Posted On: Monday - May 22nd 2017 12:16PM MST
In Topics: Treehuggers Americans Environmental Stupidity
Hey listen, we don't have to be PC here at PeakStupidity, but keep in mind, this post's title is a question, not a statement, like the long-ass 2nd part of about every non-fiction book title these days. (Made-up example: "BROCCOLI: Are today's school lunches giving our kids too much vitaman A, not enough Niacin, and sending them to the bathroom too much during the learning process, or are they just throwing most of this nasty vegetable matter in the trash?" by Ms. Annette Krebopple, PhD Ed., JD, CPA, member-$PLC, NVA/Vietcong, RVSM)
Where was I? Yeah, this post by Steve Sailer on unz, Geronimo is comprised completely of a comment by one of his commenters below a previous article. Nice work if you can get it!! No, that's a joke, as Sailer is the opposite of lazy, and you've got to have many commenters to do this, hint, hint. I won't comment much here on the article in the link above, except to explain that it (the very good original comment, that is) was about Americans' affinity for Indian lore, names, and respect for the Indian warrior of centuries past. That's not to say that we don't know how brutal the Indians and some of the white men were to each other due to the impossible divide between a culture of property rights and one that had no concept. Still, people here take pride in being part Indian, even when they are making it up. Some, even, cough, cough, make it to the US Senate this way.
That aside, this led me to think of some thoughts from way back about Indians - from here on in this post, I mean "feather", not "dot".
I was hanging out years ago with some girl who would get into New Age things and such, and one thing was the Indian sweat lodge. It'd get pretty hot and sweaty indeed under that tarp with the heated up rocks, but I was young and could take it - it was about the girl to me, see; I didn't have any other visions just due to a little thermal distress. I believe I would have needed to have something a little stronger than a sweat lodge to have a vision quest, something made in a lab.
When we got done, we went over to the property of a full-blooded Indian, or that's what she said, to pick up something or other. This guy's trailer and his 1/2 acre lot was the messiest disaster of a living quarters I'd seen in my life up to that point, maybe since, but I do have many single friends. I mean there were rusty washing machines just outside the door, and all kinds of crap clogging up the trailer. He could have applied for superfund status. I knew it was just one data point, but this made me think a bit and question the idea that seems ingrained in our modern culture that the Indians were the big environmentalists.
There is no doubt that they lived on and with the land in a way that hardly anyone but an army Ranger or navy SEAL in survival training could possibly survive today, even for 3 days on "Naked and Afraid" with one phone call to get back to civilization. That's what savages do however. If you don't like that term "savages", it's perhaps because you don't understand it. It has come to have bad connotations, but a savage is one who is not part of any modern civilization in any way we think of civilization.
OK, so these Indians knew hunting and fishing and small farming (some tribes) with the most basic tools that were hand made. This meant that they were extremely self-sufficient, which is why people sometimes daydream that they'd like to go back to that kind of life, as the freedom in it is more than we can ever attain with a civilization, even when it's the best ever seen (1st coupla centuries of the US, for example). However, these dreamers may not have felt starvation, quick death from bacterial disease, and savage fighting with, or capture, by another tribe. That can ruin your daydream if you let it.
They lived off the land, yes. Does that make them environmentalists at heart or as part of their culture? Because there was no plastic and modern materials, there were no roads and buildings, and they had and needed few possessions to begin with, there was nothing much to keep clean really. Now, how many Indians existed on what's now the continental US at one time? I don't think anyone would come up with more than 5-10 million as just a round figure.
This is my point now, that the land, Mother Earth, if you will, can do a fine job of cleaning up after itself if the people are few and far between. It's all water and wind erosion, and bacterial rot these days, that's how she rolls.
Spread the tribes of a few dozen to a few hundreds or thousands of people totaling 5 million around the 3 million square miles of what's now the continental US, and there'll be lots of room to throw out your crap. You spend a few months or even a few years over here by this forest near the river, and no one is back for 50 years, well, guess what, all the junk you left has completely decayed. Any structures of any sort are long gone, wooden pieces have long since rotted, stone has been rounded down with 50-year growth all around it and the human waste was the first thing to be cleaned. It's not hard to live in a pristine place when you can move to a new place that no human has been in a century, any time you want.
In America we have 2 orders of magnitude more people on the same chunk of land, as there were Indians long ago. Modern technology has both made more mess and at the same time improved ways of cleaning up. The thing is, how much CAN you keep up with? Mother Earth can only do so much. Does it make sense to want the population to increase even more, if you care at all about living in a pristine setting, or at least having a way to get there part of the time to enjoy it? It's not like PeakStupidity has not mentioned this complete idiocy on the part of environmentalists with a good anecdote regarding blackberry picking. We all like blackberries, right, so think about this.
OH, right, answer the question: Who cares? It's OK to be a slob when you have a 24/7/365 maid named "Mother Earth" to clean up after you.
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