Send in the robots.
The Forbidden Island
211–220 of 288 posts
Re: The Forbidden Island
#212Just think: A life without the damage wrought by modern antibiotics, dentistry, surgery, and preventative medicine! Where if you get sick with something that a week's worth of pills would clear right up, you're gonna die in pain! Paradise! Yep, nothing quite like the Noble Savage, who has the dignity to die of something you've only heard about in old novels.
Yeah? And who's going to pay for all their modern antibiotics, dentistry, surgery, and preventative medicine? I'm no expert on native/Western interactions but it's my understanding that typically the native population nose dives because of new diseases and those that survive are left to try and make money in a new, grander system of society which is completely different from what they've done for generations prior.
Right now they have a way of life in which food is plentiful; they want fruit they pull it from a tree, they want fish they reach into their lagoon. I'm sure they have their share of injuries and sickness but is it really worth trading their current life away for? And what will they replace it with? Over-harvesting their food sources to sell away? Performing their rituals for gawking tourists until the very acts are meaningless? Being exposed to a slew of diseases they've never had to worry about before only to find out that our modern antibiotics cost too much for their measly incomes?
Regardless of how they've done it these people have survived for what... 65,000 years? I don't think they need anything we have to offer. Meanwhile look at how nearly every other native population has fared after coming into contact with Westerners. Sure our society has plenty of great aspects and advantages to it but these things come with a cost. I don't think it's possible for our modern world to mesh with the Sentinelese without totally destroying their way of life if not a majority of their population.
I now find myself wishing I'd read the copy of "The Coral Sea" by Alan Villiers which is sitting on my bookshelf at home. From my understanding it's a book, published some 50 or 60 years ago, chronicling the history of various Pacific Islands and how Western exploration and exploitation have effected them. The general synopsis from what I've read elsewhere has been that they haven't fared too well.
Re: The Forbidden Island
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally I like refrigeration, modern medicine, transportation, and high technology. Maybe those aren't your thing, but I know if I was born into a society like that, I would spend my life trying to see what was beyond the water. Or die. Because, you know, a lot of them die.
We all die.
They die sooner.
Re: The Forbidden Island
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Commerce with all nations, alliance with none. What can they trade ? Knowledge about their way of living, genomic studies, dieting habits, linguistic analysis, anthropological studies of they way they represent the world. Last both are really dangerous to them because those interactions will alter their culture in significant ways. The first one are highly valuable.* What can we trade ? A lot. What can we trade that…
> What can they trade ? [...] genomic studies and interesting genes will be stolen from them and patented.
And I would do this 10x over if proved to be profitable.
Re: The Forbidden Island
#215[deleted]
Re: The Forbidden Island
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
* Childhood diseases * Stillborn children * Murder * Rape Good point. Since in joining modern society they'd be missing out on those things those things that no longer ever occur, a fair trade would be to introduce them to consumerism and all of the lovely, healthy, meaningful things that includes.
Are you suggesting they are as common in the modern society as they are in a savage one?
They could be. What do you know? These people have a culture that spans 60 thousand years, way longer than anything that forms the basis of our culture.
Re: The Forbidden Island
#217Leave them alone.
They've somehow managed to stay alive through tens of thousands of years and limited interaction with us. People have approached them over decades and they have made the choice numerous times to push out the outsiders.
Despite this, I went down a rat-hole of trying to find out more about them... and then decided thats where it should end. I don't need any more information than what's already out there. Anthropologists need not find out more while risking their own safety and the survival of these people.
Re: The Forbidden Island
#218Let’s suppose our earth is visited by aliens. Giant extraterrestial spaceships appear. They make contact, abduct a couple of humans, some of which return with strange diseases. Oh yeah, and heaps of iPads as gifts. The people that make it back speak of a strange society, where everybody is essentially a mindless part of a big mainframe, not unlike the Borg in Star Trek. One day, the aliens make contact. We try to fen…
The devil is in the details, as always. Would I want to be left alone by the Borg? Yes. But what if it was The Culture? I would be very disappointed if a civilization like that saw us and said "Oh, they probably wouldn't want all of our bullshit, leave them alone." I'm sure there are many who would disagree. The big problem with the alien analogy is our level of knowledge and language. The tribesmen are...savages. Th…
> The tribesmen are...savages
tribesmen.. savages.. how about people? You can't judge them solely by technology. If the historians are correct, they have 65.000 years of cultural evolution under their belts.
The thing is, we know for a fact that attempting contact or "assimilation" will result in a wide variety of failures. It has happened again and again. There is no incentive at all for us to make them fare well in our society. We can't even take care of our own. They seem to be healthy, happy and free of trouble; why not focus your good will on the 1 billion other people that are already 'assimilated' and live in much worse conditions?
Re: The Forbidden Island
#219Let’s suppose our earth is visited by aliens. Giant extraterrestial spaceships appear. They make contact, abduct a couple of humans, some of which return with strange diseases. Oh yeah, and heaps of iPads as gifts. The people that make it back speak of a strange society, where everybody is essentially a mindless part of a big mainframe, not unlike the Borg in Star Trek. One day, the aliens make contact. We try to fen…
>You like?
... yes?
Re: The Forbidden Island
#220Would be a nice idea to just get rid of the few bozos there and open your own nice little kingdom. Maybe develop a tax heaven and vacation destination.