Were we better off in a state of nature?

How credible was the concept of the Noble Savage?

The thing is that society is constantly changing. How can we create a stable society within such a dynamic world culture? We need an ideal as a North Star. An ideal does not depend upon what is or what was but upon what we want or what we need—hopefully that are similar.

I think that Socrates may very well be the first person to recognize what we need. Socrates recognized that the basic need was for wo/men to awaken their critical faculties. Socrates was perhaps the first to recognize that humans are too easily delighted by the praise of their fellows and that this sought after social recognition prevented their free and enlighten action. Humans need to share in a shared social fiction. The anxiety of self-discovery is a constant source of internal conflict for humans.

It appears that human play forms “may even outwit human adaptation itself”. The created fiction becomes more real than reality itself. New humans enter this world and immediately begin the process of survival which becomes “a struggle with the ideas one has inherited”. This fiction reality destroys our rational adaptive process which can react to the real world; we are too busy reacting to our fictional play.

Is it appropriate to say that the Amish might be considered to be the modern Noble Savage?

Is it possible that we could study the Amish as a means for creating a better society?

No. The Amish are nowhere near a state of nature.

Remember the phrase "life is nasty, brutish, and short?" That's the state of nature.

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When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Last I saw Amish people (3 weeks ago in the Lagrange area, northern Indiana) they were eating at a place that utilizes everything they claim to abstain from: McDonalds. I guess double standards is about as close as they come to nature

The people we tend to envision as the "noble savage" were generally neither as noble nor as savage as we'd like to imagine. I'm not sure what you mean by "state of nature". Humans have significantly altered their environments to their own advantage for all of recorded history.

And, while I think there is much to admire in the Amish, I don't think focusing on their choices of how to use technology is the way to find value in their way of life. Their choices are meant to encourage community and a care for their environment, not just for the sake of avoiding new-fangled devices, and they tend to use a variety of new-ish technologies when they don't threaten these two higher goals.

I suspect Andrewl will have something provocative to say in this thread though, if he happens upon it.

That depends on who you ask.

Same.

Human nature seems to be in a state that would make an "ideal" everyone could/would agree on and accept impossible to find or come to terms with.

It is.

It is possible. Very possible.

It is unlikely. VERY unlikely.

As to whether or not it's appropriate to say that the Amish might be considered to be the modern Noble Savage, I won't hazard a guess.

Bill Moyer has a video wherein he discusses the book “Amish Grace” that you might find to be very interesting regarding the Amish response to their tragedy. Compare that Amish response to their tragedy and the response of America to our 9/11 tragedy.

Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS

That doesn't look like a basic need to me - more like a means to an end.

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Client: In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world. And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in three months!
Tailor: But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look at the world, and look at my trousers.
(Beckett)

I think that Socrates is anticipating Maslow's hierarchy of needs where we find the fifth need is self-actualization.

Except, of course, Maslow has been demonstrated as incorrect in the research. It's a nice theory, but it doesn't bear out in reality.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Human beings have always influenced nature. None us have ever lived "in the wild", at least since the the advent of agriculture. There are of course ways to live more sustainably, but humans manipulate the environment.

What about the 100,000 years of H. Sapiens before agriculture (not to mention the other evolutionary stages)?

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

We know precious little about pre-agricultural societies, though I suspect their lives tended to be both short and uncomfortable (at least by our standards).

Based on more recent human societies that focused primarily, if not entirely, on hunting & gathering, even they massively altered their environments. The forests and fields that Europeans encountered in reaching North America (even in the lands of the non-agricultural tribes) had been substantially altered by the natives.

Who says, besides you?

All animals, except humans, live in a total state of nature. All animals, except humans, are guided totally by instinct. Civilization is a mark of this transition from instinct to ego domination of behavior.

sez you.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears