Talk:Noble savage
From Academic Kids
The content of these two paragraphs appears to be well off the topic of the "noble savage" and more appropriate to a general discussion of critiques of western imperialism. If anyone has an idea where these paragraphs might fit better, please move them. Rossami 18:56, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- There are no more "neolithic" people on this planet; the word "primitive" does not refer to people living in a former stage in cultural evolution, it refers to people who are at the periphery of the world capitalist economy who have been, are, or are about to be victims of Western colonial or imperialist expansion, ethnocide, and genocide.
- There have been some -- many, but not all, anthropologists, and many non-anthropologists -- who developed a critique of European ethnocentrism, and sought to develop more objective understandings of non-Western peoples. They continue to challenge the presumption of European (or Western) superiority, and to challenge specific claims made by Westerners concerning human nature and the world in which humans live and act. Those who are committed to the superiority of the West and Western ideas, colonialism, ethnocide and genocide, are profoundly threatened by such attempts.
Original sin
I think it needs to be mentionned somehow that the idea of the noble savage had tremendous repercussion on Western Philosophy. In Christian doctrine, humans are born with the orignal sin and religion is what guides them to know what is right and what is wrong. But there we are one day, Europe is colonizing America, a continent that could not have known the Christian religion. On this new continent, Europeans find human beings living there and they have their own morality and they don't live in perpetual sin. Something is not right. Aren't they supposed to be killing, raping and eating each other all the time? There goes Rousseau one day writing that the human being is born good and that civilization is what makes him vicious. -- Mathieugp 19:49, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
