Hacker News Reader

Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

> Our wild history is presented as a time before the world was scarred by borders, before politics, before race, before even the concept of identity carved out its demarcations of who belongs and where.

This is just flat wrong. Tribal politics are brutal, and any ancient community would have a very strong sense of identity, and about who belonged and who didn't. Life was way harder for people who didn't fit into the role assigned by their tribe; if you didn't conform, and were kicked out, you would die.

View on HN

This. The names of many tribes is simply "the people" in their language. You can easily read into it that those humans not that are not members of their tribe are not people. http://www.native-languages.org/original.htm

We invented huge anonymous cities where either tight surveillance or gang wars flourish, extermination camps, total war and many other wonders. Let's explain to any tribe that we, 'people', painfully devised and realized ways to massively and indiscriminately kill very remote civilians using dedicated complex machinery (ICBMs), then discuss about who is 'people' for who.

Comparing the 'costs' of nearly-constant but limited tribal violence to our own 'civilized' violence isn't easy.

They are the exact same thing. We have just transplanted those tribal aspects to our modern world, but we still are the same people.

Indeed. Therefore the "outsiders aren't real people" stance isn't specific to tribal life.

Upon reading (above) "Tribal politics are brutal" and "Life was way harder" one may think about the way we wage war, establish the rat race in huge cities, try hard to control everything everywhere to the point of practically barring anyone to opt out... "brutal"? "harder"? Doubt so.

> Therefore the "outsiders aren't real people" stance isn't specific to tribal life.

Nobody said it is.

Please read "armenarmen" comment, above: "those humans not that are not members of their tribe are not people". Albeit difficult to grok, it seems pretty clear to me.

armenarmen said that happens in tribal life; but not that it was unique/specific to tribal life.

That's not my understanding, as he answered "This." to a post containing "Tribal politics are brutal, and any ancient community would have a very strong sense of identity, and about who belonged and who didn't. Life was way harder...".

It's not easy but it's been contemplated.

https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-archaeological-e...

Came here to say this. This writer is clearly projecting her own opinion of what an ideal society looks like into the past. People usually do this as a way to convince people of why their world view is correct ("this is how people used to do it!"). In this case though, it is blatantly wrong.

Yes it's the myth of the Noble Savage all over again

Agreed. Most of these ancient societies would be completely alien to us. Even pre-US Civil War would be different enough to make the average USA-ian uncomfortable.

There is evidence that hunter gatherers would take care of extremely disabled people. What do you mean by "didn't fit into the role assigned by their tribe"? What are some references on the body of knowledge you are confidently referring to?

Just meaning that if you didn't conform to the tribe's rules, you would be exiled... and exile meant death.

Being part of the community mattered way more in tribal society than modern society.

That also means the tribe was close knit, and would take care of sick and disabled members... as long as you followed the rules.

In a tribal zone exile doesn't everywhere nor always imply death. We nearly cannot escape from our societies. Is it better to be able to escape or not? For the ones really loving liberty the choice seems pretty clear.

In every human society one has to apparently submit to some rules. It is somewhat difficult for me to believe that I enjoy more freedom 'Lynx' (the woman subject of the article).

Can't we escape? What is preventing you from doing what Lynx did, right now?

I'd have to turn off Reddit and go outside.

More seriously, I'd need start a competing tourism business to pay my bills.

Right now we'd have to be allowed outside

Please read "2008guy" comment.

In a word: you may be fined, prosecuted...

Why wasn't Lynx?

Lynx was annoyed in this way. An excerpt from the article follows: "Never mind the struggle to meet Maslow’s tenets of survival: being wild verges on illegal. There are limits to how long you can spend on public land. Fires are frequently prohibited, and hunting is closely circumscribed. Lynx came up against the law in 2008, when a government officer attended one of her classes undercover. She was unaware of his identity until two years later, when she was charged for running a course on public land without a permit and for cutting down a freestanding dead tree. She was barred from the national forests of eastern Washington for a year."

An excerpt from the article follows: "Never mind the struggle to meet Maslow’s tenets of survival: being wild verges on illegal. There are limits to how long you can spend on public land. Fires are frequently prohibited, and hunting is closely circumscribed. Lynx came up against the law in 2008, when a government officer attended one of her classes undercover. She was unaware of his identity until two years later, when she was charged for running a course on public land without a permit and for cutting down a freestanding dead tree. She was barred from the national forests of eastern Washington for a year."

What do you base this off? Do you have any research papers on ancient tribal dynamics or reputable articles where I can read more on this?

I guess I read somewhere Scandinavians used to leave the weak/disabled kids out in wild and if they can survive on their own, they were accepted in the tribe if not then it helped eliminate weakness.

That was in the (fiction) movie 300

I read it on Wikipedia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics

It seems they were not Scandinavian but romans

Reply on news.ycombinator.com