Submitted by thelivingphilosophy t3_yd3q1b in philosophy
Reply to comment by CorrosiveMynock in The philosophy of Martin Heidegger who argued that the Technological mindset has destroyed our relationship to the world so that Nature is seen as so many resources to exploit. He presents an alternative: a poetic relationship to the world by thelivingphilosophy
No, your understanding of native cultures is ignorant. Heidegger can suck a rusty dick.
Native cultures are and were no better than we are at living in harmony with nature. Plenty of them were horrendously destructing to the environment. The noble savage myth is still a racist stereotype. Natives are people, and people are the same, everywhere and everywhen. We take from the environment as much as we can, and then write poetry about how sad that is. That's just as true for the 1700s Mohawks as for the 1000s Inuit, as for the 1800s British or the first people coming out of Africa.
Nah, this is just your assumption that I was referring to the "Noble Savage Myth". That's your projection, not mine. If you honestly believe modern society is more sustainable/connected to nature than pretty much ANY indigenous group that is by DEFINITION prior to contact with European land exploiters, sustainable you are out of your mind. There's a middle ground between "Nobel savage" and "TheY ArE JuSt LiKe EurOpEAnS". Like if you study those cultures you can gain an appreciation for the fact that sustainability was more of a rule than an exception. Many developed a kinship with the land that views what nature gives us as far more than material resources, but rather a spiritual connection that is quite unlike the typical modern relationship. Speaking about that isn't evoking the Noble Savage Myth, and it is offensive that you would assume any mention of a non-consumption oriented indigenous philosophy as such.
My point is that however sustainable indigenous peoples were and are is usually due to accidents of technology, not due to some philosophy. And there was nothing sustainable about the Aztecs, for example. They were literally a colonialist empire like the British, consuming in similarly destructive ways. On the other hand, some farming societies, or hunter gatherer societies were relatively static, just like farming in Ireland or Poland for more than a millennia.
It's just an accident of technology.
And, for what it's worth, today there are people like you who care about sustainability, and have access to tremendous technology to help create sustainability on a scale that no Mohawk could dream of. You, today, can do more good for the environment than anyone living 1000 years ago. That's important to recognize, just as it's important to recognize our destructive power as well.
Again, I find this perspective quite Euro-centric. When evaluating a system, the degree to whether people intentionally created it or not, whether it comes from a coherent philosophy or not, is irrelevant. For example, humans evolved through an unintentional process over millions of years, and yet somehow our brains, at least as far as we know are among the most complicated things we know about. Is the fact that the process was unintentional even remotely relevant to its complexity or capacity? Of course not.
Indigenous systems often do evolve unintentionally because their users are focused on outcomes, such as surviving---and by definition any surviving indigenous group/culture possesses such systems. There are classes of knowledge valued by scientists called Local Knowledge that encapsulate how indigenous people happen to, through just surviving on the land for generations---develop sustainable practices, an understanding of the thousands of relevant species around them, and their major interactions with themselves, other species, and the environment itself. It isn't that this came from some noble philosophy given to them by some religion---it came because they survived and they needed that knowledge, which is often passed down from generation to generation to do so. Learning about it, specifically from a scientific perspective and how to integrate those systems of knowledge which weren't developed intentionally into an intentional practice that CAN be done intentionally, IS super important.
Yes, you are right, not every indigenous group has Local Knowledge and not every group has ideas or conceptions of reality that different from the ones that modern humans have, but their history of survival and the adversity of their experience has shaped them in a way that the majority of people living in Western consumption oriented societies can learn from and given that so much of that history is colored in the evils of colonization and rampant exploitation SHOULD learn from.
My people lived here for tens of thousands of years without destroying the whole place. Your people annihilated the continent in 500 years.
It wasn't some high moral choice. It was being a stone/bronze age culture.
And the Native Americans wiped out several large species that we know of shortly after their arrival to the Americas. Hunted to extinction due to being big/slow and therefore easy food.
No but it was an immoral choice to destroy the continent in 500 years.
>Natives are people, and people are the same, everywhere and everywhen.
Have you done much travelling?
I gotta say, the commenter is right that the truth lies between the noble savage and your we are all the same, always alternative.
While the Indigenous relationship with Nature is often highly simplified and politicized -- some species were definitely hunted to extinction, they sometimes did extract more from the land than it could give and paid the price, etc - it is very much demonstrably true that they had a more intuitive and sutainable way of relating to the environment than we do. They have done studies and reviews on this.
I recommend The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow, bac5665. It's fascinating and well supported and I feel has really enriched my perspective on this subject. It comes to a different conclusion than you do here.
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