Hello civilized anons

>material wealth
irrelevant, poor people today have more material wealth than the average member of the bourgeoisie back in the middle ages, are they happy about it? No, material wealth is just dumb hedonic treadmill stuff, the hedonic setpoint resets itself every single time.
>the ability to pursue pleasure
Hedonism is shit.
>legal justice
Barely any internal crime in those societies ever happen. They're too small/property barely exists as a concept and so on.
The actual reason why we're not better off is because that kind of society doesn't allow for any kind of greatness to be brought about. Where is their art, their philosophy, their knowledge of the natural world? They're beast-like.

We're obsessed with happiness.
Compare our lust for being happy to theirs.

they find total fulfillment in simple things that you would simply not understand.

they're not constantly analyzing their lives to know if they have lived a good life or not.
They just live.

>Barely any internal crime in those societies ever happen. They're too small/property barely exists as a concept and so on.

I'm pretty sure that's extremely inaccurate. Hunter gatherer societies have ridiculously high murder rates.

>they find total fulfillment in simple things that you would simply not understand.

But you would? What are you basing these pronouncements on?

Want of ignorance.
Being jealous of fools and yards for their lack of anxiety

They have extremely high rates of people duing from violent causes, yes, but if you look at what the violent cause is, it's being killed in a war with other tribes.
Or, the rate is too sensitive to random variations given how small hunter gatherer tribes are. Same thing can happen in small countries like iceland.

it is not technology

they have a monocultural close knit community and learn to get along

they don't have to go out every day and deal with neurotic dysfunctional strangers who get angry, offended and hateful over silly shit creating constant tension, they aren't blasted with ads that try to take advantage of their fears and perversions, they aren't told they are an unpopular unfashionable subhuman unless they wear these expensive trainers and designer clothes

you are attacking technology because you yourself are neurotic and attacking something that is generally good gives you a sense of catharsis

This is bs, they aren't purely instictual, they are just more practical in their thought. Though it depends which tribe you are talking about. Usually the elder has to collect a shitload of oral history, and medicine men need to know an encyclopedia of knowledge of plants and healing remedies. Not to mention any supernatural knowledge. You may be right in that we overthink things though, and we have too much free time.

>making us dumber than any tribal

QUICK!

What's the shape of a water molecule?
What's the number for Hydrogen on the periodic table?
What do you put on a cut to help it heal?
What makes waves happen?
Why does the sun set?
What's the best way to bust a nut after a long day at work?
How do you make seeds grow into plants?
What language does the majority of China speak?
What is responsible for the thoughts you are having right now?
What is cancer?
What's the square route of 144?

Congrats, if you've answered literally any of these questions, you're smarter than any tribal.

Jesus Christ user, think before you post.

You're not smarter, you just know more stuff.

That's the definition of being smarter you tard.

No it isn't, that's the definition of being educated.

>inb4 brainlet asserts education is a synonym for intelligence

No, that's the definition of being knowledgeable, smart is a matter of cognitive ability.
I definitely know more stuff than von Neumann knew at 14, but I'm also quite a lot dumber than he was.

>Barely any internal crime in those societies ever happen.
>They're beast-like.
I don't think you know much about tribal cultures.

>We're obsessed with happiness.
A lot of us are forced to work 8 or more hours a day doing tedious, repetitive things that don't really benefit you or people around you. Later we are brainwashed by the best sociologists to buy products that will make you "free". I wouldn't call it an obsession, but being mislead.

>they find total fulfillment in simple things
Yup. We need more buddism or such.

I don't think you do. Beast-like referred to their inability to produce that which sets us apart from beasts, not that they're actually beasts or that they communicate by growling.

Pretty sure us Danes are happier than savages tbqh

Yeah, all those antidepressants you guys use are just to boost the happiness, right?

Constant rape and plunder of defenseless peoples tends to make the raiders feel pretty happy tbqh.

Everyone likes free stuff.

>you are attacking technology because you yourself are neurotic
OP (me) might be neurotic, but he is not attacking technology. Rather how it's used.

>What do you put on a cut to help it heal?
I'd have to ask shaman.

I've seen these threads a lot more often lately, then I started reading pic related and he basically posits the same thing.

How many of you are getting this opinion from this book? It's an interesting idea that we basically got domesticated by wild grains / other agricultural plants rather than vice-versa and that the surplus rarely actually benefits the farmer, and I'd have rathered been a hunter gatherer than an early agricultural revolution farmer. But I'd rather have what I do today than be a hunter gatherer, and we have civilization/agriculture to thank for that.

