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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Russ in Houston says:
February 14, 2012 at 10:00 am
R. Gates says:
February 14, 2012 at 9:32 am
My point is this – If we are part of nature, then everything that we do is “natural” by definition. Pollution? No problem, its a natural waste product. However, if we are something more, something above the animals, something above nature, then we would have a responsibility to conserve and to protect “nature”. I don’t see how it can be both ways. Nature doesn’t care about conservation. Nature only cares about success. And only on the short term. Nature couldn’t care less about 100 years from now. If we have a responsibility to conserve and protect, it is a very unnatural value. Who would have assigned us that responsibility?
——-
There is nothing above nature. All is nature, from the forces that hold the molecules of your body together to dark matter that stiches together strings of galaxies. And amazingly, we’ve got thing called a brain, which allows us to be nature observing itself. We can, bit by bit learn the rules the govern this cosmos, and decide how we’ll use that knowledge to create the kind of world we want.
“there was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings.”
There was once a heart in that what once was America, and all free life wanted to feel its beat. Now it’s more like a heart without a beat but cacophony of environmental insanity that shuns free life.
I beg to differ. Humans live in perfect harmony with Nature.
Nature is a bunch of living organisms which all do whatever they please and the only criterion for their prolonged stay here is their ability to survive and reproduce. Humans are doing exactly that.
I wonder how that Y2K thing would have gone if DHS had been around?
R. Gates says:
February 14, 2012 at 9:02 am
Oh stuff it, both of you.
Go argue about:
1) What “Living in harmony with nature” means, and
2) Who gets to define it.
While you’re at it, figure out the optimal temperature as we currently attempt to measure it) so that we can discuss warming or cooling that takes away from global optimum.
Russ in Houston says:
February 14, 2012 at 10:00 am
I appreciate, and agree with, your reply.
That’s what the Nazis said when they created the death camps.
Nature is nothing but a bunch of organisms all striving to survive and perpetuate and has nothing to do with balance. The lion would not hesitate for one millisecond to eat the last zebra on earth. Natural forces such as weather only add additional issues any organism must overcome to survive. Nature does not decide to balance anything and never has. the only semblance of balance is when a few species are well matched for survival and see-saw back and forth in populations. A situation that will be destroyed by a new organism or a natural event. Balance is an illusion of the observer. It is a never ending cycle of evolution to try and gain a foothold in a changing world.
This essay was timely as a poster on facebook just started arguing that civilization is the bane of our existance and there was no disease, war or unhappiness before it. In order to believe in the noble savage one has to be completely ignorant of the past…….so I guess thats self explanatory.
Kasuha says:
February 14, 2012 at 11:20 am
Nature is a bunch of living organisms which all do whatever they please…
___
So in your mind, nature is only “living organisms” i.e. the biosphere of the earth? You would not include all the non-living parts of this cosmos that go into sustaining that biosphere? These non-living systems and processes are just as vital to the continuation of the biosphere on our planet as the actual biological functions that go on inside of organisms.
To answer the question: Living in harmony with nature means recognizing that nature is a web of relationships of which we are part, and living in such as way so as not to do anything inentionally to destroy that web to such as degree that the whole thing contracts in some significant way, as it can, and has, numerous times in Earth’s history
The author is trying to make a point by overstating many arguments. It is not clear that the extinction of megafauna was caused by humans, cities like Rome, Paris and London were disease pits that only kept their populations up by a steady immigration of people from the country, which was paradise by comparison. Disease follows civilisation. Mosquito’s bite, but strangely enough people who live in the country get used to them. The horrors of the primitive life are greatly overstated by the author, as are the joys of the city life. The most important point is that the human brain has shrunk by something like 20% over the last 25000 years. Domestication does that to animals. If we continue on with the current path of the easy life, I see the human race evolving into a species of cretins, as they already have to certain degree in the form of the citiot (city idiot) who neither sows nor reaps, nor sings or dances but is a passive consumer of entertainment and life. There are worse things than being eaten by a tiger, for example living your life at the beck and call of an employer like the food rabbits in Watership Down.
More Soylent Green! says:
February 14, 2012 at 11:33 am
R. Gates says:
February 14, 2012 at 9:36 am
Ed Caryl says:
February 14, 2012 at 9:15 am
R. Gates,
I agree with every word you wrote, but I suspect that my definition of “wise” and “wisely” differs from yours.
——-
Why would you suspect that? Wisdom is simply applying the laws of nature for a desired outcome. What we may differ on is the kind of world we want to create, but in this regard, our common humanity should prevail. Don’t we want a world our grandchildren and great grandchildren can live healthy and abundant lives in which they are free to achieve their maximum potentials?
That’s what the Nazis said when they created the death camps.
_____
Oh, is that what they said?
