Dr. David Deming has an interesting essay on the logical flaws in modern environmentalism that are rooted in a meme known as “The Noble Savage”.
Excerpt (with my bolded quote) below:
All of this would be of academic interest only, were it not the case that the modern environmental movement and many of our public policies are based implicitly on the myth of the Noble Savage. The fountainhead of modern environmentalism is Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. The first sentence in Silent Spring invoked the Noble Savage by claiming
“there was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings.”
But the town Carson described did not exist, and her polemic, Silent Spring, introduced us to environmental alarmism based on junk science. As the years passed, Rachel Carson was elevated to sainthood and the template laid for endless spasms of hysterical fear-mongering, from the population bomb, to nuclear winter, the Alar scare, and global warming.
Human beings have not, can not, and never will live in harmony with nature. Our prosperity and health depend on technology driven by energy. We exercise our intelligence to command nature, and were admonished by Francis Bacon to exercise our dominion with “sound reason and true religion.” When we are told that our primary energy source, oil, is “making us sick,” or that we are “addicted” to oil, these are only the latest examples of otherwise rational persons descending into gibberish after swooning to the lure of the Noble Savage. This ignorant exultation of the primitive can only lead us back to the Stone Age.
Read the entire essay here
The Noble Savage and Noble Cause Corruption seem to be familiar bedfellows.
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Nature is never harmonious. The natural order of things in the wild is you kill to eat or you die. If you are an herbivore, you flee from predators and when one of the herd is taken down you breathe a sigh of relief. There is no pity in nature. People that would speak about the noble savage have never gone hungry and would do well to consider that wealth is the only thing that allows us to be civilized.
Excellent article!
From Wikipedia
The term noble savage (French, bon sauvage), expresses the concept an idealized indigene, outsider (or “other”), and refers to the literary stock character of the same. In English the phrase first appeared in the 17th century in John Dryden’s heroic play, The Conquest of Granada (1672), where it was used by a Christian prince disguised as a Spanish Muslim to refer to himself, but it later became identified with the idealized picture of “nature’s gentleman”, which was an aspect of 18th-century sentimentalism. The noble savage achieved prominence as an oxymoronic rhetorical device after 1851, when used sarcastically as the title for satirical essay by English novelist Charles Dickens, who wished to disassociate himself from 18th and early 19th-century romantic primitivism.
The idea that in a state of nature humans are essentially good is often attributed to the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, a Whig supporter of constitutional monarchy. In his Inquiry Concerning Virtue (1699), Shaftesbury had postulated that the moral sense in humans is natural and innate and based on feelings rather than resulting from the indoctrination of a particular religion. Shaftesbury was reacting to Thomas Hobbes’s justification of royal absolutism in his Leviathan, Chapter XIII, in which he famously holds that the state of nature is a “war of all against all” in which men’s lives are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. The notion of the state of nature itself derives from the republican writings of Cicero and of Lucretius, both of whom enjoyed great vogue in the 18th century, after having been revived amid the optimistic atmosphere of Renaissance humanism.
Contra Rousseau, someone once opined: “We are not fallen angels. We are risen apes.”
Voltaire has the best quote.
From the essay:
“According to Rousseau, civilization itself was the scourge of humanity. Rousseau went so far as to make the astonishing claim that the source of all human misery was what he termed our “faculty of improvement,” or the use of our minds to improve the human condition.
Rousseau sent a copy of his book to Voltaire. In a letter acknowledging receipt of the work, Voltaire made a pithy and devastating criticism. “I have received, monsieur, your new book against the human race. I thank you for it…no one has ever employed so much intellect in the attempt to prove us beasts. A desire seizes us to walk on four paws when we read your work. Nevertheless, as it is more than sixty years since I lost the habit, I feel, unfortunately, that it is impossible for me to resume it.””
“Human beings have not, can not, and never will live in harmony with nature. Our prosperity and health depend on technology driven by energy.”
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This is the biggest lie one could possibly spread. First of all, we are not separate from nature, so to suggest the humans can’t live in harmony with nature creates a false dichotomy. Of course nature lives in harmony with itself! When the lion eats the gazelle, that is harmony! It guarantees the continuation of both! Death and decay are part of the cycle of rebirth. Yes, humans must use energy, as all living things must, and the inevitable law of entropy and times arrow is the only law that we as part of nature cannot escape. Our prosperity and health depend on learning and applying the laws of science in wise ways. You can choose to smoke and drink and eat poorly and not exercise and live and very unhealthy life. So too, humanity can choose to apply the laws of science in wise ways that promote a healthy society using healthy and smart applications of technology. It is not humans versus nature, for we are nature, and we can control our healthy and prosperous future by acting and living wisely.