Honestly i hate people who are so quick to denounce the modern society, while there is no real way to measure happiness since it is relative i most certainly would rather know than not know.

They have a lot going for them but the constant threat of diseases must suck. Imagine most of your kids dying before age 12 and knowing that one infection can kill you.

Hunter-gatherer societies with modern medicine would be god-tier. And maybe with travel opportunities, I wouldn't want to give up holidays.

Only a few of these are actually relevant to your lifestyle as a tribal hunter-gatherer, though.

If you ran off a list of how to catch food, identify poisonous plants, build a shelter, etc you'd get a lot of "I don't fucking know". We have different priorities to hunter gatherers. The square root of 144 isn't gonna do you a lot of fucking good if you're stuck in the woods.

I'm pro-civilization by the way, your example is just about as retarded as saying football players are dumb because they can't skate.

>Beast-like referred to their inability to produce that which sets us apart from beasts

We 'set ourselves apart from beasts' long before the agricultural revolution.

I'm saying we didn't even quite a lot after the agricultural revolution.

>implying modern medicine means shit in this age of antibiotic resistance

You need modern sanitation standards too. And you can't have them living in a mudhut wading barefoot through the giardia and helminth infested shit mud.

So your option is to stop treating people like in the good old days so we can pretend mental illnesses don't exist anymore?

>saying football players are dumb because they can't skate.

I mean, yeah. It's not really that hard.

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No, I'm saying having a high rate of antidepressants conflicts a bit with the idea of being the happiest people.
Of course, regardless of this point, the idea of measuring and comparing happiness is completely retarded.

Yeah totally man, tons of animals knew how to controlled use of fire prior to those EVIL HUMANS with their AGRICULTURE extincting all of them.

And I'm saying you're wrong.

Neither are analogies user.

What sets us apart from beasts?

Glad to hear that.

>How many of you are getting this opinion from this book?
Not OP.
>I've seen these threads a lot more often lately
You'll find first mentions of this problem in the Epos of Gilgamesh.

A society's technological development should correlate with its IQ, with strict trade barriers between the different races.

Every time a European invention gets brought into the developing world, uncivilized peoples inevitably hijack those goods (which they could never develop on their own) and they use them for evil. IS rides around in Ford pickup trucks, Nigerians get into shooting matches over who gets to illegally tap the oil pipeline, Latin American drug cartels use sophisticated radios to evade detection, etc.

If European and Asian wealth were kept out of these regions, the societies therein would revert to their own natural level of development. Latin America would become an advanced agricultural society with extensive road networks, with food crops displacing drugs for lack of an export market. MENA would be a little more advanced in that it would have water and sanitation systems like those of ancient Rome. Sub-Saharan Africa would likely revert to village-based agriculture and mass illiteracy, which wouldn't be so bad in practice since it's all their minds can handle. East Asia would stay more or less the same as now, but cease to continue developing further.

White societies would continue to evolve at their own natural pace, without the hideous chaos which has historically resulted from the diffusion of their technologies to uncivilized peoples.

>You'll find first mentions of this problem in the Epos of Gilgamesh.

I'm not saying it's a new question, I'm saying it's a question that I've observed getting asked a lot more on this board lately. New literature has a way of bring old questions back to the forefront.

The ability to control fire is of no interest to what I'm talking about.
Good.
As I said earlier, art, philosophy, science.

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The only reason why you can sit on your ass all day thinking about what is happiness and how do we achieve it is because civilization has put everything else at your disposal, so you don't have to worry about surviving.

Not having time to think about happiness =/= being happy.

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>controlled use of fire is not science

Stopped reading there, opinions disregarded, thread hidden.

you're all retards
what sets us apart from beasts is uniquely language
the more complex a species' language system is the more human-like and intelligent they act
human language however is simply far more complex and gives power of articulation that is far above any other existing animal "language"

No but having time to think about happiness seems to make people unhappy, or at least very aware of how unhappy they are.

let's not forget that while only primitive tribes are what remains today, there used to be an advanced, independently evolved civilization in pre-Columbian America, with cities described by Conquistadores like Hernan Cortes as more beautiful than European cities.

So you'd rather be preoccupied with basic survival than have time to think introspectively?

No, that would be a technical skill. Do you also think an engineer is a scientist?
Do you think if chimps started to control fire (just that) they would significantly close the gap between us? I don't.

>As I said earlier, art, philosophy, science.