I was wondering how long it would take before someone had to mention Nazis. A bit quicker than I thought actually…
To the shame of North Carolina, USA, in the Capitol in Raleigh at the downtown Natural History museum there is a prominent bronze sculpture on the grounds of Rachel Carson leading children through a wetland scene like the Pied Piper.
http://www.igougo.com/review-r1328670-NC_Museum_of_Natural_Sciences.html
Yes, The Noble Savage is at the heart of the potentially fatal fantasy
If this AGW scare doesn’t work, the liberal coastal elite scare-mongering environuts will rebrand and repackage and reposition. Obama’s Science Czar’s John Holdren’s past call (before the AGW scare) to “de-develop the United States” and create a “stable low consumption economy” is the political expression of the leftist dream, and they will push and push for that. Driving it all is secular guilt, and the dream of their own Eden. But the raw feeling of their pastoral fantasy is not dressed in wonkish words such “a stable low consumption economy,” but THIS:
“We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion.” –Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalogue
They see draconian CO2 cuts as the ticket to fold up industrial civilization, if all goes “well.” But unfortunately, for them, and everybody else, it wouldn’t lead to this Utopian Eden. An Alabanian told the story of what happened to their country with the collapse of communism (and just some supply systems): “Even the trees lining the roads were chopped down.”
It would be no Garden of Eden. I could say that instead it would be like a Mad Max world — but it’d be much worse. No desert idealism of clean and clean-cut ruffians. Tons of people (at first), and just cold discomfort, disease, dirtiness, dysentery, hunger, violence.
You’d think at some point, after severe CO2 caps are implemented, and other problems ensued, people would see it coming, and repeal… But there would possibly be too much inertia, and once a series of collapses begin, it may be impossible to halt the descent… into anarchy.
R Gates: In your comments and critiques you seem unaware of the distinctions between intellect and intelligence and the importance of wisdom, an acquired trait. Thomas Sowell in his Treatise, “Intellectuals and Society,” at page 2 provides the following instructive explanation:
“The capacity to grasp and manipulate complex ideas is enough to define intellect but not enough to encompass intelligence, which involves combining intellect with judgment and care in selecting relevant and explanatory factors and in establishing empirical tests of any theory that emerges. Intelligence minus judgment equals intellect. Wisdom is the rarest quality of all–the ability to combine intellect, knowledge, experience, and judgment in a way to produce a coherent understanding. Wisdom is the fulfillment of the ancient admonition, “With all your getting, get understanding.” Wisdom requires self-discipline and the understanding of the realities of the world, including limitations of one’s own experience and of reason itself. The opposite of intellect is dullness or slowness, but the opposite of wisdom is foolishness, which is far more dangerous.”
I promise you that you will be a better person after reading the first 9 pages in Sowell’s treatise. I suspect you will read the entire work. Good reading.
R. Gates says:
February 14, 2012 at 11:06 am
decide how we’ll use that knowledge to create the kind of world we want.
THAT is the rub. The kind of world that we want. Who decides what that is? You? Me? If its natural selection, as in nature, then it will be the strongest or most devious that decide. No matter how good your motivation is, at some point you will say “its for your own good”.
To wsbriggs at 9:41 am:
wsbriggs says that “…since you haven’t posted the references, I’m guessing that just like it was when I tried to find the research on the soft eggshells, there are still no replicable research projects demonstrating the soft eggshell hypothesis is correct.”
Mr. Briggs, I don’t make thinks up, and I care deeply about getting science right. Here are three such references:
1. “Dieldrin and DDT: Effects on Sparrow Hawk Eggshells and Reproduction” Porter RD and Wiemeyer SN, Science 165, pp. 199-200 (July 11, 1969)
2. “DDT-Induced Inhibition of Avian Shell Gland Carbonic Anhydrase: A Mechanism for Thin Eggshells” Bitman J, Cecil HC, and Fries GF, Science 168 pp. 594-596 (May 1, 1970)
3. “DDE Residues and Eggshell Changes in Alaskan Falcons and Hawks” Cade TJ, Lincer JL, White CM, Roseneau DG, and Swartz LG. Science 172, pp. 955-957 (May 28, 1971)
With regard to sacrificing birds in Africa, you don’t have to do it. My post said that using DDT indoors in thatch huts works really well at keeping the malarial mosquitos outside, so you don’t get bitten at night. You don’t have to do the far more widespread spraying that was harmful in the US in the 1950s, when many farmers sprayed with DDT. You don’t have to sacrifice birds. For the record, I do like nature, I don’t want to see wildlife continue to dwindle. That is a strongly held belief, and I am proud of it.
This doesn’t mean I take everything the environmental community says as gospel; I don’t. I wouldn’t be reading this website if I did. There has been a great deal of distortion of science by the environmental community, especially the last 15 years or so.
I’d like to make a more general point. A lot of commenters seem to think that they can make statements without backing them up. That is anti-science. If you think that you can decide an issue based on tribalism, based on whether you belong to the “anti-environmentalists” to pick a word, no, that doesn’t work as science, and it only works as politics for a short while. Deciding an issue based upon whether you are an environmentalist of the type that believes everything the EPA or IPCC says doesn’t work, either, for the same reason: it isn’t science, it’s tribalism.
