How about the bulk of Sir Walter Scott's work? In fact, the concept of the noble savage is a large part of Romanticism. Although today savage invokes the idea of a racist term for colonized people, it also applies to vikings, Scottish highlanders and the ilk.
What happened to this page. The meaning has changed a lot. Noble Savages can be white. It is about being civilized.
So the Real Life section has just been deleted entirely, with the reason "Not examples of the trope". It seems to me however that they are-they're portraying foragers/tribal people as in some ways superior. Perhaps some examples aren't-we could remove them. It seems like we should discuss this though. What does anyone else think?
- The Noble Savage trope is in part based on generalizations about Native Americans. There is a kernel of truth to the idea that they lived within nature, were not as commerce-oriented, and had matriarchal input, but the problems of the trope come when this is idealized, and anything too "Western" is automatically bad, even in the face of all logic (for example, modern technology). People have been to known to demand that Aztecs be depicted as less sophisticated than they really were in order to fit in closer with this trope, complaining that terms like “provincial” and “months” ought to be avoided in favor of "country" and "moons" (never mind that the Aztecs had a solar calendar and an empire spanning central America). There are noble values in Western culture, too. There are noble values in any culture — and, because all human cultures are made up of real live human beings, some of the members of each one live up to their values and some don't. The reason that this trope has Unfortunate Implications is that it implies that this fact, which is true about all human beings, is not true about Native Americans — which, in turn, implies that Native Americans aren't fully human. In general, a common criticism of most post-colonial scholarship is that it tends to overindulge in this trope — unquestioningly praising "native" people and cultures while glossing over some of the less pleasant aspects. For example, Marshall Sahlins, who theorized that hunter-gatherer societies actually enjoyed higher standards of living and greater social equality than "civilized" humans, and dismissed those things that hunter-gatherer societies lack as not really worth having to begin with. Other scholars and researchers have also deconstructed this argument by pointing out the biases, selective lenses and idealized framing that tends to come along with this trope, as well as the tendencies for double standards and condescending attitudes. Sahlins is the source of the "original affluent society" idea for instance, claiming hunter-gatherer groups only needed to work about fifteen to twenty hours a week and could spend the rest how they pleased. However, he defined "work" as solely food gathering, thus excluding food preparation entirely. When this was added, it averaged around 40-45 hours of work per week-that is, around the same as most modern people in the West have.
- The trope also tends to vastly underplay the actual difficulties hunter-gatherer societies face, such as the commonness and sheer brutality of tribal warfare, famine, disease and personal and gender roles defined by necessity and mysticism, not to mention sky-high child mortality, all in a further attempt to portray civilized life as more decadent and less optimized in comparison.
- Additionally, most of what we know about Native Americans comes from the time when 90% of their entire population was wiped out by European diseases, likely spread by Cortes's contact with the Aztecs earlier. Before that, the natives had cities and actually cut down so many trees that some historians think that the resultant sudden rise in CO 2 helped stop the Little Ice Age in Europe (i.e. on the other side of the world). Monk's Mound is an example of Native American engineering, with earth for the mound being carried for many miles without the benefit of horses. The book 1491 goes into great detail, such as how the Amazon Forest resulted when the agriculture of native societies collapsed during these disease epidemics and plants essentially went wild (thus the lost cities in the jungle). So the image of Native Americans as almost entirely disparate tribal hunter-gatherers is because they were largely what remained afterward (due to being more isolated and thus escaping disease at the time).
- As for the whole "one with nature" thing it's often not mentioned that primitive tribes are almost always responsible for the extinction of several species before complex civilization develops. The most grand example might be the extinction of North American mega-fauna (including the famed woolly mammoth) due to overhunting. When Europeans arrived the natives only appeared to be so in tune with nature simply because of a combination of necessity and the fact the Europeans had no idea how far the environment had already been modified.
- A lot of people frown on certain practices done by industrial societies but are complimentary of nearly identical practices done by tribal societies. For example, a lot of people frown on any product, especially food, made with byproducts. Some of those same people also think it's noble that several Native American tribes did not waste any part of the animal they killed. However, this practice and the use of by-products are basically the same thing.
They all violate Examples Are Not General and frankly come across as generalizing and complaining that's only tangential to the trope; these aren't Real Life examples of Noble Savage, they're "well actually, they're just savages and I'd rather we treat them as such."
Edited by Larkmarn Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
Okay, well that tells me what the issue is with it being there thanks. I suppose it can't be repaired, perhaps by cutting or editing examples? Some appear reasonably specific. I don't agree with your characterization though-it seems like a criticism of this trope in real life rather, than just denigrating people. For instance, the part about noble values being found in all cultures.
Removed natter from the real-life example:
- Lack of rigid status and inequality?? Not if you're female my friend!
- Many hunter-gatherer societies especially from the most "primitive" end are relatively gender-equal, actually. The main difference is that men hunt and women gather, but socially the two can be equally appreciated. Not to say that there aren't highly misogynistic tribal societies in existence, but that's not the sole way to go.
- Prescribed gender roles =/= gender inequality
- Conversely: prescribed gender roles =/= gender equality, either. The original commentator probably was considering how women were treated overall, which is usually glossed over—for reasons generally traceable to some version of Did Not Do The Research, a determination to believe this trope, a combination of those two, and—very rarely—because nobody documented the 'Good Old Ways' before its practitioners decided that a dependable food supply (something no hunter-gatherer society can claim) is really, really awesome.
- There's also the issue of the ultra-high child mortality rate.
- Moving away from disease is not how it works: disease is not caused by miasma rising from the ground, disease is caused either by organic malfunctions (examples: cancer, diabetes), microbes (examples: colds, flues, any plague ever), and occasionally by the environment (usually via pollution). In fact, the Black Plague managed to spread like it did because of people attempting to move away from it—they instead carried the disease with them. Actually, the whole idea has issues, because hunter-gatherer cultures exist on the subsistence level: what leisure time
- More then one might think; hunting cannot be done continuously or you run out of game.
- The researcher was necessarily applying his own criteria to having a good society. Maybe a Noble Savage wouldn't mind being NOT being savage and having any kind of diet he wants, varied or not; opportunity to be healed of disease rather then just moving away from it. Not to mention lots and lots of materialistic goods (which he just might prefer to having "little" materialistic goods), and plenty of leisure too (except when he is acquiring more of said materialistic goods); and the ability to share these well beyond his immediate family every time he sends a check to charity (possibly for funding studies about the virtue of Noble Savages). And he might even think rigid status and hierarchy a reasonable price to pay, especially when told this that helps our warriors keep neighboring tribes from enslaving our women, and eating our men. Said Noble Savage might even think the idea of having a mysterious council of bards from all over the world communicating by magic, called "TV Tropes" might be kind of fun.
- Not to mention, the idea of obtaining a varied diet and lots of materialistic goods without the possibility of being trampled or gored might have it's advantages.
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