So all these things are requisite before we're separated from the animals? Or are elements of them merely required? Art predates agriculture, science arguably does unless you consider it the specific school of thought we have today, and if so we've only been separate from beasts for a very limited time. Philosophy like what? People had cultures, world views and explanations for the world around them for a long fucking time. Pre agricultural people had ritual burials so clearly they had a concept of things like afterlife.

>technology is not a science
>let me change the goalposts, now it's about advancing animals to humans and not what separates humans from animals

&humanities was a mistake

>clearly they had a concept of things like afterlife
I don't know any specifics, but I don't see why these things are inextricably linked - you can honour the death of someone close to you without believing that they've gone anywhere but the earth.

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>So all these things are requisite before we're separated from the animals?
Well, we're already technically separated from them by virtue of our ability to do those things, we actualize the division when we bring about the -entirely human- phenomena I listed.
>Art predates agriculture
Painting predates agriculture, but not every painting can be called art.
>science arguably does
The attempt to know the natural world has to be systematic. So, not from Galileo onwards but at least Mesopotamia/Egypt
>Philosophy like what?
Like the difference there is between Socrates and the local folklore of a small town. Can you see what I mean?
>technology is not a science
Yes, user, technology is not a science, you might guess that from the fact that STEM is science, technology, engineering and maths. As you can see, everyone around you already agrees that the T and the E don't go together with the S.
>now it's about advancing animals to humans and not what separates humans from animals
what the fuck are you blabbering about,

Here is so much wrong and wishful thinking I won't even bother to argue.

>As I said earlier, art, philosophy, science.
Them "beast-like" primitives have all that. It's just... primitive. And different than ours.

why was she licking the leather? She could have licked her hair if she had hair, but this is retarded.

I've sketched a few reasons why they often don't fall under that umbrella here

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>The only reason why you can sit on your ass all day
But I can't. I have to work to pay for food and a place to live. I wonder if I work more than tribals?
Being a kid as a tribal souds a lot more fun. If only them white devils didn't bring diseases.

They haven't tasted the fruit of knowledge

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>I've sketched a few reasons
Completely arbitralry points. You are asking:
>Where is their art, their philosophy, their knowledge of the natural world?
Well, I encourage you to check them out. Because I still think you don't know much about those and arguing from ignorance. You say their society doesn't allow for any kind of greatness. Here is a clip with women pursuing greatness in sports - that is a lot more than our culture used to allow women. There are also tits, so you won't be bored.
youtube.com/watch?v=A6h1eF27rFw

>get appendicitis
>die

Feels bad man.

damn those tits

>Muh lazy but smart

End yourself

Enkidu is always right.

Fuck no.
I'm living the dream, the quest for interesting pornography.

>Xingu cultural complex
>"Isolated"
>Despite being surrounded by industrial farmlands at every edge of their rez
Zozzle.

In any case the Iamurikuma rite(s) are interesting as fuck.

Long ago, in the mythic dreamtime, the women controlled all the sacred flutes, and therefore all the sacred shamanic powers. This rite retells that period of mythic history, and women take on a dominant social role through the Iamurikuma festivities, because there's always the risk that without that placation, they'll steal the flutes again and impose their own social order(s).

The rites form an axis of dialogue, you can hear the women singing lexicalized songs; those are their 'response' songs to the men's flute playing, and then the men will incorporate the female variations back into THEIR songs creating a never ending cycle.

Much of the content deals with the concept of "kawokakuma" or romantic jealousy.

Much of this then gets tied up into notions of temporarily within the "naaki" symbol complexes and the Villages of the Dead.

This is just wrong though. Hunter-gatherer groups spend far less time "working" (gathering resources) than we do in modern society. Bushmen some 30ish hours a week (season dependent), Amazonian tribes 45ish. Not saying I want to go live that way, but the "we have time to think about these things" argument is just not valid. Primitive people spend far more time socializing and playing than we do, it's not even up for debate.

Go back to your forest.
"HURRR IS LIVING IN TREES BETTER THAN SHELTER, ABUNDANT FOOD, AND MEDICINE?"

Gee I wonder...

Really that depends on your means of procurement.

Shit like manioc is really labor intensive to cultivate. Much of the labor saved in hunt during the abundance years gets shifted when the mobile society needs to shift up or down stream/trail.

You're still right, precomplex societies, on average, spend less time in labor than complex cultures, but the extent to which you're actually 'in the black' through the course of maybe five or so years will depend on your actual subsistence practices and the quality of your current settlement.

No matter the EXACT labor contexts, they do spend more time in social bonding and play than 'we' do by leaps and bounds.

Thatks for the input. Would you care to write more about "romantic jealousy"?

