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> If anything, there are ample examples of traditional tribal communities who are struggling with modern problems - health, addiction, crime - which they didn't

> If anything, there are ample examples of traditional tribal communities who are struggling with modern problems - health, addiction, crime - which they didn't have just 50 years ago This is the noble savage belief, but it really doesn’t match up with reality. Life was nasty, brutish, and short before modern civilization. People died early from preventable disease, war, famine, and crime was still a thing. Most people were peasants, serfs, or slaves, chained to the land and forced to work for a small upper class who enjoyed the fruits of their labor. If you look at the history of South America or Africa, they still had kingdoms and empires, they still had wars, and they certainly still had poverty. People in China or elsewhere also weren’t in “isolated tribes” they were still poor peasants in an empire. (Edit: just to be clear I do accept there are some problems unique to modernity but I want to challenge the idea that the past was a golden age)

CaptArmchair 7y ago
I didn't refer to kingdoms, civilizations or any comparable large societal system. I was referring to ancient tribal communities that lost their traditional way of living to Western dominated modernity. > This is the noble savage belief That's what you read into my statements. That's not what I implied. Let me be crystal clear here: Of course, life wasn't easy back then. People suffered and died. If you didn't adapt or pulled your weight, you died. If you were unlucky in any respect, you died. I'm very much aware of that. And I reject any glorification or comparison as "one-is-better-then-the-other" vehemently. The idea that modern civilization and "progress" somehow solved all of that is manifestly false. Millions upon millions are born and live in abject misery, simply because economies of scale have allowed those lives to exist, but without the affordances - social cohesion, cultural identity, an authentic belief system,... - to sustain them properly or give their lives a due sense of purpose and meaning. I'm pushing back against usage of the past - see, they were poor, primitive and miserable - to be able to laud the merits of "Progress" without considering the misery it has caused and is causing as well.

CaptArmchair 7y ago

I didn't refer to kingdoms, civilizations or any comparable large societal system. I was referring to ancient tribal communities that lost their traditional way of living to Western dominated modernity. > This is the noble savage belief That's what you read into my statements. That's not what I implied. Let me be crystal clear here: Of course, life wasn't easy back then. People suffered and died. If you didn't adapt or pulled your weight, you died. If you were unlucky in any respect, you died. I'm very much aware of that. And I reject any glorification or comparison as "one-is-better-then-the-other" vehemently. The idea that modern civilization and "progress" somehow solved all of that is manifestly false. Millions upon millions are born and live in abject misery, simply because economies of scale have allowed those lives to exist, but without the affordances - social cohesion, cultural identity, an authentic belief system,... - to sustain them properly or give their lives a due sense of purpose and meaning. I'm pushing back against usage of the past - see, they were poor, primitive and miserable - to be able to laud the merits of "Progress" without considering the misery it has caused and is causing as well.