The Great Affluence Fallacy

[AthenaAwakened]

Perhaps it is the rise of Trump and his Alt-Right, Neo-Confederate, Proto-Nazi acolytes or perhaps it the fact that he has gone through his own divorce, or maybe he just had some really good pie, but at least for the time it took to write this piece, something was awakened in David Brooks that made me agree with him.

In 18th-century America, colonial society and Native American society sat side by side. The former was buddingly commercial; the latter was communal and tribal. As time went by, the settlers from Europe noticed something: No Indians were defecting to join colonial society, but many whites were defecting to live in the Native American one.

This struck them as strange. Colonial society was richer and more advanced. And yet people were voting with their feet the other way.

The colonials occasionally tried to welcome Native American children into their midst, but they couldn’t persuade them to stay. Benjamin Franklin observed the phenomenon in 1753, writing, “When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return.”

During the wars with the Indians, many European settlers were taken prisoner and held within Indian tribes. After a while, they had plenty of chances to escape and return, and yet they did not. In fact, when they were “rescued,” they fled and hid from their rescuers.

Sometimes the Indians tried to forcibly return the colonials in a prisoner swap, and still the colonials refused to go. In one case, the Shawanese Indians were compelled to tie up some European women in order to ship them back. After they were returned, the women escaped the colonial towns and ran back to the Indians.

Even as late as 1782, the pattern was still going strong. Hector de Crèvecoeur wrote, “Thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those aborigines having from choice become European.”

I first read about this history several months ago in Sebastian Junger’s excellent book “Tribe.” It has haunted me since. It raises the possibility that our culture is built on some fundamental error about what makes people happy and fulfilled.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/the-great-affluence-fallacy.html?_r=0

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Build a "Berlin Wall" to keep the European-Americans in their place, and shoot those who try to escape to freedom on the Reservation.

Perhaps it is the rise of Trump and his Alt-Right, Neo-Confederate, Proto-Nazi acolytes or perhaps it the fact that he has gone through his own divorce, or maybe he just had some really good pie, but at least for the time it took to write this piece, something was awakened in David Brooks that made me agree with him.

In 18th-century America, colonial society and Native American society sat side by side. The former was buddingly commercial; the latter was communal and tribal. As time went by, the settlers from Europe noticed something: No Indians were defecting to join colonial society, but many whites were defecting to live in the Native American one.

This struck them as strange. Colonial society was richer and more advanced. And yet people were voting with their feet the other way.

The colonials occasionally tried to welcome Native American children into their midst, but they couldn’t persuade them to stay. Benjamin Franklin observed the phenomenon in 1753, writing, “When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return.”

During the wars with the Indians, many European settlers were taken prisoner and held within Indian tribes. After a while, they had plenty of chances to escape and return, and yet they did not. In fact, when they were “rescued,” they fled and hid from their rescuers.

Sometimes the Indians tried to forcibly return the colonials in a prisoner swap, and still the colonials refused to go. In one case, the Shawanese Indians were compelled to tie up some European women in order to ship them back. After they were returned, the women escaped the colonial towns and ran back to the Indians.

Even as late as 1782, the pattern was still going strong. Hector de Crèvecoeur wrote, “Thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those aborigines having from choice become European.”

I first read about this history several months ago in Sebastian Junger’s excellent book “Tribe.” It has haunted me since. It raises the possibility that our culture is built on some fundamental error about what makes people happy and fulfilled.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/the-great-affluence-fallacy.html?_r=0

There's a flaw:

If all (or most) Whites/non-Indians were to flee to the Indian tribes and live there instead of in the capitalist culture, most Americans, including the Indians, would starve.

-- or, that would be the best outcome?


There's another flaw:

Everything here is about the 18th century. What about today? Do White or non-Indian Americans still want to stay with the Indian tribes? And no Native Americans prefer to live in the White Capitalist culture today, given a choice?

Nothing in the article says this continued into the 19th and 20th centuries.

Colonial life was the Stone Age compared to today.

Don't most Native Americans on the reservations today enjoy refrigerators and micro-waves and TVs etc. etc.? Don't they enjoy their cheap Chinese imports from WalMart?

 

[couch_sloth]

From what I've read, many Native America tribes readily adopted captured white children into their tribes.
Normally, life for Native American children was a lot easier than it was for white pioneer children. e.g. White kids began to do what we would consider 'adult work' before the age of 10 (Working on the farm, etc). By contrast, NA kids were allowed to spend much of their time playing and were encourage to do tasks they would most likely find interesting (like hunting).
Many white children taken by NA's for 1-3 years (and later returned) remembered this NA time with fondness.

 

[Valjean]

Perhaps it is the rise of Trump and his Alt-Right, Neo-Confederate, Proto-Nazi acolytes or perhaps it the fact that he has gone through his own divorce, or maybe he just had some really good pie, but at least for the time it took to write this piece, something was awakened in David Brooks that made me agree with him.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/the-great-affluence-fallacy.html?_r=0

There's a flaw:

If all (or most) Whites/non-Indians were to flee to the Indian tribes and live there instead of in the capitalist culture, most Americans, including the Indians, would starve.

