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Photo of previously uncontaced tribes in S. America

  • Thread starter nightsky
  • Start date
  • #21
I think these people are living the life. So what if they don't have medicine? It means they stay stronger genetically. I'm sure they're enjoying life just fine without our modern conveniences.

I'm also willing to bet they get a LOT more "time off" living like they do than your average working American. This alone would lead me to believe they have a higher quality of life than us.
 
  • #22
just another culture to be exploited and ruined and it takes away some of the mystery in life
 
  • #23
Ok, clint I think you need to look at the condition of most decendents of Native Americans in Brazil before you say they are better off with modern life. Go walk through the shanty towns of any major Brazilian city and tell me that they would be better off there. Face it you say introduce them to the modern world but my guess is you arent going to pay to fly them to a western country where they will be exposed to the best of western medicine not to mention that our drug companies may be able to learn something to benefit the world as a whole from allowing them to live their traditional life style. I think before we introduce them to the full western world we should send in anthropologists to study their culture the best we can can in many ways easy any transition they may have to deal with if they do incorporate western technologies.

Not to mention they will need their survival skills for when the western global economy collapses when we run out of oil. I would like the human species to survive and these little outposts of it are our only hope at this point.
 
  • #24
If they're gonna war on us, I think it's about time the US sends out the Predators and Global
Hawks. Make sure we get the intelligence right this time....
 
  • #25
I think we should start out slow by sending in some Eskimos, just to get the ball rolling. After that, we can work up to some Amish envoys, and so on. ;)
 
  • #26
I bet they their loinclothes aren't all twisted in a knot about a real estate slump and gasoline prices and Hillary vs Obama vs McCain. So why is it that some of us are feeling sorry for them?
 
  • #27
So you're telling me ever descendant in Brazil lives in the ghetto? That they have no opportunity to escape the ghetto? Seems hard to believe.

How can the drug companies learn anything without exposing them to the outside world? Think about that.... We can't read their minds from a hundred miles away. You anthropologists can study away. I never said we must put a pill in each belly, a coke in every hand, and a birkenstock on every foot right this very second.

Personally, I'd rather live in a shanty town in the modern world than be isolated. People in shanty towns can escape. It is possible. Unless someone from this village just happens to hike far enough, they can't have upward mobility.
 
  • #28
Third world slums suck very badly and there's darned little opportunity to escape, but they look good enough to attract lots of people from the third world countryside. Of course the major reason so many look to escape the countryside is that developed countries have created a global economy that undercuts the rural third world economy.
 
  • #29
Personally, I'd rather live in a shanty town in the modern world than be isolated. People in shanty towns can escape. It is possible. Unless someone from this village just happens to hike far enough, they can't have upward mobility.
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Just because you would, don't mean other people do. How do you know these people are unhappy? That's what is wrong with humans, we always have to push our beliefs onto others.
 
  • #30
Which is why they have the CHOICE. No one said I'd put a gun to their head and force them to conform, did they? It's not that they are unhappy. It's that they could be so much happier and healthier. This isn't about my beliefs. This is about not croaking 30+ years before you have to. It's about not getting a cut in the jungle, and being screwed.

I'm just amazed you people don't agree with me. You'd rather have them suffer disease and a short life expectancy, in order to preserve a culture that can't even be studied without making contact with them. You can not keep them isolated and study them. Once they realize they aren't alone, it all goes down hill as far as their "cultural purity". You'd allow them to die prematurely.
 
  • #31
You'd rather have them suffer disease and a short life expectancy,
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Our lifestyles causes us diseases that they will never have. They are probably healthier now then most of us.

Same thing should be said about animals, we can put all of them in zoo's where they can be treated in case they ever get a disease.
 
  • #32
No. Animals don't have a choice, now do they?

If you seriously think the lower life expectancy makes them healthy, then I can't argue with that logic.
 
  • #33
I lived in a fishing village once on a Pacific Island. Those people were still using ancestral fishing techniques and did a wonderful job. I mean they caught fish by hand and rock. They ate the fish with their hands and drank collected rainwater better than I could do. In my opininion the only thing wrong was that they were cast aside by modern tourism (du - western culture). These people lived on the islands form much longer than those resorts.

I'm a Christian. Personally I don't care what an evangelist says if there saying we should introduce these folks to medicine, banana republic, and Wal Mart (collosal impervious surface). That is ignorance to me. Evangelism is about spreading the word of God not our culture, not our medicine, not our way of life, not our clothes, not our disease, not our food, not our population explosion.

Remove those people from the wild is removing a cultural and natural resource from the wild so that we can teach them to over exploit. I'm sure we could learn better things from them like how to be more sustainable. In my opinion protecting their environment and way of life from exploitation is not ignoring them or rendering them to a shortened life. It is respecting them.
 
  • #34
It isn't a proven fact that they die younger, but even if they do, its a lot better alternative to live an overall shorter life rather than have a couple of foreigners come in and wipe out your entire neighborhood with a cold.

You're not saving them by offering them modern conveniences. If they wanted to join modern society, they would have to start off on the bottom anyways, which is a big step down from how they currently live. You don't need TV and water heaters to live a fulfilling life. Further more, would it even be possible for them to join modern society? I'm unsure if they actually speak a widespread language.

I personally would find it disgusting if missionaries rushed in to "enlighten" them with religion. I'm sure if God had really wanted to "save them", he would have left them a copy of your holy book of choice.
 
  • #35
You didn't really answer my question :p

Of course it's not proven. I will bet my life that they have a lower life expectancy than we do. As far as starting off at the bottom, so? They're already on the bottom. They're in the jungle, living in a hut, hunting and gardening. I can't see how you could get much more hardcore than that. I don't see how it could be too hard for us to learn their language and them to learn ours.

Of course, I find the thought of evangelicals doing that revolting, too. I just wanted to know what the evangelicals thought. It's interesting. Personally, I don't believe they'll go to hell for not knowing about the concept of the Xtian God in the first place. That would be pretty retarded.

Reminds me of the episode of southpark where TBN wanted to spread the word of God to the aliens of Marklar.
 
  • #36
I imagine the people that would want to rush into the jungle, offer the natives enlightenment and modern convenience, wouldn't feel the same way if it was an undiscovered nepenthes, lizard, or something.
 
  • #37
Clint said:
Of course, I find the thought of evangelicals doing that revolting, too. I just wanted to know what the evangelicals thought. It's interesting. Personally, I don't believe they'll go to hell for not knowing about the concept of the Xtian God in the first place. That would be pretty retarded.
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We are in agreement with that point.
 
  • #38
Clint said:
They're already on the bottom. They're in the jungle, living in a hut, hunting and gardening. I can't see how you could get much more hardcore than that.
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Instead of living in a close family community, they could be selling crack in some ghetto neighborhood where you have to look over your shoulder to make sure you don't get a bullet in your back. It doesn't get more hardcore than that. :p

It's not that hard to go out with your childhood buddies for a few hours and blast a couple monkeys with arrows to get dinner.
 
  • #39
So all poor people sell crack in the ghetto? And as if rich people don't use and sell drugs. Please. Seriously. PLEASE.
 
  • #40
What do rich people have to do with anything? They're exposed to the violence associated with slum life. The kind of life where people have to sell drugs or steal to survive.

If we lived in a utopia, maybe there would be some merit in inviting them in to our society.
 
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