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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David Ball says:
February 14, 2012 at 7:40 pm
“I’ve said before; It is civilization that has a tenuous grip, not nature.”
That is one of the more succinct statements I have seen in a very long time.
Except for people who understand what those color bands in the Grand Canyon represent (especially to our ‘precious’ graveyards) or the percentage of species that have gone extinct prior to our appearance, few have any grasp of time. If children where taught that it takes 11 and a half days for a million seconds to pass and nearly 32 years for a billion to go by, they might begin to understand proportions and what is required of 39 molecules in a hundred thousand to wreck life on this planet.
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Having grown up and gone to school with the Navajo to the west, the Ute to the north and the Jicarilla Apache to the east and understanding what history the Anasazi, the Basketmakers and the Fremont before them endured, I have an inkling of how brutal life was long before modern Europeans arrived. They slaughtered, raped and enslaved each other long before 1492. Does anyone really believe the Inuit (no vegans there) stayed where they are because they wanted to? Native Americans (they beat
Europeans by a miniscule 10-15 K) did anything and everything to obtain food and the territory it contained up to and including setting forest alight and driving far more food than they needed over cliffs. Within a half hours drive of my home there has been found ample evidence of cannibalism in prehistoric ‘culture’.
Human civilization, as we know it today, is the greatest anomaly the biological record has ever seen. Mark the introduction of the coal fired steam ENGINE (from ‘ingenious’), and the ensuing inventions on a plot of human population and it is difficult to argue that civilization has not been a success of late.
Those who find the past a romantic place to live and the public education systems that teach that the people who brought us to this point in geologic time are evil remind me strongly of the analogy of a mother bird plucking the feathers off its own chicks.
Smokey,
Glad to know you still got it goin’ on! See, “nature” does want us to enjoy ourselves in the brief existence we call life!
Gates,
We are in agreement there.
David Ball says:
February 14, 2012 at 7:40 pm
I’ve said before; It is civilization that has a tenuous grip, not nature.
———
Civilization is just a collective way one species has found to survive. That species is as mich a part of “nature” as anything else, and like the countless species before us, we too shall one day pass, with a whimper or a bang…
Nice essay. Overlabours the point a little, based on ‘definitions’.
But, it holds a great truth: If we need forests, we can make them, it takes only about thirty years.
Stop blaming the developing countries for cutting down their forests (and, mostly these arguments are really based on not wanting the economic completion of, say, Brazilian corn and soya beans) and replant your own forests!
Small thought for this thread:
Save the Planet ?!?!?!
The Planet doesn’t need saving!
The people are {BEEP}, but the planet’s doin’ just fine. – George Carlin
Alan the Brit says: (February 14, 2012 at 9:39 am): “…when Stewart’s character is talking to the capured Spanish girl, something about being dead before she was 30 years old because of the tough lives of the Indians! Sometimes the obvious is staring you right in the face!”
That reminds me of “Little Big Man”, 1970. Although it has Noble Savage elements, it included this memorable quote: “At first sight of an Indian camp, what you think is, ‘I see their dump. Where’s their camp?'”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065988/quotes
This guy obviously hasn’t read Ishmael.
Great topic. I haven’t had time to read all the comments, so forgive me if this has been mentioned.
The best thing a dreamer can do is to put his money where his mouth is. I did it. I didn’t like working indoors and only fishing on the weekends. Why not fish all week long? So I “ran away from civilization.” It was a wonderful experience, but not all that easy. And that was during the summer.
To be quite honest, most people are cowards, when it comes to quitting a cozy job, that has benefits and a pension. It is easy to indulge in armchair speculation. It takes guts to risk sleeping in your car, for a dream.
It takes stamina, I suppose, to stick with a job you hate, however even there you may find the business goes bankrupt, and the benefits and pension may vanish.
I have looked a lot at the balances some cultures found, for a time, and one thing you see happen over and over is that they lose their balance. If they have adapted to a LIA, a MWP comes along, and if they readapt to a MWP, along comes another LIA. Even when the weather stays the same, a culture can become corrupt, and bring about its own downfall.
