Alpha Centauri 2

Community => Recreation Commons => Topic started by: Elok on May 13, 2017, 05:27:03 AM

Title: The Prime Directive
Post by: Elok on May 13, 2017, 05:27:03 AM

So, there's this community of native Americans called the Yanomamo (sometimes called Yanomami).  They live in the wilds of Venezuela and Brazil, and are technologically quite primitive--almost nothing beyond simple stone tools.  They live in smallish settlements scattered around the jungle, with no overarching government, and whenever things break down in inter-settlement relations (which isn't that uncommon), the resulting wars can be astonishingly brutal.  Up to half of all Yanomamo men ultimately die of violence, and raids on rival settlements typically involve rape, murder, infanticide, abduction, and the like.  Even in peacetime, the men are more or less expected to keep their women in line through regular beatings, punctuated by occasional burning with lit sticks.  Girls are married at puberty, and kept pregnant as much as possible.

The interesting thing to me, on learning all this, was that all people involved with the Yanomamo seem to be overwhelmingly concerned with preserving their culture and way of life.  If these living conditions were found outside of a picturesquely indigenous society, we would be horrified; even the Taliban rule over a more pleasant society.  Basically, their way of life produces no winners; every single Yanomamo who lives past childhood will face at least the threat of violence, and often much more than threats.  Is there something about a culture that warrants preserving it at the expense of everyone who practices it?

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Geo on May 13, 2017, 01:17:23 PM

Quote from: Elok on May 13, 2017, 05:27:03 AM

Is there something about a culture that warrants preserving it at the expense of everyone who practices it?

They seem ideally suited to survive a nuclear holocaust? Someone has to repopulate the world after that...

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Spacy on May 13, 2017, 04:58:42 PM

I think it would be easy to see parts of all societies and cultures that are "wrong".  But, drawing the line between "wrong", "not good", "bad" and "unlikeable" is HARD.

Think about it:  Black, poor, urban culture (the culture that I teach high school to so I have lots of anecdotal evidence that this is true) has no regards to reading.  Reading has no value to them.  By extension - learning for learning's sake isn't valued.  (Remember, we are talking culture here, not individuals.)  Is this "evil"?  What about "wrong"?  If so, who is to say that White, Rural, Deification of Outlaw Skills culture isn't also "wrong" (oh, ya, Deification of Outlaw Skills is also called NASCAR). 

I am sure few people miss the Aztec practice of ripping slaves hearts out and sacrificing them to the gods.  But what if the practice was just giving a blood sacrifice using paper cuts on the pinky of willing practitioners?  How do you draw the lines? 

I have my own ideas, but I will just leave the questions hanging out there for now. 

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Buster's Uncle on May 13, 2017, 07:38:08 PM

A pretty casual survey of the history of native relation in this hemisphere -and the other, for that matter- indicates that intervention has a pretty close to zero chance of ending well for the Yanomamo.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Elok on May 13, 2017, 08:27:34 PM

But their life *now* is horrible.  That's the thing.  Like most non-state societies, they live under a more or less constant threat of violence, to say nothing of hunger and disease.  I think it's important to distinguish the different components of our predecessors' behavior.  It's perfectly reasonable to condemn Cortez for looting the Aztecs' gold and enslaving them, while allowing that Aztec society was deeply and needlessly cruel.  If he'd put a forcible end to "flower wars," washed the blood off the pyramids, and then set up a profitable and more or less honest trade network with them, we'd revere him as a hero.  Now, that's implausible, but even something like a paternalistic and occasionally greedy "protectorate" would have vastly improved Mexica standards of living.

There is modern precedent.  When the government of New Guinea penetrated its highland interior in the sixties and put a stop to tribal warfare, the overwhelming majority of primitive highlanders were relieved.  It didn't mean they had to give up every aspect of their way of life, it only meant that higher authorities kept breakdowns in relationships from turning into cycles of massacres.  And some of their grandchildren today are slowly integrating into modern society.  I'm suspicious of the whole idea that "culture" means everybody does the same thing as their ancestors did eight hundred years ago, since we only ever apply that to the picturesquely low-tech.  I'm no less American for not living in a crude pine-log cabin trapping beavers for a living; does a Yanomamo stop being a Yanomamo because he's stopped demonstrating his warrior spirit on his wife's back?

