Our Battle with the "Noble Savage"

   After studying Rousseau’s story of human alienation, what really stood out to me was the idea of the “noble savage.” As pointed out in lecture, this is considered a pretty racist term but I first learned about this term in my American Culture class this semester. For speculated reasons, settlers viewed the Native American population inhabiting America as “noble savages.” They admired their distance from society and yet saw their outsider standing as defining their lowered status in comparison to the settlers (clear in the use of the word “savage”). Rousseau uses this image of the “noble savage” to romanticize the image of those that live in the “wild.” Moreover, it is this image that founds Rousseau’s idea of the state of nature. Looking afar from “civilized society,” founded on the idea of property, we of course would look at them as “savages.” Owning nothing, having no family, living day to day on whatever need they happened to think of at that moment, we, with our fences and our families helping us out on our farms, can’t help but view our way of life as superior. Rousseau seemed only half committed to this idea—applying his method to women (and his frequent abandonment of them and his subsequent children) and letting the rest slide—but that’s a different story. Or maybe that just demonstrated the impossibility of the existence of a state of nature in our current state.

   This idea of the “noble savage” and the persistent envy of a simpler time ultimately returned to me while reading a recent article in the New York Times. The article, which basically describes new developments in technological intelligence, almost made me nostalgic for the world Rousseau described. Although I know my argument is not founded at all, I can imagine a world run entirely by machines—much like the spaceship as seen in WALL-E.

   I can see maybe the few on top who create the gadgets to do our thinking, our jobs, our movements, and our experiences and the rest of us becoming mindless drones until not even they are no longer needed. However, without the machines, uncorrupted by the extreme developments of society, we could ideally reenter the natural world to keep our strength and our nimbleness of mind. But, as proven, society has given us longer, healthier lives and the instruments to pursue a greater knowledge.

   It makes me question the very fundamentals of society that Rousseau describes: Do we eternally have to confront this struggle of the “noble savage” in our society (due to the fact that we eternally try to improve ourselves/our situation)? Like the original settlers, do we admire what we see as the natural while thinking our advancements place us above the natural? Must we always lust after what is now seemingly unattainable and pursue a return to pure nature while battling for the biggest, most innovative, and best invention? Or do you think that one is entirely better than the other? I honestly don’t have an answer…