It Could Happen Here - The Myth of the "Noble Savage" ft. Andrew

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Andrew talks with Gare and Mia about how the myth of the "noble savage" has been used to delegitimize and oppress Indigenous societies.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here with me, Andrew, of the YouTube channel Andrewism. And today I'm joined by... Garrison is here. Greetings mia also here hello and i wanted to talk about the idea of the noble savage it's something that people have occasionally brought up in my comment section when i discuss really anything related to maybe there's something to learn, something to be learned from the indigenous people of pre-colonial period. There's often this accusation levied against any sort of positive representation of their society, any sort of generous reading of their society

as something to be scoffed at as something to be ridiculed as something to be you know seen as perpetuates in this trope of the noble savage and so i was in some sort of at first i was in sort of a, I got into a sort of defense mood and I was like, well, I really don't want to do that. Right. I don't want to want to create this caricature of indigenous peoples in my videos that, you know, falsely represents all their complexities and stuff. Obviously, every group throughout history has had many layers to them. And then in reading Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengroo, I ended up stumbling upon even further information

on the subject. And so that's something that I want to talk about. You know, where the idea of the noble savage came from, how it's used, and I think how we should be approaching it today but before i even get into all of that are you all familiar with this term and how it's used yeah i mean i i think it's i don't know it it is interesting in the way that it kind of like, I don't know, there was kind of this shift of it being used as a term to critique sort of like racist white fantasy to being a term that's used to sort of bludgeon anytime anyone like has the temerity to suggest anything in another society than this one could have possibly have been better. Which is a kind of grim shift i think in a lot of

ways and i think has done a lot of political damage by people who sort of don't quite understand what was going on yeah uh and that is a shift that i noticed as well and for a while i thought that was really how the term was originally meant to be applied i mean we see it all over discussions of anthropology and philosophy and literature which you know it could be extended to media as a whole right you have this sort of stock character of the noble savage this person that's uncorrupted by civilization something that's a person that symbolizes this sort of innate goodness and moral superiority living in harmony with nature that we don't have access to because we've been corrupted by the influences of civilization right it's this idealized concept of an uncivilized or sort of base man right or rather person and i mean we see it a lot

in rightist discourse being used as a term of derision for example a right-wing australian politician named dennis jensen once told parliament that the australian government should not be funding people to live a noble savage lifestyle in remote indigenous communities jesus yeah christ and he it's it's used to mock the so-called backwards lifestyles of indigenous people and really try to reinforce this um white supremacist idea of their inferiority or their backwardness, their regressiveness, whatever the case may be. And then on the other side, in leftist political discourse, you also see it being used as a term of derision. So in both cases, it's being used as a term of derision without really a good grasp of what the term is, where it came from.

For example, anarcho-primitivists are criticized for upholding this trope. And of course, leftists criticize other leftists for falling for the trope when describing indigenous histories, spiritualities, and social ecologies. It seems like you can't even bring up any sort of reciprocal gift economy-based relationship with the land that indigenous group might have had without somebody saying, oh, well, did you know that indigenous people also perpetuated extinctions and genocides

and this, that this and the other um so i i really don't think that anytime you learn from a society that predates your own and may still persist that you're doing a noble savage but it is um something that i had become very conscious of in my approach to any sort of discussion. I feel like it sort of haunts the discourse. Among other sort of stock characters and troops that permeate in our political conversations. Within media, the trope has, you know, come in and out of fashion. The trope has come in and out of fashion.

But the two main forms that it appears in is one that life is strenuous. The life of a quote-unquote primitive is strenuous. And therefore, this savage is nobly brave, hardworking, and honorable. And then you have this other depiction, which is that the savage and again it pains me to use the term every time but the savage is not greedy and just doesn't have a taste for luxury so it might be seen in in certain media it's been a long time since I've watched The Road to El Dorado but if I recall there is this sort of idea within the movie that they're so used to this the decadence and stuff of of gold and whatnot that they don't consider it as valuable they consider it worthless so there's this aspect of the trope that treats materials traditionally considered valuable um to be something to be

sort of shrugged off or flaunted and then of course because what is philosophy what is really our ontology without some sort of reference to the stories embedded within the Christian canon, right? There is this sort of interpretation of the story of the Garden of Eden as Adam and Eve being these noble savages that live in this uncorrupted innocence and harmony with nature. And then they partake in this fruit from the tree of knowledge, or they become, quote unquote, civilized. And then they're punished by having to engage in agriculture