Living in harmony with nature means living with tics, fleas, lice, mosquitoes and all manner of other pests, and all the diseases they vector. Mastering technology has allowed us to live longer, healthier, more comfortably, in greater numbers and with more leisure time to improve our minds, should we be so inclined.
Not all that long ago, even in what are now advanced industrial societies, “work” for most people meant physical labor with their arms and backs. Now it means sitting in a comfortable chair in a climate-controlled office and exerting trivial energy tapping keys.
Liberals often accuse conservatives of wanting to “turn back the clock”. Greenies want to do a time-warp back to when life truly was brutish and short.
Deming writes about common sense thinking, using rather than avoiding the less pleasant facts of life. Living in a bubble, employing magical thinking, is not a child’s thing: it is a human thing. Creating a vision of the world that suits our emotional needs is, apparently, more important to us than creating one that suits our physical needs. Think only of how many people – abused spouses, not just genocide victims – listen to their own needs that things will get better, that the unthinkably horrible won’t happen, despite all their experience and persuasive evidence otherwise, and then suffer from what they knew would happen. It is easy to say that hope springs eternal. It might be better to say that blindness has its own reward, however temporary.
CAGW has so many elements of bubble- or magical thinking. Linear extrapolations of one parameter in isolation from all others is the fundamental character, but one which achieves the wisher’s goal: a view of himself as either victim or savior. Carson and Lovelock are victims; Al Gore and David Suzuki are saviors. All are black/white, on/off thinkers.
Humanity as a scourge, a pestilence on the face of the planet: Maurice Strong, Paul Erhlich, Jim Hansen. Each promotes situations that involve, essentially, removing the human element from Earth. They wouldn’t even be happy if we transported humanity to the Moon: before long our footprints and tire tracks would crisscross what they fondly would recall as “pristine”; our exhalations would contaminate what was, before, a “pure” vacuum as the Universe meant it to be.
And of nature, what? Have any of these nature lovers ever followed a herd of cariboo across the tundra? The defecations and urinations at their watering holes are disgusting and ruin the water supply for … well, for humans, but we don’t count. And beavers drown forests, though frogs are happy. Wherein does life not negatively affect other lives? Sustainable? Eventually a stability of sorts is reestablished whenever new species invade an area, but until then, there are many changes that are not welcome to the prior occupants. Perhaps that is what we are seeing today: the initial stages of human colonization of this planet. Stability (of sorts) will arise, but what will be will not be what was.
But the past never extends into the future. That is why one thing is called the past and the other, the future.
Alan Watt says:
February 14, 2012 at 8:47 am
Living in harmony with nature means living with tics, fleas, lice, mosquitoes and all manner of other pests, and all the diseases they vector.
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Absolutely wrong! Why did nature give you a brain! To alter and transform the world around you! You, as part of nature don’t have to accept anything, but rather to create a world you can live in, and if you you want that world to be healthy and prosperous, then you’ll wisely apply your knowledge of how the world works to create a health and prosperous world!
This is an excellent piece. From the very day that we are conceived, “Nature” works very hard to kill each of us— and will eventually succeed.
Sorry, “Silent Spring” was not based on junk science. DDT really did make egg shells thinner, heavier birds such as Bald Eagles and Peregrine Falcons and others really did have much less breeding success, to the point where both were on the endangered species list.
When Steve Milloy of the junk science website said that DDT never did these things, I went back to the original science, and I found that there was considerable amount of good observational science in which various birds were fed food with different amounts of DDT or DDT breakdown by products, and there was a dose response relationship between more DDT and thinner eggs shells, which in fact did break when the birds tried to incubate them, at higher levels of DDT.
And now, of course, Bald Eagles once again breed successfully and are off the endangered species list.
There has been a lot of junk science, but please don’t blame every junk science scare — which certainly do exist, or I wouldn’t read this website — on Silent Spring’s raising the alarm on DDT’s prevention of breeding success in many birds.
DDT can be useful even today, for instance in Africa by applying it in moderation indoors in thatch huts in the outback. The mosquitoes carrying malaria will not enter, and the people don’t get sick. But the far greater and widespread use of DDT on farms did indeed have the effects Rachel Carson said it did.
Every environmental scare has to be evaluated on its own. If we say every environental issue is BS, because a number of such issues have been shown to be BS, we are setting ourselves up for a fall. We will be judged on a major issue where we were wrong, and we won’t be listened to any more. So let’s look at each issue on its own, and retain our credibility.
