Isolated groups (religious, indigenous, etc.,) should be de-isolated.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Isolated groups (religious, indigenous, etc.,) should be de-isolated.

Adar: Jul 27, 2001

XMNN posted:

To be fair, deliberately and unilaterally making contact with them in order to bring them the wonders of modern civilisation (which has historically tended to include alcohol, disease, poverty, extinction etc) does sound a bit like the White Man's Burden, if we're going to start accusing people of racist fallacies.

e: There are plenty of groups that have had occasional contact and remained hostile to the outside world, I'm sure most of them are aware that there is something bigger out there and if they choose for whatever reasons of their own not to engage with it, it's pretty paternalistic to decide you're going to do it anyway because we know better.

Paternalism regarding cultures that are objectively several thousand years behind us technologically, resulting in a vastly lower life expectancy* and quality of life**, is probably the correct ideology.

That said, this argument does not apply if/when half of the contacted culture promptly dies of the flu so until we solve that point it's moot.

*the reason such tribespeople usually seemed/seem healthy to outsiders is not because they don't have sick people, it's because they don't have them for very long and/or because any babies with any kind of genetic condition certainly aren't around for very long

**doesn't apply if we integrate these people into society following the best practices of the 1800's through 1950's, which most of those countries would still do, so once again this point is currently moot

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Adar: Jul 27, 2001

bagual posted:

Traditional societies probably are not immune to mental illness, but contact with civilization has been causing indigenous mass-suicides and a stupendously high individual suicide rate at least here in Brazil, besides extreme poverty, discrimination and drug abuse that generally plague integrated indigenous populations worldwide. I suspect everyone is better-off in intermittent contact regimes, with indigenous populations getting tools but keeping dominion over their territory. Land use is a key issue, even doing something simple as opening up a road leads to poo poo like illegal logging, hunting and in lots of cases an expansion of the agribusiness frontier, all of which generally end badly for the locals.

On traditional (as in millenia-old and not "new age") medicine, a tribe in the peruvian amazon that has put together a 500 page encyclopedia of medicinal rainforest plants is a pretty good example of what sort of knowledge is lost by "integrating" populations. It may not follow western typology, but this basic knowledge of what plant does what has been filtered through many generations of people living there and figuring it out by experience, which narrows the search for potential new medical compounds still undiscovered in the rainforest.

So yeah, I guess forced education is pretty horrible because it paves over cultures that have formed over hundreds of years and in return gives the "educated" one of the most miserable and discriminated positions in modern society. Maybe we should try instead to treat them as fellow autonomous human beings and holders of knowledge worthy of respect. But we're probably gonna extinguish them all anyway.

Intermittent contact is probably "best" in the short term (again, we're avoiding the everyone dead from measles thing here) but in the long run for every hundred people saved from a moderate fever or a stomach cramp by a plant the tribe will lose as many to everything from Hodgkin's to the local guinea worm equivalent to haemochromatosis. You won't see them die but that doesn't make them less dead.

Of course the other issue here is they'd die anyway because this is the middle of the Brazilian jungle so instead of integration and free medical care they'll get shot by loggers and get nothing. That's a huge and very valid problem that's definitely a good reason not to do anything until humanity grows up! But it's not "do not integrate the noble primitive into the corrupt modern world.txt".

# ¿ Oct 8, 2015 18:04

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Isolated groups (religious, indigenous, etc.,) should be de-isolated.