People who dream that Native Americans were in harmony with nature need to go meditate on the ruins left behind by the Anasazi or Mound-builders. It wasn’t Europeans that brought them to their knees.
No matter how hard we try to build safe havens, the fresh winds of change come and dislodge us, pushing us reluctantly on our way, unless we were getting a little fed up with the stagnation and musty air of our safe haven, in which case we are glad to depart.
Earth is a lovely place, to be respected and cared for, but we are not here forever. We are only passing through.
R. Gates says:
February 14, 2012 at 9:36 am
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?
I don’t want my grandchildren to live in the world containing individuals capable of uttering such wish-washy mawkish nonsense.
Some of us, not a big percentage but enough, like museums and art galleries. They store beauty and information that those of us who feel so inclined might go and enjoy them. They are paid for using private and public money but they never really detract from our own self actualization and purpose in life even though they are somewhat elitist.
National parks are similar ,but on a larger scale, to urban parks and public open spaces. They too provide amenities to a small part of the public but are felt to benefit society at large in many ways so the majority go along without complaint.
Unfortunately the “environmental movement” , Big Green, goes much further. This very elitist movement has decided that a minority of people should be able to prescribe what entire countries should do and not do so as to preserve the environment in a form they find attractive and acceptable. This is elitism at its worst.
Just look at the advocacy groups against fracking, nuclear power plants, GM crops, hydro power, cell phone towers and so on. You have small groups trying to prevent things that would be advantageous to very large groups of people. They will dress it up as opposition based on exaggerated environmental damage coupled invariably to corporate greed. They never acknowledge the large benefits that will accrue to large population groups and are mum on the fact the the large corporates are invariably owned by pension funds, insurance funds and a large swath of little guy shareholders as well as a few “fat cats”. They just highlight the fat cats and that’s it.
The bottom line is that this is all extremely undemocratic. It is elitist and damaging to ordinary people yet it is never portrayed in those terms. Yes a dam will displace a few people and wildlife but the greater good will be served by the power and irrigation potential. Yes a pipeline from Canada to the Gulf may have the potential of bursting and causing pollution but it will also provide go juice to a population that needs it while achieving a strategic objective at the same time. The resistance to GM crops is fueled not by science but by hatred of corporates even though ordinary people get more, cheaper, food using these seeds.
Let’s face facts. The environmental movement today is deeply elitist and constitutes cultural imperialism of the worst kind. A small group of people , who a-la South Park, have farts that don’t smell are trying to foist upon us all a world that they would like to see not one that would serve us all the best. They are unelected yet they wield great power without any accountability. They are supported by a corrupted media that strikes fear into the hearts of the elected ( actual and wannabe ) if they don’t go along with this construct. The construct seems to be a global “National Nature Park” with only themselves still alive to enjoy it and they have demonized CO2 to achieve that end.
The little guy trying to eke out a living and bring up a family needs a better shake than he is getting.
Alexander Feht says:
February 15, 2012 at 2:38 am
R. Gates says:
February 14, 2012 at 9:36 am
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?
I don’t want my grandchildren to live in the world containing individuals capable of uttering such wish-washy mawkish nonsense.
——-
Well since I, and others like me don’t plan on leaving anytime soon, I suggest you find an alternative world. Maybe one of convenient and happy little gated communities that are so popular in the vast suburban landscape will have to suffice, where everyone looks, acts, thinks, shops, and votes the same.
R. Gates says: February 14, 2012 at 9:29 pm
AND
Smokey says: February 14, 2012 at 9:31 pm
Well it seems you boys are outliers and should be collaborating with our Aussie researcher, Bettina Arndt. ☺
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/the-health-issue-powerful-men-wont-talk-about/story-e6frgd0x-1226240227878
Gates, it does not have to be that way. Nature has also provided the capability to rise above that and off our planet. Have you no vision?
Or Hope?
