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Comment by sdenton4 | Hacker News Reader

Correction: the crime of being rich while many starved.

I'm currently reading 'The Dawn of Everything,' and it is FASCINATING. The case made at the beginning of the book is that notions of equality and individual freedom basically came into being in Europe because of contact with indigenous Americans. Suddenly there was a flood of observations and conversations with societies that made sure no one went hungry.

And then when people started starving with the knowledge that another world was possible, things got violent. Incidentally, many-to-most violent uprisings have started with food shortages. Typically people have to be extremely uncomfortable before they start breaking out the guillotines, and hunger is extremely uncomfortable... And one of the still-active remnants of the French revolution is a government regulation ensuring that baguettes are cheap and readily available.

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> The case made at the beginning of the book is that notions of equality and individual freedom basically came into being in Europe because of contact with indigenous Americans.

The biggest problem with that theory is that indigenous Americans generally did not hold notions of equality and individual freedom.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_among_the_indigenous_p...

2: https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/service...

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois#War

It falls under the "noble savage" concept, the thought that native Americans were somehow innocents living in the garden as god once intended. The concept is far more telling of the European religious mindset than anything of actual native Americans.

I read a great book a few years back about the lives of African slaves owned by native Americans, native Americans who took said slaves with them when they were exiled by white settlers. The fact that I had not known of such things is a remnant of the noble savage concept. I was taught little in school about native american views on class.

The book talks a lot about this, and is worth reading.

Note that nothing you've pointed to is exclusive; Mayan society was very different from the societies of New France. Indigenous America is not a cartoon, but a large collection of societies with different organisation.

Another interesting point in the book is that there are many instances of enlightenment thinkers explicitly pointing to indigenous Americans as the source of their ideas... Which has tended to just be ignored or glossed over, in favor of the great man theory where these ideas spring from pure European genius.

There's a lot of ground between "these ideas spring from pure European genius" and "[these ideas] basically came into being in Europe because of contact with indigenous Americans." It would be much more interesting to acknowledge the specific ways in which contact with indigenous society contributed to the European Enlightenment than to dismiss Europeans' contribution entirely.

And describing indigenous people as "societies that made sure no one went hungry" without mentioning warfare, torture, and slavery does appear to be restating the classic myth of the noble savage. These practices were not limited to the Mayans, but were widespread across the Americas, including New France, as the additional links I added above describe.

Sounds like you'll enjoy the book (which is long) more than my comments (which are short). Getting into the specifics of how these ideas originated and travelled is exactly what it sets out to do.

Were the indigenous Americans the source of the ideas, or did the mere existence of indigenous Americans foster these ideas? The discovery of people, any people, outside the existing understanding of european/asian culture would bring forward new ideas. Were they the source, or were they simply the canvas onto which European thinkers painted stories?

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a classic example:

https://shanesafir.com/2020/12/before-maslows-hierarchy-the-...

The book makes the argument that the ideas originated especially from debates between Jesuits and the Wendat tribe, and was then over a hundred years or so internalized into the enlightenment debate.

I read your Canadian article. I don't see anything that contradicts the idea that indigenous Americans valued (or invented) individual freedom and equality. Unless you mean that they fought wars against other tribes.

The recent violence in kazakhstan came after the possible rise in gas and electricity prices (which in turn is tied to crypo mining). The Terror started with food shortages but I think the next violent revolution will be triggered by energy prices, be it gas or electricity.

As for breaking out the guillotines, that doesn't take much. A gallows made an appearance on January 6th. Those people looked very well-fed. I'm not sure they were joking.

that is a good take on it, i would also say happiness, if you see your parents and grandparents falling in love and starting a life together but you are pushing 40 with nothing to show for it because of unstable environment conditions, poor schooling and unfair labor wages which are all have to do with equality then people will look for a representation of their struggle.

the blm movement was not just about blm, a lot of it was used as a starter to talk about a related issue. which is equality in general, you can see this by how many socialist supporters came out. in reality mlk supported fair wages for all working class people and that is the “conspiracy” theory of why he got shot, but obviously if people can’t eat, or if they feel very they are being massively mistreated, they will riot.

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