-- or, that would be the best outcome?


There's another flaw:

Everything here is about the 18th century. What about today? Do White or non-Indian Americans still want to stay with the Indian tribes? And no Native Americans prefer to live in the White Capitalist culture today, given a choice?

Nothing in the article says this continued into the 19th and 20th centuries.

Colonial life was the Stone Age compared to today.

Don't most Native Americans on the reservations today enjoy refrigerators and micro-waves and TVs etc. etc.? Don't they enjoy their cheap Chinese imports from WalMart?

Your first flaw is an example of the second flaw. But your second point is valid. Happiness today is conceived as a commodity to be bought, not as a lifestyle related artifact. Tribal communities today are rare because our aggressive, capitalist culture has pretty much wiped them out. But our hard-wired, Pleistocene psychology remains. We're desperate to be a part of a tribe. We create status communities and countries. We support specific political groups and schools. We'll identify with certain sports teams; teams pretty much identical to others we oppose -- for no apparent reason other than tribalism.

If people today experienced a communal society, like the renegade colonials mentioned in the article; and were free to choose without outside pressure, I expect you'd get a similar exodus from 'civilization'.

 

[untermensche]

The question of capitalism is not the provision of finished goods for some and misery for others, it is the question of freedom.

Are nations free from capitalist exploitation? Free to experiment with alternative economic systems or will they be attacked by powerful capitalist interests?

Let's just look at a little history in the 20th Century to see what has actually happened.

There's so much US violence in The Western Hemisphere during the early 20th Century it is called "The Banana Wars".

Panama, U.S. interventions in the isthmus go back to the 1846 Mallarino–Bidlack Treaty and intensified after the so-called Watermelon War of 1856. In 1903, Panama seceded from the Republic of Colombia, backed by the U.S. government,[a] during the Thousand Days' War. The Panama Canal was under construction by then, and the Panama Canal Zone, under United States sovereignty, was created.

Nicaragua, which, after intermittent landings and naval bombardments in the previous decades, was occupied by the U.S. almost continuously from 1912–1933.

Cuba, occupied by the U.S. from 1898–1902 under military governor Leonard Wood, and again from 1906 to 1909, 1912, and 1917 to 1922; subject to the terms of the Cuban–American Treaty of Relations (1903) until 1934.

Haiti, occupied by the U.S. from 1915–1934, which led to the creation of a new Haitian constitution in 1917 that instituted changes that included an end to the prior ban on land ownership by non-Haitians. This period included the First and Second Caco Wars.[4]
Dominican Republic, action in 1903, 1904 (the Santo Domingo Affair), and 1914 (Naval forces engage in battles in the city of Santo Domingo[5]); occupied by the U.S. from 1916 to 1924.

Honduras, where the United Fruit Company and Standard Fruit Company dominated the country's key banana export sector and associated land holdings and railways, saw insertion of American troops in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924 and 1925. The writer O. Henry coined the term "Banana republic" in 1904 to describe Honduras.[6]

Mexico, The U.S. military involvements with Mexico in this period are related to the same general commercial and political causes, but stand as a special case. The Americans conducted the Border War with Mexico from 1910-1919 for additional reasons: to control the flow of immigrants and refugees from revolutionary Mexico (pacificos), and to counter rebel raids into U.S. territory. The 1914 U.S. occupation of Veracruz, however, was an exercise of armed influence, not an issue of border integrity; it was aimed at cutting off the supplies of German munitions to the government of Mexican leader Victoriano Huerta,[7] which U.S. President Woodrow Wilson refused to recognize.[7] In the years prior to World War I, the U.S. was also alert to the regional balance of power against Germany. The Germans were actively arming and advising the Mexicans, as shown by the 1914 SS Ypiranga arms-shipping incident, German saboteur Lothar Witzke's base in Mexico City, the 1917 Zimmermann Telegram and German advisors present during the 1918 Battle of Ambos Nogales. Only twice during the Mexican Revolution did the U.S. military occupy Mexico: during the temporary occupation of Veracruz in 1914 and between 1916 and 1917, when U.S. General John Pershing led U.S. Army forces on a nationwide search for Pancho Villa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars

Iran 1953:

The 1953 Iranian coup d'état, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup (Persian: کودتای ۲۸ مرداد‎‎), was the overthrow of the Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favour of strengthening the monarchical rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on 19 August 1953, orchestrated by the United Kingdom (under the name "Operation Boot") and the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project).[5][6][7][8]