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Buster's Uncle on May 13, 2017, 09:34:58 PM

You're advocating attempts to regulate domestic violence.  Good luck with that.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Elok on May 13, 2017, 09:42:46 PM

Not necessarily.  There could be any number of ways to change this.  Legally mandating, and enforcing, the right of women and their children to leave a community where they feel abused would have devastating effects on the brutal status quo (and offering incentives to communities which refrain from burning women, etc.).  Now, at present Venezuela does not have the means to do such a thing, since their government is about to collapse.  But in principle it should be possible to rescue people from a squalid and miserable existence, by direct or indirect means.  The only thing stopping it is this notion, which I do not get, that a particular set of customs constitutes a being with rights which can [Sleezebag] living people's.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Buster's Uncle on May 13, 2017, 10:12:01 PM

I'd want to know infinitely more about these people before I even thought about stirring in their crap.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Elok on May 13, 2017, 10:29:17 PM

I think it's fair to make arguments about practicability and undesired side effects, etc.  I'm taking issue with the fundamental assumption that belonging to a tribal society makes cruel behavior sacrosanct.  We didn't excuse the pederasty scandal on the grounds that deference to priests was part of Catholic culture; would it be okay if the Pope were a shaman and the altar boys wore bark loincloths?  It seems to me that we're allowing post-colonialist guilt to override our view of these people as human beings.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Buster's Uncle on May 14, 2017, 12:06:02 AM

I think more than anything, it's an acknowledgement that, historically near 100% of the time, fooling with "primitive" cultures ends very badly for the primitives - as in, most or all of them die.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Elok on May 14, 2017, 12:53:44 AM

Except in this case, they don't have anything we want.  Modern economies have little use for agrarian slaves and most of their land is worthless.  Now, there's gold under some parts of it--and at present, they have extreme difficulty resisting encroachment by prospectors, because they have no understanding of our legal system, possess no real wealth and are politically disunited.  This could change, with modernization.  Keeping them as a relic of aboriginal lifestyles isn't doing them any favors.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Buster's Uncle on May 14, 2017, 01:03:23 AM

Quote from: BUncle on May 14, 2017, 12:06:02 AM

most or all of them die.

Personally, I realized a very long time ago that I wasn't competent to save the world - and I'd better get my own crap straightened out before I tried to stir in anyone else's...

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Buster's Uncle on May 14, 2017, 01:33:10 AM

And, y'know, assuming for the sake of things that your characterization of the people and bad acts is accurate and fair with no major omissions of fact -not necessarily a safe assumption- I'm not disagreeing that the situation is deplorable and wrong and somewhat our business as fellow human beings with hearts - just strongly doubting that the problem is fixable by outsiders.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Lorizael on May 14, 2017, 01:59:10 AM

The value I see in culture is not localized in some particular set of rituals or customs but in the worldview and ideas that arise from it. Those are what we should preserve. But preservation by itself it also not valuable (to me). The continued existence of novel worldviews provides a benefit when we integrate it into all the other ways of thinking we've encountered and create an ever more interesting and useful synthesis. Thus, benefit (for both) comes from engagement. But if engagement leads to destruction, then nothing is gained.

If we can preserve a culture while simultaneously engaging with it, should we intervene to put a stop to awful cultural practices (which don't, as far as I'm concerned, have any value that demands preservation)? Well, life is terrible and we're all going to die. There's such a tremendous amount of suffering we don't have any capacity to prevent. Pumping resources into helping these people might be something worth doing, but it inevitably means there are others we will help less. What activity will help the most people per dollar? Man, I don't know. Maybe this.

This is why the monkeysphere exists as far as I'm concerned, at least until we really get psychohistory nailed down.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Rusty Edge on May 14, 2017, 09:52:21 PM

If they are essentially stone-age culture, any exposure to us is potentially as deadly to them as Europeans contacting the Mississippi Civilization. Whether you are trying to help them or eradicate them, the consequences are potentially the same.

There are lost cultures for which I do not grieve. These Yanomamis may be one of them. Then again, they seem to be self-reliant, while the socialists in Venezuela are struggling to feed themselves. Will both still be in Venezuela in a hundred or a thousand years?

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Elok on May 15, 2017, 04:40:44 AM

Well, they're self-reliant in the sense that their numbers can't outstrip their resources.  And I wouldn't say Bolivarian socialism, or whatever it's called, is really intrinsic to Venezuelan culture.  But why should we consider the survival of a cultural group per se?  Cultural sets are not living entities, and people do modify their cultures.  We don't think of tribal Germanic groups as having "died out"; their cultures mingled with Roman and Christian culture to form something different, and the Germans were no worse off.

