are only notable because they had unusual success, because that success came at the same time as philosophical development which began to make that treatment towards other Europeans taboo, and because that success eventually was leveraged into a system of strict hereditary privilege we're still dealing with today.
The Europeans were not more torture-happy than the Natchez, not more murderous than the Aztecs, not more mutilatory than the Sioux.
What the Europeans were was hypocrites. At a time when humanist notions of basic dignity and universal brotherhood were being preached by scholars and theologians, European soldiers were murdering and enslaving Mesoamerican peoples en masse. In an era when tolerance was quickly becoming the watchword of the day, European priests burned ancient texts in the Americas for the suspicion of pagan notions. In an era when 'all men are created equal', American colonists denied not only the right of the Native American tribes to be equal polities, but even denied them the ability to be equal citizens.
It's less jarring when a culture which believes that incorrect ritualism will doom the universe murders people for religious reasons, or when a culture admits that it finds the murder of women and children to be an honorable deed to slay civilians, or that a chauvinistic culture extols itself above all inferiors; compared to one that preaches one value and acts according to another entirely. Not even in a selfish manner, but in a manner suggesting a total reversal of their claimed principles.
When American colonists murdered American tribes from the youngest to the oldest, saying 'nits make lice', that was not some exceptional deed that had never happened before in the history of the world; a scant few generations ago Europeans were doing just that to one another; American tribes had done the same to each other since times immemorial; same with every other suitably wide collection of cultures on the planet. The difference was that we were supposedly 'civilized' enough to recognize the basic dignity of one color of our fellow man, but none of the others.
THAT is what makes European colonialism repulsive beyond the 'normal' passage of history, the butchering of Saxons by Franks, or of Pawnee by Sioux, or of Chinese by Mongols. We claimed to know better - we demonstrated an understanding of the values that should have prevented such action - we demonstrated the ability to restrain ourselves in dealings with fierce (European) foes - and yet we proceeded to indulge in the worst impulses of man that we claimed we had left behind anyway. We were not ignorant, we were not running on fundamentally different values that made murder somehow okay like Bronze Age fanatics - we made a deliberate choice to exclude subsections of our fellow man from the 'enlightened' values we were redefining our civilizations by.
They were not medieval peasants who knew no higher word than their lord's. They were not Aztec warriors brought up in a culture of human sacrifice and flower wars. They were men who were raised reading the works of the humanist enlightenment, whose norms should have excluded many of the actions they took - but when they saw a human being of a different color than them, they turned every last goddamn one of those norms on its head like they were the Hebrews bashing in the skulls of gentile infants in the Bronze Age.
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I really appreciate this perspective (it's something I hadn’t considered before) Standing up for equal rights doesn’t mean we need to glorify or unconditionally defend a group, no matter who they are. For example, opposing police racism doesn’t require me to justify the actions of every Black criminal or attribute every single crime solely to systemic factors. (Though, of course, they often play a significant role.)
People are people. We all have the best and worst human traits somewhere inside of us, and we deserve human rights not despite of that, but because of that.
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Were there not many different tribes? It stands to reason that there could well have been a range of different lifestyles too. Including that described above.
My point being that other recorded experiences with native americans do not invalidate this rosy reminiscence.
It is in no way a workable solution to the modern maladies of this fractious over-crowded planet but it does help to have a range of idealised utopias to draw from in our discussions of how to proceed.
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Ok. An unsourced meme is not historical fact. It’s disturbing that it’s even taken as valid with no corroborating information, you arguing as if it were true, and using opinion to manufacture “proof” such a “different tribes” and “lifestyles”. There’s plenty of made up bullshit floating around on the internet in pic/text format, why is this one granted any more believability? Do you have a legitimate source indicating any such “utopias” or do you just want to keep making things up?
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Why does it upset you so much? It is, as you say, a meme. Just a meme. It's not peer reviewed or held to any measurable standard that warrants getting yourself worked up over. It's not taught in schools or repeated on any serious news platform as fact. It's just a meme.
I too doubt if it is real. It's just entertainment. Just like when I watch a tv show, I can choose to momentarily suspend belief when I engage with it.
Is it flat out impossible for some native peoples to have had that quoted experience? I don't think so. I don't also think it would have been common at all. But not impossible.
Are you sure that it is not the sentiment of the meme that you are really objecting to rather than it's credibilty. Why not write a critical analysis of it. It would make for a more interesting conversation.
For one (speaking from my experience reading about the 'wild Irish'), there is often a might makes right in the anarchy of these losely connected groups of people that is often brutal. Those at the bottom of the social ladder probably wouldn't have such a rose tinted overview of it.
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So if I disagree with you I’m “upset”? Now it’s just a meme and not the basis for your theories on native peoples?
can choose to momentarily suspend belief when I engage with it.
This is ridiculous. I provided a factual and objective source of information. Now you’re going on about the Irish, grasping at straws, and flat out saying feels before reals. Goddamn no wonder we got trump for president.
Take a hike.
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You're still angry. And I don't exactly understand why. You seem angry to me because you are being uncivil and closed minded.
But why? Do you think that meme is seditious or in some way undermines democracy? Do you think that there are only a limited range of responses to that meme that are acceptable, and you, somehow, are the arbiter?
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My point being that other recorded experiences with native americans do not invalidate this rosy reminiscence.
I'd actually point to the excepts from Columbus's own journals, catalogued in Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" to identify a number of native tribes he initially encountered who were practically childlike in their innocence.
The Caribbean island peoples were documented in sharp contrast to more imperial mainlanders as extraordinarily passive, initially quite friendly, and devoid of the more rigid hierarchies and institutions common in those more technologically advanced societies.
The only bit that doesn't really fit is the horses, which hadn't arrived from Europe yet
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Interesting stuff. I think remember hearing about that in the Behindthebastards episode on Columbus.
The spanish had a similar native experience during an unplanned visit to Ireland in 1517. While there were towns and villages in Ireland at the time, there was still a significant population of wild Irish.
They spend an marked amount of time talking about the free range boobs that were on show.
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Good thing we've sacrificed that relative utopia to solve all those problems, eh?
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Not even remotely close to a utopia, especially when compared to modern day, but I'm sure that doesn't matter to you.
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A fairer society where people largely take care of one another, or a society structured primarily to extract wealth from others with all those problems...
Pointing to a description of a society that on the face of it is better than ours, and saying that they still have some of the problems that we haven't solved isn't much of a point.
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They went to war and took each other as slaves.
You're just waxing poetic about things you don't really understand, and it makes you look genuinely fucking stupid.
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Slaves?! The society that displaced them was at least better in that respect, right?
...right?
Fuck me, you're talking about my stupidity as you condemn them because of a series of flaws that were/are prevalent in the society that genocided them. You're a little lacking in credibility, my guy.
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You claimed it was a relative utopia. I disproved that. You've doubled down.
You're just a fucking moron, eat the L.
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You're calling a moron when you understand what "relative" means? Not my L to take, champ.
The positive differences have been established from the outset, you've failed to point to any negative differences - relative utopia remains accurate.
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