If by "Happier" you mean crawling with parasites and ringworms, living in fear of running out of food and dying from easily treated shit like asthma and premature birth or the flu, then yes, yes they are.

Also, if modern humans get sick of society, we can always just go camping for a week and then go back to our plush healthy lifestyle. Nothing's stopping you from living in a tent, drinking lots of beer, and shitting in a ditch every weekend for fun, user.

The idea is that you're not a little jealous of your lovers' interactions and connections with other members of the opposite sex then the relationship is already dead.

If you see your husband with that slutty girl in the village and don't chew him out just a lil bit it's evidence the 'heat' has gone out of the relationship.

So these songs often have content that insults other affines that your lover may know, couched in socially acceptable terms. So, like, you can't just walk up the girl who takes your husband into that one *wink* hunting trail and scream REEEEEEEEEEE, YOU WHORE but can compose a songs that's something akin to "May the fires of my love for that dude leave other women a burnt husk" or some poetic metaphor like that.

These get less metaphorical when you deal with societies that have plural marriages. Over on the other side of the jungle near the Andes the songs are much more "May that cunt Becky have a nasty cooch, so may that dude shall always chose my hammock."

Nice!
Is this related to your work?

Undergrad anthro (archaeo). Fuckloads of ethnography. Soft spot for the Amazon. Master in museum admin. Considering going to search for assault sorcerers and dark shamen for a PhD but I don't wanna die young.

Any field experience in Amazon?
> assault sorcerers and dark shamen
Sound like RPG character classes.

Reminds me of Don Kulick's study of the 'kros' in a Papua New Guinea village. Basically a socially sanctioned way for people, usually women, to air their grievances

humdev.uchicago.edu/sites/humdev.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/kulick/1993 Kulick Speaking as a woman.pdf

>Papua New Guinea
There's a LOT of similarities between the SE Asian precomplex cultures and Amazonia right down to uxorilocality and the importance and meaning of the flute complexes.

youtube.com/watch?v=JF_U-0Jh1eM

amazon.com/Dark-Shamans-Kanaima-Poetics-Violent/dp/0822329883

amazon.com/Darkness-Secrecy-Anthropology-Witchcraft-Amazonia/dp/0822333457/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=P4EPBF64AEBV300VPXDQ

I shit on your "greatness".

>Any field experience in Amazon?
No, pardon.

Not gonna buy books, but I'm checking out videos. Interesting subject. Do you think there is any truth to their "powers"? Not saying magic, but stuff they know about and our science does not?

If that's your point of interest, you should at least get on an Amazon river trip for vacation. Then you'll see if you wan't to go "deeper".

>Do you think there is any truth to their "powers"?
Absolutely.

>Not saying magic
I am.
You'd be floored to realize how many ethnographers go into the jungles secular and come out as spiritists.

>Then you'll see if you wan't to go "deeper".
I probably don't, tbqh, because I'll probably wind up dead, and I'm not talking incidentally but due to my specific spheres of interest. I have a bajillion reasons not to go (and not 'muh familee' or 'muh comfort') but who knows maybe I'll wind up doing ethno at some point.

I'm waaaaay more interested in material culture and the preservation thereof as a career.

The only reason I'd truly have to go to many of the places I'm ethnographically invested in would be to sate my own sick curiosities and not for any "academic" purpose, where I find shit like trace element analysis legit fun which is productive for the community and as interesting to me as trying to get Tongo the Savage to translate some sodomite shaman's poison formula comprehensibly.

Go before capitalism and missionaries get to them. I'll be looking for news about another white tourist killed by tribals ;)

youtube.com/watch?v=QW-l-CPC6QY

That hadly ever happens.

the main problem of this tribes are more "civilized" individuals, the land it's valuable and there's a lot to gain from removing them from existance.

>white
Swing and a miss. I'm indigenous, like them. Well not like THEM but I could probably use the 'second (third but they don't gotta know that) generation mestizo racionales' card to get inroads and avoid absurd requests like "Ayo, professor, get the whole village industrial farming rigs and/or cars".

>that fucking vid
Don't get me started.
youtube.com/watch?v=FGJKXmUZcNo

You're white on the inside.

You got that backwards, I'm white on the outside, because I sure as fuck don't feel white when peers are recounting their childhood and I reflect back on all the powwow travelling I did.

For them 'grandma's' is a 1960's era ranch house at the edge of a farm plot. For me it was a two room adobe hut.

That said I do appear to have more 'upper class white' interests than the other 'upper class whites'.