I don't know that societies should forcibly intervene to repress perverse customs in all cases--perhaps not even in most.  A softer touch would do better--offering trade and educational opportunities.  At present, the local governments seem to be treating the Yanomamo culture (as it presently exists) as something to be preserved inviolate.  But people often benefit when cultures change.  It's easy for us to overlook this, but even the New World societies we overthrew were hardly static.  The Aztec empire was younger than the US is now when Cortez came along, IIRC.  And the Plains Indians adopted the horse, and radically modified their societies to take advantage of it, with remarkable speed.

I have an even grumpier rant for the idea of "cultural appropriation," but I don't think anybody here really believes in that so I'll keep it to myself.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Rusty Edge on May 15, 2017, 07:25:29 AM

Well, introducing law, education, or religion might solve their problems, but there's still the risk of disease, addiction, etc., failure to adapt to a modern economy. I guess that's kind of the point of "The prime directive".

Why should we consider the survival of a cultural group per say?  Cool question. I have an answer, I'd like to ponder it some more.  Can I get back to you on that?

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Unorthodox on May 15, 2017, 06:31:03 PM

Quote from: Elok on May 13, 2017, 05:27:03 AM

Basically, their way of life produces no winners;

Define winner. 

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Unorthodox on May 15, 2017, 06:33:41 PM

Quote from: Spacy on May 13, 2017, 04:58:42 PM

I am sure few people miss the Aztec practice of ripping slaves hearts out and sacrificing them to the gods. 

 :whistle:

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Elok on May 15, 2017, 09:09:40 PM

Quote from: Unorthodox on May 15, 2017, 06:31:03 PM

Quote from: Elok on May 13, 2017, 05:27:03 AM

Basically, their way of life produces no winners;

Define winner.

Most unjust societies produce winners and losers, right?  Somebody is profiting from the injustice.  So, the antebellum South was definitely very bad for slaves, and not particularly good for the majority of whites; the big landowners bought up more and more of the land, leaving the poorer majority to scrape by on little plots on the periphery.  The closest thing the South had to a middle class were white people who owned, say, five slaves and as many acres.  Even they had no real prospects for advancement in their underdeveloped, agrarian society.  The only reason so many of those poor whites fought for slavery was that they couldn't bear the thought of black people being their equal.  As long as the slaves were underfoot, poor crackers had a kind of equality with even the wealthiest plantation lords.

I don't know if there are any privileged classes among the Yanomamo.  It's possible that, say, shamans are personally inviolate and get an extra share of wives.  But if so, they're a very small elite.  By and large, everyone in this society is about equally badly off.  Women are more routinely subject to violence, including rape, but are significantly less likely to be actually killed.  I guess it's sort of better to be a man, but there's no entrenched interest to defend here.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Unorthodox on May 15, 2017, 10:40:06 PM

My sole knowledge of them comes from Cannibal Holocaust, which is taken with a few pounds of salt as one of, if not the first "found footage" subgenre horror film.  As with all things horror that might have had potential at my place, I thus have done a cursory research into them. 

My understanding is the word Yanomamo is really a made up one to represent a few hundred tribes.  Each village more or less has it's own internal political structure with coalitions among nearby villages not unheard of.  There's debate whether the violence has been proliferated by the influence of western culture or not, as it tends to center around areas where 'culture' is competing with resources, thus the villages must compete with each other more. 

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Elok on May 16, 2017, 02:03:47 AM

It's the norm for non-state communities in close proximity to spend extended periods of time at war.  There's no higher power to mediate or enforce peace, so the only thing preventing a lengthy cycle of bloody retaliation is . . . fear of an endless cycle of bloody retaliation.  Which is to say, relations between these villages are much the same as relations between states prior to the invention of nukes, except that these societies typically lack the concept of a military-civilian distinction since they don't produce enough to support a dedicated military class.  I've not read a book exclusively about the Yanomamo yet, but run into them in several.  I aim to fix that when I come back from MD at the end of May.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Buster's Uncle on May 16, 2017, 02:32:18 AM

I 'spose the profitable tack for this conversation to take would be to get into precisely what intervention you'd like to see take place...

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Unorthodox on May 16, 2017, 05:00:44 AM

Given the lack of natural predators, I'm not so sure warfare isn't just what nature/god intended for man. 

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Elok on May 16, 2017, 05:19:41 PM

Buncle, I would suggest beginning with trade incentives, to encourage voluntary cooperation.  At least some Yanomamo land has gold; trade them valuable modern goods (e.g. rain gear, medical supplies, interesting foods not available locally) for access to it, or pay them same to scout or mine it (in a sustainable way, obviously with nothing usable as a weapon in the payment).  Offer voluntary, non-binding mediation to settle disputes between villages, to decrease the frequency of massacres.  It would have to start small, but trade and exposure to new ideas have proven highly corrosive to old values in the past.  Just off the top of my head.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Unorthodox on May 16, 2017, 05:37:45 PM

The gold is more problem than it is solution at this point. 