In a similar vein to inventing the rain-forest.I’d say.
http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/upldbook2pdf.pdf
All life consumes resources and produces waste products. The resources become depleted and the waste products accumulate.
The other hallmark of life is adaptation. As its resources become depleted a species adapts by learning to exploit new resources. As its waste products accumulate they become resources for another opportunistic species.
The only ‘towns’ where all life seems “to live in harmony with its surroundings” are ghost towns.
Nature is not your friend. Nature is your collaborator. Like all collaborations, it can be harmonious — or otherwise.
The traditional Inuit living in Greenland survived but it was anything but easy. Hunting from kayaks was a very skilled and risky business. Some early statistics from about 100 years ago (i.e. before significant western influences were felt) indicated that about 50% of all males aged between 16 and 25 died in kayak accidents. Although the groups formed a very close community, nonetheless a family was almost completely dependent on the husband’s/father’s hunting skills. If he was killed leaving his wife with a young family, then she had to hope that she would find another man to marry and soon. Normally this was not a possibility, in which case it was the accepted thing amongst the Inuit that she went with her children to the top of a sea cliff and they threw themselves off. This was necessary so that the group as a whole could survive.
TTG
R. Gates says:
February 14, 2012 at 8:44 am
When the lion eats the gazelle, that is harmony!
With that line of reasoning we can do no harm to “nature”. If we use carbon fuel and cause global warming, the most adaptable species will survive. That is natures way. So, I vote we drill baby, drill.
Alan Watt says:
February 14, 2012 at 8:47 am
“Liberals often accuse conservatives of wanting to “turn back the clock”.”
Actually, the liberals are correct. Conservatives want to turn back the clock to a time before the liberals got into power and screwed everything up…
On the current topic, our Green friends absolutely love to live in harmony with nature so long as a big eighteen wheel semi delivers organic yogurt and granola to their local grocery store, and some coal burning power plant delivers heat, AC, and electricity to their homes, offices, and schools…
Voltaire spotted the poison in an instant! Yet we still find it all around us, and in recent years absurd legislation such as the UK’s Climate Change Act is passed with scarcely any parliamentary opposition. Are we really so incapable of learning? My one hope for this sorry period of climsci-politics, so well-exploited by haters of humanity, is that we shall gain enduring insights into human foolishness and frailty. I guess Voltaire would have a wry smile for that pious hope.
R. Gates,
I agree with every word you wrote, but I suspect that my definition of “wise” and “wisely” differs from yours.
Reminds me of Darwin. He saw nature as violent and harsh. Not only was it species vs species, but it came down to individual vs. individual. Species survive and evolve as the best adapted individuals survived and reproduced.
The notion of nature in harmony or in balance is very unscientific and anti Darwin.
“Noble Savage” is of course a pejorative used by the self-absorbed to ridicule the infuriatingly humble, not an actual viewpoint that anyone has ever held. I have often thought that if Rachel Carson had not written Silent Spring, the bald eagle would almost certainly be extinct by now in the lower 48. Driving our national symbol to extinction might have had a more profound effect on our collective self-regard than the book.
People who want to “get back to nature” ought to take a look at those who see the business end of nature on a daily basis. I am very thankful that I am insulated from the vagaries of nature by, well, insulation, of course, but also by screens and windows and refrigerators and running water and ready access to electricity and plastic and a vehicle that is driven by the power of a hundred horses and that also shields me from the vagaries of nature, etc. etc. etc.
I use this example when talking to these unserious daydreamers: I can easily place an elderly person, a very pregnant woman, and her toddler in my car, along with a couple hundred pounds of belongs. I can then transport all of us twenty or more miles in virtually any direction in half an hour or less. I can do this for less than $5. In creature comfort. We may very well arrive more refreshed than when we set out. Now, imagine performing that same feat while my little group is “back to nature”. No car, no covered wagon, no cart. I’ll be nice, and throw in a dog. If we attempt it at all, it will at least take all day. At best, we will arrive exhausted. Hopefully we all make it. God help the aged one, and the baby, and the one with child as we trek beyond the horizon in the heat or the cold or some other less than ideal weather.
A life lived “back with nature” is, too often, stunted, sad, and brutal.
“belongs” in the 2nd paragraph should’ve been “belongings”. Sorry.
If there was ever a balance of nature, then there would have been no devlopment of species. We would still be microbes sloshing in primordial sea.
For further info on the “Natural state of humanity” you might enjoy Stephen Pinker’s book: The Blank Slate.
Earth worship (in various forms) is the oldest religion on the planet and currently experiencing a global revival amongst the ‘great and the good’. It is the state religion in most western countries.
Dawkins would do far better attacking this religion than attacking Christianity.