I'll Take Civilization Over "Noble" Savagery Any Day, Thanks

Mr. and Mrs. Kim DuToit have provided a fine essay on something that is so often overlooked in modern, civilized nations such as ours, with additional thoughts by NRO blogger and author John Derbyshire. The excerpts below, which I endorse and agree with wholeheartedly, speak for themselves, so I'll just add my own two unique cents. The people who idolize noble savagery without the first thought as to what that might mean if it actually did rule are the cousins of vacant-headed earth worshippers who believe that man should be subservient to plants and animals. Neither one of these groups owns (or if they do, they don't use) a shred of common sense and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the levers of power...such fruit loops actually being in charge makes a Democrat Congress or *shudder* a Hillary Clinton or John McCain presidency seem like not such a bad thing after all.

From Mrs. DuToit:

"No, it isn't about denying reality. It is about continuing on, despite reality. It is the acceptance that your life could end tomorrow, by any number of simple daily events, so you resign yourself to a kind of happy complacency.

It demands of you a constant state of living in the here and now. You better focus on the here and now because you might be not here and there might not be a now tomorrow.
So what does that do to a person? Well, in one sense I think it gives people a kind of peace--a kind of connection with the essence of life (and death) that we, in the West, don't have to address on a day-to-day basis. We expect miracle cures and we get them.
But on the flip side of that, it allows us to make long term plans. It allows us to focus on achievement in the longer term. It allows us the time to think about what our home will be like in 20, 30, or 50 years. We allow ourselves to focus not on the here and now, but on the what can and will be. We live our lives in a constant state of improvement, of a life better than we have today, in a place we will make better. And we'll live to see the fruits of it.

Give us this day our daily bread is a sweet concept. It is, however, so far from an American concept. Give us this day the will to see greatness, to improve our lives and the lives of those around us. Give us vision for a better road, a better way of doing things, and a life more prosperous with more room for play and time with family.

There is something to be said about a life of happiness, the simple joys of sharing your daily bread. But there is also something equally interesting and important about a life with a safety net. The simple things are handled. We get to focus on greatness."

From Kim DuToit:

"This is why we spoiled rotten Americans can afford to complain about slow download times off the Intarweb, while the Pore & Starvin in the Third World are, well, poor and starving. But at the same time, it should be realized that because we Americans aren't too concerned about where the next meal is coming from, we also have the time and mental availability to worry think about other stuff—some trivial, such as why Paris Hilton gets so much fan mail, and some not-so trivial, such as the formula for a drug which will alleviate sinusitis or the design of a world-class fighter jet. Because we are not preoccupied with the essential, in other words, we can afford to concentrate on other stuff—other stuff which in the long run can become essential as well ...

I think that this is the point which the "noble savage"-worshippers and "back to nature" eco-loons miss. Human endeavor, and the growing civilization it engenders, is an accumulative process: what was an unheard-of privilege in 1900 (eg. uninterrupted electricity in every home) becomes today's taken-for-granted. If you reject that, and force retrogression, you must inevitably cause civilization to degrade. ...

One of the things that I discovered after coming to Paradise (the United States --Ed.) was that issues which had seemed so cut-and-dried to me before were no longer so easy to categorize. When you live in a society (ie. apartheid) in which "right" and "wrong" are so clearly delineated, you tend to see all social problems as being similarly simple to solve. And of course, they aren't—otherwise, there'd be no more discussion of issues, ever. What is clear to me is that once the basic wrongs have been righted, and we've decided on black or white, what's left is a plethora of grays—which are not so easily decided—but at least civilization affords us the time and inclination to think about them. What we as Americans need to realize, I think, is that far from decrying our obsession with the minutiae of life, we should be revelling in it—because the alternative would be quite horrible."

Via John Derbyshire:

"Personally, I have a clear and uncomplicated attitude to the whole business. The white man took North America from the Indians, by means frequently foul. As a result, we have a civilized nation here, with laws and legislatures, with libraries and hospitals, with colleges and police departments and TV talk shows and orthodontists and supermarkets and second-hand bookstores and gun clubs and lawns and swimming pools. If the thing had not happened, North America would be vegetating in barbarism, as it did for the previous several millennia, with none of the above. I like the above, all of them. I don't want to live in a society with no law but blood revenge, with no medicine or sanitation, with no books or computers, with a 30-something median lifespan, with a famine every five years, with ritual public torture, human sacrifice and chronic tribal warfare. Far as I am concerned, civilization is the bee's knees, and barbarism stinks. Yes, I know how it was done, and I can't say I altogether approve. But it was done, and I am glad it was done.

When anyone tried to push the "noble barbarian" line on the unfoxable Samuel Johnson, he had a sharp retort for them: "Don't cant in defense of savages." Same answer here."