and have to labor over the land instead of living in harmony with it. So one interpretation of that story is that it's a metaphor for the dawn of agriculture and the god of eden as a sort of nostalgic take even later on when europeans first encountered hunter-gatherer communities in the americas they compared them to being living in this sort of Eden. And today, you still find comparisons to Eden used to describe certain hunter-gatherer societies. And of course, as this is quite topical, you often see this criticism of noble savage and whatever being levied against avatar as in the blue people not the not the last airbender um because they have this sort of oh we are these utterly perfect you know peace-loving space hippies all in harmony with

nature chilling and vibing uh we literally have sex with trees kind of vibe um and i haven't seen the second movie in the series i only saw the first but i wouldn't be surprised if that trend continues i don't know have you all seen either or both of them i saw the first one and i was like i'm no not nothing on earth can compel me to see the second one so i have no idea if it's true or not yeah and i mean the the concept of the noble savage it has its roots a lot further back than european encounters with native americans right that's sort of the intellectual lineage of the concept could actually be traced back to ancient Greece. So if you really want to reach, you could say that even back in the

Akkadian epic of Gilgamesh, that Enkidu as a sort of bushman was a kind of a depiction of that contrast between hunter-gatherer societies and agricultural societies that gild the mesh representing of course you know civilization um but if we start in from ancient greece uh we could say we've seen huma and pliny and xenophon all idealizing the arcadians and other groups whether they were real or not and then later on in rome um you find tacitus for example writing of the noble germanic and caledonian tribes in contrast with his view of roman society as this sort of corrupt and decadent place. He even wrote speeches, like he practically wrote fan fiction about liberty and honor for his sort of caricatures of these people.

Other writers would also treat the Scythians comparably. You'll see it in the works of Horace and Virgil and Ovid. And then further on, you know know in the 12th century the polymath Ibn Tufayl wrote in his novel The Living Son of the Vigilant this idea of this sort of stripped down back to the roots earthy wild man who is isolated from society and has a series of trials and tribulations that lead him to knowledge of Allah by living this life in harmony with mother nature basically theorizing this idea that people can find can find their way to to god just by being exposed to nature finding a sort of a theological understanding by understanding the natural world. Welcome.

I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnal tales from the shadows presented by I heart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Don't get me wrong though, I love technology, I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Check out betteroffline.com. vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture.

powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. attributed to 18th century enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. And he believed the original man was somebody that was free from sin, appetite, or the concept of right and wrong. And those deemed savages were not brutal, but noble,

or at least this is how the story goes. The idea can also be found in theology. The founder of the Methodist church, for example, John Wesley, again, just like the Andalusian novel writer, believed that, you know, there's this idea of man in the beginning at the roots connected with nature is not as corrupted. It is more connected with nature and with god compared to the so-called degeneracy found in 18th century society compared to the disease and materialism seen throughout the world david greber um in one of his recent posthumous works, Pirate Enlightenment,

and in a lot of his other works as well, he sort of grapples with this idea of the Enlightenment, right? And how flawed our understanding of the Enlightenment is, how our approach to the Enlightenment as a sort of era unique to Europe or this era centered upon Europe is flawed in its approach because it leaves out the realities that the enlightenment occurred as a result of Europeans' interactions and exposure to the rest of the world. You had these European explorers and colonizers and scientists venturing out, trading, interacting with these different groups of people, hearing their ideas about things, and then going back and writing best-selling books

about these societies and how they believe and what they think and how they organize their society one chronicler for example um noted that among the indians or native americans that land belonged to all just like the sun and water mine and thine the seeds of all evils do not exist for those people they live in a golden age in open gardens without laws or books without judges and they naturally follow goodness rousseau thomas moore and others also idealized the naked savages as innocent of sin another one wrote about how they are equal in every respect and so in harmony their surroundings they all live justly and conformity with the laws of nature basically

we have we just found a whole continent of people basically living in a garden of eden but then this concept of ecological nobility that is perpetuated is of course flawed. I mean, like I mentioned earlier, there were cases of overexploitation and damage done to the environment. And yet, we also find in a lot of indigenous groups, the living incompatibility with the ecological limitations of their home area getting familiar with the lands that they live on and what it takes to preserve them for the next generations a lot of what is seen as a sort of virgin landscape was profoundly shaped by the controlled burns, the horticulture, the herding, and other activities done by indigenous groups throughout the Americas, for example, in the case of the Amazon rainforest, and in Australia as another case,

where the controlled burns really shaped that landscape over thousands and thousands of years. To this day, you know, the methods used by indigenous peoples have been found to be, you know, superior to those used by non-indigenous peoples living in the same habitat. Methods like polycropping, techniques to enhance soil fertility, sustainable harvesting. And of course, there are these culturally encoded mores that are placed in these communities that help result in the preservation of these resources. Then you also have to account for the fact that no culture is stagnant. Every culture changes over time. And as a result of the capitalist market economy,