If you want to have a long lasting impact, not just a short one, you have to go with the science, wherever it takes you.
The English long ago came up with the cure for the Noble Savage.
.455 Boxer
followed by .303 Enfield
We Americans took over the lead in savage taming technology with the .45 Long Colt, the .45-70 Springfield, the .45 ACP and the .30-06 Springfield. Ain’t technology a beautiful thing?
Now, if only American climate scientists were as accomplished in their field as American firearms designers have been.
And yet you lack the wisdom to understand the dangerous arrogance and hubris of your statements.
R. Gates says:
February 14, 2012 at 11:47 am
“To answer the question: Living in harmony with nature means recognizing that nature is a web of relationships of which we are part, and living in such as way so as not to do anything inentionally to destroy that web to such as degree that the whole thing contracts in some significant way, as it can, and has, numerous times in Earth’s history.”
Let us know when NCAR starts “living in harmony with nature” and pulls itself off the electrical grid in favor of “environmentally correct” forms of energy like wind and solar. And you should probably get rid of that monstrous building too. I’m sure the site used to be teeming with animals and plants before the NCAR people destroyed it… /sarc
@BC Bill
” I see the human race evolving into a species of cretins, as they already have to certain degree in the form of the citiot (city idiot)”
For some reason they put these evolved creatures on television each day and train them in the use of superfluous ‘direction words’ attached to each verb they utter. Such as, “Come on up over onto the pickup truck” and, “Did they reply back over to you yet?” This verbal chaff is now considered so de rigeur that the CBC as introduced it to prime time.
I’ll dine with a noble savage anytime. They appreciate the company and don’t constantly whisper into their cellphones during funerals.
Khula Ngwane, nina bakitsi!
To John at 12:22
I agree with you. Though I studied biology at the university, I never really directly used it in my career. However, it has proven to be well worth the brief time I spent on it in school. Even though I had enough training to know better, I believed all the propaganda about DDT until I really looked at the data. And the risk/benefit especially to the children in Africa is heavily on the side of benefit. Especially when proper application methods are used. Your “take” on the environmental community is also on the mark. I used to belong to many of these organizations including the World Wildlife Fund. I think that they actually did care about wildlife back in those days. I still do. The real argument here is about truth versus propaganda and as you put it “go with the science”.
“Oh, is that what they said?”
Yeah, it was. They were big Greens before the term existed, and, much like today’s “progressives”, big on eugenics.
On the bright side, I do love stories like this one from California (found via Climate Depot) in which the ‘harmony with nature’ and ‘noble savage’ greenies clash with the AGW greenies:
“Problems cast shadows of doubt on solar project
The unexpected deaths of kit foxes and discovery of ancient human settlements threaten to delay or even cancel a $1-billion, 250-megawatt installation on federal land in the desert near Blythe.”
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/11/local/la-me-solar-foxes-20120211
Looks like it is shaping up as an epic battle between two cults.
This story also provides some insight into the prevailing insanity of the ‘endangered species’ cult.
“Kit foxes became an issue at the site in late August, when two animals died. At the time, biologists assumed the foxes succumbed to dehydration in an area where summer temperatures soar to 118 degrees. On Oct. 5, Genesis crews discovered another fox carcass and sent it to state Fish and Game veterinarians for a necropsy.
At the time, the company was using “passive hazing” strategies approved by state and federal biologists to force kit foxes off the land before grading operations began in November. To scatter the kit foxes, workers removed sources of food and cover, sprinkled urine from coyotes — a primary fox predator — around den entrances, and used shovels and axes to excavate about 20 dens that had been unoccupied for at least three consecutive days.
By early November, only three active dens remained, but the foxes using them wouldn’t budge, raising the risk of construction delays. The California Energy Commission, which has jurisdiction over the project, scrapped the three-day timetable and said the company could destroy dens that had been vacant for 24 hours.”
Next stop: Grief counseling for the displaced foxes and relatives of the deceased.
“I once debated a young idealist who assured me that before the coming of the white man to America, the natives always lived to at least 100, because their was no pollution to make them sick. Not only that, but the tomahawk was actually an agricultural implement, until the white man showed the natives how it could be used to kill as well. And of course, the natives never, ever, fought with each other. The whole idea of violence was completely foreign to them, until the white man introduced it.”
I’ve been fortunate enough not to confront anyone like this since I was, oh, 25 or so. Fortunate because since then I’ve known enough to make it clear their position is garbage. I’ve had the misfortune of overhearing people propagate this type of twaddle (claiming Fort Ancient in Ohio was actually a religious site, because the natives didn’t need fortifications because they weren’t violent), but have avoided confronting them because, well, you don’t seek out arguments over religion.
Off the top of my head, the easiest points against this delusion are:
o Mound 72 at Cahokia: human sacrifice, of apparent captives, around 1000 AD
o Crow’s Creek Massacre Site: the population of a village, minus the pubescent females, in a mass grave. Skeletons show signs of violent death, and in some cases, scalping.
Forgot the date for Crow Creek Massacre Site: around 1400 AD.