Human Destruction and the Noble Savage

A reoccurring theme in the liberal political think of western culture is the myth of the Noble Savage. The idea of a Noble Savage is that somewhere out there in the world, there are these savage people that are so much better than the western civilized world. These noble savages live in harmony with nature and they don't have any crime or violence in their society and they are not greedy or any number of other ills that plague use horrible horrible western people. These wonderful savages live long healthy happy wonderful lives and the only time they have problems is when we westerners come in and corrupt them with our horrible horrible culture.

Of course there has never been any savages that are actually that noble, but liberal thinkers are convinced that it is true and one day we will see the error of our ways. This thought has been documented as far back as the Roman Empire. If you would like to read an example of the myth of the noble savage in Roman thought click here, and you will be directed to a paper examining the phenomenon.

We see the myth of the noble savage again in our modern world in a new incarnation. Now the noble savages are couched in the trappings of being so environmentally friendly that we westerners are pure scum for not following their righteous example.

For instance, our astronomy and research into physics and the physical sciences are killing the universe by looking at it. The article I am referring to is in my last post, but can also be viewed by clicking here. The answer therefore is to stop astronomy and physics research. We must return to the more savage state that is much more noble and stop this madness. Our western values are destroying the universe!

This rolls over to discussions of global warming as well. We must not use air conditioning, no matter how hot we are, because we are killing the planet! We must not use heat no matter how cold we are because we are killing the planet! The noble savages without heat or AC have it right! Sheryl Crow tells us that we must not use toilet paper, or maybe 1 square or 3 squares at the most. Ah those savages who just use their hand to wipe must be so very noble indeed.

I have a different view on the matter. I see savages, not as noble, but (get this) SAVAGE! Instead, I believe that western culture and science needs to do what it always has done. Drag the rest of the world, kicking and screaming, out of savagery and continue to advance medicine, science and general quality of life. There is a reason that savages want the things that we have. The reason is that we really are better. Life with heating and AC really is better! Really, I promise it is!

One final thought on the matter in two parts.
1. It is the hight of human arrogance that we think we can destroy the planet let alone the universe. Whatever pollution we put on this planet will kill us long before it destroys the planet completely. The planet will go on even if we do not.

2. The idea that we can end the universe by observing dark matter is extreme jackassery. Only one of the most ignorant of scientific principals would accept this as a good theory. The uncertainty principal only applies to things on the subatomic level because the difference in size of the observation and that being observed is so large as to alter the small particle. When we the human observe something infinitely larger than ourselves, the effect (in calculus terms: the rate of change as x goes to infinity, is zero) is to have no effect on it at all. We are not killing the universe.