there is this pressure to overexploit the land for the sake of profit. You know, a lot of where these documented patterns of land cultivation and land preservation are found is usually in the outskirts and the margins of the capitalist market economy. Such practices can be more difficult to find right in the belly of the beast for example um the irapa yucpa in western venezuela they were traditionally mobile over an extensive area plants and food search and game and now they're stationary now they are settled and now they sort of are forced to adopt a different lifestyle in response to their new material conditions

when you had that lesser population density and greater freedom to roam it was easier to both satisfy subsistence needs and also maintain the health and vitality of the ecosystem over an extended period of time. But now that surpluses are needed, now that agriculture has been reduced to a very small portion of the population, and that those techniques are now expected to be more intensive in order to keep up with the demands, those lifestyles and those cultural mores and those practices have had to change. But back to the idea of the noble savage, right? And particularly drilling into this idea of the noble aspect of it, right? Because there's some confusion, as Graeber points out,

between these two meanings associated with the word nobility. You could say someone is noble in the sense that they are, you know, moral, good, exemplary in their behavior, in their etiquetteette in their ethical standards or you could say somebody is noble in the sense they have this position in a sort of a class system a hereditary position in a class system an elevated economic status rousseau didn't come up with the phrase and in fact he never used in his writings what ter ellingson uh historian discovered or rather explored in his book the myth of the noble savage is that the term was coined over a century before Rousseau's birth by a French lawyer-ethnographer named Marc Lescarbeau.

And Lescarbeau described indigenous peoples as truly noble, not having any action, but as generous, whether we consider their hunting or their employment in the wars. The nobility was more so associated not with just moral qualities like generosity and you know good behavior but also nobility from a legal standpoint the The lives of freedom, the privileges and the responsibilities that the indigenous people enjoyed were also found according to

Lescarbeau within the European nobility. In Cannibals and Kings, an anthropologist by the name of Marvin Harris went on to explain why Lescarbebo had recognized nobility among the indigenous people that he visited. You know, a lot of the abandoned village societies,

there was a level of economic and political freedom that very few enjoyed in his day. And even today, you know, people decided for themselves how long they wanted to work on a particular day, what they would do, or if they would even work at all. You know, they didn't have to deal with the taxes and rents and tribute payments that, and one could even extend it to say debts, that keep people today and in the past so

confined and restricted in their limited life on this earth. What should have been, you know, this sort of normal standard, you know, of human freedom is in contrast with European society. Just like mind blowing. Yeah, there's another David Graeber. Actually, I've been talking about there never was a West a lot recently. west a lot recently and one of the things that he he talks about in that in in there ever was a west is this like trick that european writers use when they're looking at another society which is like they they present themselves as like people whose behaviors are sort of are entirely rational and they're solving a logic puzzle and then they go find like i't know, what they consider to be the weirdest thing. And so like, sorry.

They go find what they consider to be the weirdest thing that like another culture does. And look at it through this, you know, this lens, which draws in the reader to be doing this sort of logic puzzle and trying to figure out, oh, how could these people do this thing? And then, you know, if you pull back the lens a little bit and look at what these supposedly objective European theorists are doing, it's like, well, okay, these guys all have these really weird tea ceremonies and they eat the flesh of their god every weekend and stuff like that. And so you get this really interesting – but when you read it through their sort of colonial ethnography, you get this image of both societies. That's very weird.

That lets you sort of – that conceals the fact that, yeah, like when these European writers are talking about meeting indigenous people, like you kind of – the way that it's written makes it very easy to sort of like do this colonial thing where you forget that every single French writer who is writing about this lives in like the most hierarchical society the world's ever seen. Yeah. Yeah. That's so true. And it's like, well,

yeah, of course, like they, they, they, they went to literally any other place on earth and talk to people and we're like, Oh my God,

these people are like, are really free. And it's like, well, yeah, it's because these guys live under the french like they're like french absolutism this is like i think graber's line was like this is a society where every single person when they want when they walk into a dining room immediately knows the class of every single other person sitting around the table by like how they hold their silverware yes it's absurd you know

when a lot of the rest of the world is like you know living on the generosity of the people around them being reliable in you know the foundations of you know community not even necessarily because i mean obviously there were hierarchies to be found within a lot of these cultures and communities but not to the extent that you would have found in in some of these european societies not even close yeah these are the european like i don't know like europe has been really really i mean you know this is is the sort of organizational trend of European society for like the last like four or five hundred years has been just incredible, unfathomable centralization on a level that was just, it's just sort of incomprehensible to most of the people who've ever lived. But we treat as sort of normal now because it's a society that we've grown up under.

society that we've grown up under yes it's an i'm trying to draw a comparison between europeans encountering this level of freedom in other societies and sort of like i can't think of any specific example right now but you know how you know growing up as a child in a particular household, your house would have certain norms that you think is just like universal, you know, like everybody does this. Obviously this is just a fact of life in the universe, but in reality, it's just like some weird quirk one of your parents had that you just had to

grow up with. Yeah. Yeah. Like, like for example, this is a really weird example, but let's say for example, this is a really weird example, but let's say, for example, you had like ceramic dishes were not allowed to be used ever. Right.

