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.

Scientific racism

There’s one thing that really scares me…the idea of a scientifically-minded racism. I mean…people harbor dumb views all the time, but I’m a little comforted by these views because they don’t have anything to back it up. They are just ignorant people making ignorant assumptions.

But what is really scary is when people who should know better propose dangerous systems of racial inferiorities and superiorities based on race-based genetics. These are people who not only harbor some kind of misguided view of race, but they justify their views with what we take to be supported science. It’s people like James Watson who say the prospect of Africa is “inherently gloomy” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas the testing says not really.” He has the gall to suggest that even though we want to find people equal, “people who deal with black employees find this not true.” It’s people who say, “You’re inferior, but I don’t hold you against it; your genetics make you so.”

His foundation is a suggestion that there is no reason to believe that people “geographically isolated” should have “evolved identically.” And, from other studies in evolutionary biology, that’s not an unreasonable thing to suggest…but to suggest that this is the primary and unchanging determinant of any factor, particularly intelligence? How irresponsible!

The people who try to turn this into a positive are even worse…according to them, we have natural genetic weaknesses and strengths that should be appreciated. So what if Asians are all scrawny — they are smart and that makes up for it! So what if blacks are all dumb because they are more physically powerful/agile/whatever and that makes up for it.

Ugh. This disgusts me. I would like to understand that I live in a society where I determine my own fate; my race determines little more than my skin color. We also know from evolutionary studies that what we assume composes race is actually little more than a human construct. We can assume that skin color correlates and causes all sorts of other traits, but it really doesn’t. Humanity doesn’t work like that, even if people may believe that.

What humanity does have is another factor — nurture — in the debate. We have traits based on how we have been raised and acculturated, and these things might be inherited by our tendency to grow up similarly to how our parents grew up. But this does not mean we are in a genetic trap…for the most part, we can always work out of our supposed weaknesses. Our parents can give us a better life than they had, and we can take advantage of this as well. If we are lazy and do not take this advantage, then we shouldn’t blame this on a genetic fate.

We need to think about other sciences not often thought about when bringing up biology. What about sociology? How has a person been raised to form his consciousness that might explain certain trends? We stereotype Asians as being good academically, and the people who follow that evil of scientific racism will contend it’s because they are genetically more academically inclined, but these people fail to look at the fact that many Asian cultures tend to emphasize education on the cultural level. If you take away that cultural advantage, then there is no real bonus, which there should be if it were a genetic factor.

Genetics leads us in the wrong direction. Genetics misleads people into thinking that it’s ok to say, “Well, he’s going to be inferior in x way; we should just accept this.” No! Social science lets us realize a more important truth: we can change things about ourselves by changing the way we are socialized. What is it about certain Asian cultures that promotes education? Is this factor lacking in certain other cultures and subcultures?

When we realize how much effect socialization can have, then we can do some real sociological, rather than genetic, splicing. Take the good aspects of this culture with the good aspects of that, and then, we begin to approach something good about multiculturalism.

A pseudo-scientific (i.e. fake) study on depression

People seem to get one thing wrong all the time…they think that because you become from a more privileged environment, you somehow are entitled to be happier. According to them, it doesn’t make sense for middle class kids on up to be depressed or emo because, as one of the dangerous cliches reminds us, someone always has it worse than you do.

Let’s take a quote of what these guys are saying:

I guess I just don’t understand where some of you guys are coming from that you are so unhappy with your life. I really just want to sit and talk with you guys about your views on life. I have no job, no girlfriend, very few friends, am not in great shape, am not that good looking and have a slightly below average dick. But I would NEVER describe myself as depressed or unhappy. Most of you live in America and never have to go through the hardships of just surviving in a third world country. You have the power and resources within you to make yourself a successful, happy person. I am certain of this.

These guys miss the fact about depression and emo-dom that psychology and sociology have seemingly failed to realize for so long: depression arises BECAUSE of privilege, not in the absence of it.

Think about the starving children in Africa? Are they depressed? You might be tempted to say yes, but then you might realize, no, they aren’t. You don’t hear about anyone in Africa whining about starving. That is the way of life. Starving is the norm. You may recall Susan Sarandon whining about starving children in Africa, and although those children aren’t by any means happy, they aren’t sad. They don’t have enough things to be happy about to have the absence thereof. If you’ve never tasted good cheesecake, then how can you know what bad cheesecake tastes like? You just think cheesecake.

On the other hand, when you think about emos or depressed kids, you think about people from 1st world nations (or the wannabes of those nations). You immediately identify them as 1st world, middle class, etc., and this is for a fact because you look down at them for this reason…you can’t understand why anyone with so much would be depressed. I know you’re trying to say to yourself that you’re an angel and you would never pidgeonhole someone in such a way, but quit lying. This is the internet, where no one knows you’re a dog.

I used to be the same way…but then, I became enlightened…I read a little book by Pearl S. Buck called The Good Earth. I guess Academic Decathlon was trying to get me to realize all kinds of grandiose things about 20th century China, the treatment (or mis-) of women, and all that good stuff, but I found the perfect scenario for what I term the Rich Depression effect.

Wang Lung = Poor farmer. He’s not happy, but he’s not sad. He wants to move up in life. Bam. He gets some success, and his children are raised in this success. They become educated, but then…one son becomes, as Ms. Buck described it, “moody.” He begins slacking in his studies and hanging out with the wrong crowd. Sound familiar?

No, I’m not saying that all emos/depressed kids/etc., stop studying and start hanging out with the wrong crowds, but it seems there’s this trend…as you become more privileged and more educated, you keep up with the Joneses, and when you can’t, bam. Emo-dom.

I don’t know if you’ve seen any research on this (I’m pretty sure TED has covered this once or twice), but people with less are somewhat able to be happier in their stations than people with more. And, a general trend is that as people become more privileged and educated…it seems that increased happiness isn’t the natural result. I dunno. I’m not a doctor though.

So, cut out this stuff about rich kids having no justification for being depressed and emo. I have every darn right to write bloody valentines to my androgynous girlfriend on my $500 phone while wearing my sister’s designer $200 jeans.

P.S. Big congrats on Mexico. Although it’s unfortunate that it’s having major riots against emos (which I do not condone in any way), this is a clear indicator that it has emos, which means…quite simply…that now, Mexico has. Welcome to the haves, mi amigos, I think you’ll find it’s a much better crowd than the have nots!

**Disclaimer. This isn’t real science, obviously, except for the links. Depression is a complex psychological and neurological issue. Although, I’m willing to believe sooner or later, I could go somewhere with that privilege -> emo idea and make millions of buck$, so please don’t sue me or steal my ideas. Also, please don’t cut me or yourselves.