Honest question, has trade with a 'backwards' civilization ever been anything close to a fair exchange?  To go into a culture that has no concept of money, and offer them items of superficial value compared to the monetary value of what you're taking is not exactly an enlightened course of action. 

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Spacy on May 17, 2017, 01:07:08 AM

I have about 10 lbs of glass beads.  Please give me Manhatten.  Thank you.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Elok on May 17, 2017, 05:22:05 AM

Did I say "an inferior quantity of" anywhere in there?  No.  I'm specifically proposing a fair trade, ie not acting like SOBs.  The chief difficulty there would be the ability of their society to absorb the value of gold; a week's production could give them more crap than they know what to do with.  Might have to start with something lower-value, though I don't know what.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Spacy on May 17, 2017, 11:36:25 AM

Ah, but value is in the eyes of the beholder.

They may value the glass beads a lot more than a tiny island.  Really.  Today it sounds absurd, but glass beads are not the easiest thing to make, and if you have never seen them before they are new and unique. 

If they are completely happy with the loincloth, giving them a tuxedo will not be a good trade.  Even a pair of camo shorts might not have any value.

Reminds me of when I was in the Peace Corps in Ecuador.  I was working with a 50 family indigenous village high in the mountains.  They used the bushes for the past 1000 odd  years to go potty in.  Along comes this gringo who offers to give them a bunch of outhouses, along with directions on how to clean them and the reasons why to keep them clean.  They agree.  We build 60 odd outhouses.  6 months later I return to see how things are going and there are only 2 of them left.  One is next to the school and looks like it hasn't been cleaned ever, and the other is being used to house pigs.  The rest were all dismantled and the parts (bowls & vent pipes) were sold and the cinder blocks and corrugated roofs used to improved their homes.

We value not going to poo in the bushes.  They didn't. 

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Unorthodox on May 17, 2017, 01:37:27 PM

Quote from: Elok on May 17, 2017, 05:22:05 AM

Did I say "an inferior quantity of" anywhere in there?  No.  I'm specifically proposing a fair trade, ie not acting like SOBs.  The chief difficulty there would be the ability of their society to absorb the value of gold; a week's production could give them more crap than they know what to do with.  Might have to start with something lower-value, though I don't know what.

And why should they be the ones to absorb the value our society placed on things?  History is not kind to the solution you propose.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Rusty Edge on May 19, 2017, 05:46:15 AM

Quote from: Rusty Edge on May 15, 2017, 07:25:29 AM

Why should we consider the survival of a cultural group per say?  Cool question. I have an answer, I'd like to ponder it some more.  Can I get back to you on that?

I guess I'd like to see cultures preserved for purposes of genetic diversity. But that's thinking like a farmer.

What's more important to me is preserving culture for it's merit. The culture of Iceland, in particular. Why? Because they have about the lowest murder rate in the world, and have been at peace for a 1,000 years , mostly. Maybe one is the result of the other. Regardless, I'd like that culture to persist until we understand why that is, and beyond that, even if we don't understand why, just to serve as an inspiration. But the internet is making the world smaller. Maybe if they play enough GTA, they'll be just like everybody else in a few generations.  But that should be their choice.

Just like it should be the choice of the Aussie Aboriginals to eat a traditional diet , or go modern and become diabetic. I'd wish for some cultures to be preserved, and others to go away, like the Pitcairn Islanders who seem to have developed a culture of sexually assaulting children.

But on the whole, I wouldn't try to play God with any of them. Not being God, I probably wouldn't be very good at it. So I'll just wish, and stay out of their way.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Spacy on May 19, 2017, 11:24:35 AM

I see nothing wrong with looking at a culture from the outside, making evaluative judgement, and then deciding to interfere.  Deciding that an action is evil, and then deciding to take action against it, isn't a bad thing (assuming you have good judgement to begin with and that the action really is evil). 

Just know up front that there will be unintended consequences, and that you are messing with peoples lives. 

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Geo on May 20, 2017, 08:46:44 PM

Preservation (be it cultural or ecological) has a tendency to pick a certain point in the evolution and try to stagnate it at that point.
Things that stagnate have a tendency to whither and die.

Title: Re: The Prime Directive
Post by: Elok on June 04, 2017, 01:05:12 AM

Quote from: Rusty Edge on May 19, 2017, 05:46:15 AM

But that should be their choice.

Question: by "their choice," do you mean the choice of the group collectively, or of every individual within it?  Those two possibilities are likely mutually exclusive.