Manifest destiny, uncontacted tribes, cultural relativism and CIVILIZATION!

Recently, another uncontacted Amerindian tribe was found in the jungles of South America…The various news agencies have been all over this (although, I guess it’s not really that big of news in comparison to Hillary Clinton and her minions seizing the DNC in a song-and-dance chant of “Denver!”)…What’s most interesting about this is actually not the people themselves, who have been living in isolation for long enough that they aren’t weird (at least in their minds)…what’s much more interesting is seeing how people from our boring, modern world are now scrambling to take different stances. Some say the tribe is a chance for anthropological and social research (after all, other previously-uncontacted tribes, like the Piraha, have shaken our very foundations of linguistic research — Noam Chomsky certainly can’t win ‘em all).

But there’s a different response to this latest tribe…According to a Brazilian uncontacted tribes expert, Jose Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Junior (that certainly is a mouthful, especially for a junior!):

What is happening in this region [of Peru] is a monumental crime against the natural world, the tribes, the fauna and is further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the ‘civilised’ ones, treat the world.

Uh oh. We’re the bad guys.

I guess he has a decent point. With massive deforestation, pollution, and whatever other negative externalities we can think of, we haven’t gotten a good track record with Mother Nature…but is taking pictures from planes not exempt from our evil record? I mean, even PETA says it’s ok to take photos of Fido.

According to Miriam Ross, an advocate for uncontacted peoples’ continued survival, of course, these natives aren’t likely to know what to make of a plane. A huge flying thing is likely to rock their world, in a bad way.

This got me thinking…what is our duty to uncontacted tribes? I was talking with some others over the interwebs, and one person suggested that we had a moral duty to give tribes that we met in remote places the choice between poverty and starvation and the abundant life (–actually, this person didn’t quite phrase it like that…I just wanted to quote Robert Brent and Civilization IV.) They said that of course, we had no right to force our lifestyle on them…because to do this would be to commit the grave sociological sin of ethnocentrism. However, they proposed that there would be no damage in offering a choice and that, in fact, because we had a choice between simplicity and complexity and they didn’t, if we didn’t offer them our way of life, we would be in the moral wrong by consigning them to their fate.

Needless to say, this didn’t fly well with many. It seems choice still doesn’t pass the ethnocentric test (especially when you phrase an indigenous people’s way of life as a fate to be consigned to.) And plus, when we meet other people, we have a nasty habit of destroying them and their culture. Whether we scare them into thinking that we are the gods of their lore and then destroy them or we just happen to spread all kinds of diseases that they have no resistance too, we have a massive effect.

I thought about it…and pointed out that the choice would be hollow…how can you tell someone about modern life when they’ve lived in their own lifestyle for thousands of years, and then expect them to switch in an instance? We can see the difference that microwaves and Interwebs and high fructose corn syrup make in life because we’re accustomed to it…but for people like the Piraha, who we aren’t even sure can count past 10, it seems they would have no use for most of the things we find essential. And who can blame them? They seem to have been doing well enough off without it.

But then…I stopped waxing philosophical…and I realized…where had I heard the idea of contacting uncivilized tribes before? It seems so novel in a real world…but then…I realized it.

Civilization. Or, to be more specific, Sid Meier’s Civilization.

Uncontacted tribes are like huts.

Need a visual?

Or, if you are a little more old school:

You should either be feeling warm and fuzzy and nostalgic now or extremely confused, but don’t worry; I’ll explain.

Huts are like chance cards in Monopoly — sometimes they’re good; sometimes they’re bad, but always they are way cooler than Community Chest (and CC knows it.) They have the potential to give good things (free military units, settlers, or even a free city)…but they also have the potential to give bad things (a raging horde of barbarians or even nothing.) However, the best advantage is that sometimes…they give you technology. In the early parts of the games, you might gain the Wheel from them…and sometimes, these isolated tribes even know a thing or two about Cold fusion (see? Who said uncontacted meant uncivilized!?)

Listen to me, America, presidential candidates, and the world: if uncontacted tribes in Peru are anything like huts, then it would behoove us and be to our utmost advantage to find these huts before any other nation does. At best, we get cold fusion and maybe even a secret to beating global warming. At lukewarm, we stick it a little more to Chomsky, who seriously should’ve stayed out of politics. At worst, we hope that their spearman don’t beat our tanks.