Gates, you keep saying nature but you mean Mother Gaia, , don’t you? You have completely anthropomorphized the natural world.
Alexander Feht – I agree but was it necessary to make the guy burst into tears ?
I second the commenter from Ottawa. Steven Pinker’s ‘The Blank Slate’ is a must read for anyone who wants to get a grip on this subject. A big, detailed, authoritative, and meticulously researched book that is also engagingly written and leavened with humour.
R. Gates says:
February 14, 2012 at 9:36 am
“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?”
I agree completely, but we cannot go forward by going backward. To see that come to fruition, we need economic stability to provide a platform for research to develop the technology to clean our world.
Have you seen “Alone in the Wilderness”? It is amazing what he does from next to nothing in the way of supplies. If you watch carefully, he says that he HAD to make one concession to modernity . 600 square feet of polyethylene (for the roof of his domicile). Without this, he would have to rebuild his home every couple of seasons. Most of my “green” friends miss that or ignore it. It is pivotal.
David Ball says:
February 15, 2012 at 7:22 am
R. Gates says:
February 14, 2012 at 9:36 am
“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?”
I agree completely, but we cannot go forward by going backward. To see that come to fruition, we need economic stability to provide a platform for research to develop the technology to clean our world.
Have you seen “Alone in the Wilderness”? It is amazing what he does from next to nothing in the way of supplies. If you watch carefully, he says that he HAD to make one concession to modernity . 600 square feet of polyethylene (for the roof of his domicile). Without this, he would have to rebuild his home every couple of seasons. Most of my “green” friends miss that or ignore it. It is pivotal.
———-
Some may misunderstand my perspective. I am 100% for the use of the tools of science and technology to improve the lives of people. I am in now way of favor of going back to the old world of superstition and ignorance. But, it is not a case of using science and technology to fight against nature, as that is a false dichotomy, but rather we are nature, and we can learn to use our knowledge of science to improve our world in wise and healthy ways.
R.Gates, perhaps that is how you yourself feel about the subject, but what we are talking about is the environmentalist movements view that humans are a “cancer” on the planet. That is a false dichotomy in my view. Do not confuse your views with what we are discussing here.
R.Gates, I said nothing about “fighting against nature”. I believe it was David M Hoffer who said it best about a year ago on this blog. I’m paraphrasing; ” Mankind has spent its entire existence trying to keep the outdoors out, and the environuts want to let it back in.”
Nature cares little about our survival and would relegate us to the “extinction bin” left to it’s own devices.
David Ball says:
February 15, 2012 at 12:02 pm
Nature cares little about our survival and would relegate us to the “extinction bin” left to it’s own devices.
——
This is illogical and sadly full of anthropomorphism. Nature “cares” about us as much as we care, for we are nature. This notion that there is a “nature” out there somewhere separate from the web of interrelated life on earth is absurd, but this false-dichotomy way of thinking is so engrained in certain people’s minds that they simply can’t see the absurdity of trying to separate humanity and nature. There is no division.
R. Gates says:
Civilization is just a collective way one species has found to survive.
From what I see, it’s a bad choice for long-term survival. “Civilization” ultimately weakens the race, by suppressing its evolution.
JimBob,
Thanks for the response to Alan. Saved me the time and you were more informative than I probably would have been.
FYI – I have Springfield TD rifle in .50-70 and a carbine in .45-70. Couple of SAA’s in .45 LC as well. I still kick myself for passing on a .52 Spencer carbine several years ago.
TonyG says:
February 15, 2012 at 12:32 pm
You are referring to natural selection if I take your meaning. Is a species not strongest when it is growing? I certainly hope for more from our species.
R.Gates, do not pretend you care more about about nature. You are confused about my position on this. Understand me, I do not think we are seperate from nature. We have been given the capability to be successful as a species, and we should do just that. It is you who wish to slow development to full potential. It is an anthropocentric view that you have. Freeman Dyson imagined much more for mankind. I am with him. Sorry.