They were purely for decoration. And your parents told you that it's some grave moral sin to eat off of ceramic dishes. And then you go to somebody's house and they have all their plates laid out and you're like, you're utterly baffled by how they're able to eat off of ceramic dishes. If I could think of a better example,

but for now, yeah, that's what I'll roll with. That's what I roll with. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to the leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology, I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Get Your Podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that

shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Anyway, despite recognizing all of this freedom and stuff, they were kind of like disgusted by it, at least some of them. You know, some of them, when publishing their texts in Europe, would put their own liberal ideas into the mouths of Indigenous people to say oh I'm

not saying this this is obviously like treasonous and I would never say this but this indigenous guy who I spoke to the other day he said it and so I'm just publishing what he said um so that took place sometimes um and then there also those who who were utterly disgusted by the liberty exhibited in some of these societies. But whether they saw that freedom as a positive or as a negative, despite all their fluffy words about indigenous liberties, that didn't really matter for indigenous people at the end of the day. indigenous liberties that didn't really matter for indigenous people at the end of the day because you know through the centuries empires continue to swallow indigenous lands and the phrase basically disappeared for about 250 years because the idea of the noble savage was reversed by this stereotype of the dangerous brutal savage like how dare they defend their land and way of life right it wasn't until 1859 that the term was resurrected by a guy named john crawford a white supremacist uh he wanted to

become president or rather right he was attempting disdainful of this idea emerging in anthropology and philosophy of universal human rights like how dare you you know so he introduced the phrase resurrecting after 250 years to make a speech to the society and by the way he missed he's the one who first misattributed this speech um the phrase to russo basically ridiculing using the noble savage as a term to ridicule those who sympathized with such quote less advanced cultures and so that sort of fabrication where he attributed it to russo and he built up this straw man to blow it down you know it's basically this myth of the myth of the noble savage he creates a straw man of the noble savage as a myth and then that's what perpetuated

but his myth of the noble savage wasn't was the one that was a myth so it's you know the myth of the myth of noble savage and so as the british empire was reaching the height of its power and he was you know trying to ridicule anybody who had anything nice to say about indigenous people that straw man was used to continue to advocate for the extermination crawford's version of noble savage became the source for every citation of the myth by anthropologists from lubach tyler or boas through the scholars of the late 20th century so even 100 years later people were still using the term that he came up with this rhetorical cheap shot that he used

and to this day it continues to polarize our discussions and obstruct any sort of nuanced approach to hunter-gatherer life and having discovered all of this I have to say it really made me feel like a part of history

there never was a noble savage myth I have to say it really made me feel like a part of history. There never was a noble savage myth, at least not in the sense of this straw man of simple societies living in happy innocence. Travelers usually accounted for both virtues and vices they spoke of the positives of these societies and also things that they weren't too fond of both the concept of the noble savage and the concept

of the brutal savage are fantasies constructions of a European mind that was intent on boxing indigenous people in this sort of suspended state of either purity or evil going forward i think it's really silly to continue to perpetuate the term i think it really keeps us from engaging with history properly and i mean even if somebody is exaggerating or expunging certain aspects of a particular society or culture that should be engaged with directly you know i don't think you should fall back on a lazy trope popularized by a white supremacist i mean we live under states now we live under capitalism now

and i don't think i don't fault people for trying to imagine what life must have been like before then before these institutions became so all-encompassing what becomes an issue is when we take you know these past societies and we use them as these beacons of virtue instead of going back and trying to take their their lessons and their practices and adopting them and interpreting them to move forward there was a lot of freedom and there still is a lot of freedom left to be uncovered in our history it is obscured in our history classes it isn't taught instead we're taught facts and figures and wars and notable um notable individuals um we're taught of kings and dictators and high priests and emperors and prime ministers and

presidents and chiefs and judges and jailers and dungeons penitentiaries and concentration camps this is our existence now but it doesn't have to be and if we're going to have an honest exploration of our history in order to inform our future we have to free our imaginations of this lazy troop of the noble savage that's it for me for this episode you can check me out on youtube.com slash andrewism and also on twitter at underscore saint drew as well as my patreon.com slash stdrew. This is It Could Happen Here. You can find us in the usual places on Twitter and Instagram.

And yeah, go be free. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow of Wrath.

Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.

The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

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