Mossadegh had sought to audit the documents of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation (now part of BP) and to limit the company's control over Iranian petroleum reserves. Upon the refusal of the AIOC to co-operate with the Iranian government, the parliament (Majlis) voted to nationalize Iran's oil industry and to expel foreign corporate representatives from the country.[9][10][11] After this vote, Britain instigated a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil to pressure Iran economically.[12] Initially, Britain mobilized its military to seize control of the British-built Abadan oil refinery, then the world's largest, but Prime Minister Clement Attlee opted instead to tighten the economic boycott[13] while using Iranian agents to undermine Mosaddegh's government.[14] With a change to more conservative governments in both Britain and the United States, Winston Churchill and the Eisenhower administration decided to overthrow Iran's government, though the predecessor Truman administration had opposed a coup.[15] Classified documents show that British intelligence officials played a pivotal role in initiating and planning the coup, and that the AIOC contributed $25,000 towards the expense of bribing officials.[16] In August 2013, 60 years after, the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) admitted that it was in charge of both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda.[17][18] The CIA is quoted acknowledging the coup was carried out "under CIA direction" and "as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government."[19]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

Guatemala 1954:

The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was a covert operation carried out by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and ended the Guatemalan Revolution.[1] Code-named Operation PBSUCCESS, it installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas, the first in a series of U.S.-backed dictators who ruled Guatemala.

A popular revolution against the U.S.-backed dictator Jorge Ubico[2][3][4] in 1944 had led to Guatemala's first democratic election and the beginning of the Guatemalan Revolution.[5] The elections were won by Juan José Arévalo who wanted to turn Guatemala into a liberal capitalist society.[6] He implemented social reforms which included a minimum wage law, increased educational funding and near-universal suffrage. Arévalo's defense minister Jacobo Árbenz was elected President in 1950, and continued the social reform policies, as well as instituting land reform, which sought to grant land to peasants who had been victims of debt slavery prior to Arévalo. Despite their moderate policies, the Guatemalan Revolution was widely disliked by the United States government, which was predisposed by the Cold War to see it as communist, and the United Fruit Company (UFC), whose hugely profitable business had been affected by the end to brutal labor practices.[7][8] The attitude of the U.S. government was also influenced by a propaganda campaign carried out by the UFC.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

Brazil 1964:

In 1963, however, Goulart successfully re-established the presidential system through a referendum. He finally took office as president with full powers, and during his rule several problems in Brazilian politics became evident, as well as disputes in the context of the Cold War, which helped destabilize his government. His Basic Reforms Plan (Reformas de Base), which aimed at socializing the profits of large companies towards ensuring a better quality of life for most Brazilians, was labelled as a "socialist threat" by the military and right-wing sectors of the society, which organized major demonstrations against the government in the Marches of the Family with God for Freedom (Marchas da Família com Deus pela Liberdade).[4]

The coup subjected Brazil to a military regime politically aligned to the interests of the United States government.[5] This regime would last until 1985, when Tancredo Neves was indirectly elected the first civilian President of Brazil since the 1960 elections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Brazilian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

Chile 1973:

The 1973 Chilean coup d'état was a watershed event in both the history of Chile and the Cold War. Following an extended period of social and political unrest between the right dominated Congress of Chile and the elected socialist President Salvador Allende, as well as economic warfare ordered by US President Richard Nixon,[2] Allende was overthrown by the armed forces and national police.[3][4]

Before Pinochet's rule, Chile had for decades been hailed as a beacon of democracy and political stability while the rest of South America had been plagued by military juntas and Caudillismo. The collapse of Chilean democracy ended a streak of democratic governments in Chile, which had held democratic elections since 1932.[11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

Nicaragua 1980's:

The contras (some references use the capitalized form, "Contras") is a label given to the various U.S.-backed and funded right-wing rebel groups that were active from 1979 to the early 1990s in opposition to the left-wing, socialist Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction government in Nicaragua. Among the separate contra groups, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) emerged as the largest by far. In 1987, virtually all contra organizations were united, at least nominally, into the Nicaraguan Resistance.

From an early stage, the rebels received financial and military support from the United States government, and their military significance decisively depended on it. After US support was banned by Congress, the Reagan administration covertly continued it. These covert activities culminated in the Iran–Contra affair.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras

Time after time nations have been attacked by capitalist interests. With the rise of capitalism we immediately move into Colonialism in Africa, The Middle East and elsewhere, like Vietnam.

Capitalism might give you a toaster and the person who made it misery.

But it is no friend to freedom.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Perhaps it is the rise of Trump and his Alt-Right, Neo-Confederate, Proto-Nazi acolytes or perhaps it the fact that he has gone through his own divorce, or maybe he just had some really good pie, but at least for the time it took to write this piece, something was awakened in David Brooks that made me agree with him.

In 18th-century America, colonial society and Native American society sat side by side. The former was buddingly commercial; the latter was communal and tribal. As time went by, the settlers from Europe noticed something: No Indians were defecting to join colonial society, but many whites were defecting to live in the Native American one.

This struck them as strange. Colonial society was richer and more advanced. And yet people were voting with their feet the other way.

The colonials occasionally tried to welcome Native American children into their midst, but they couldn’t persuade them to stay. Benjamin Franklin observed the phenomenon in 1753, writing, “When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return.”

During the wars with the Indians, many European settlers were taken prisoner and held within Indian tribes. After a while, they had plenty of chances to escape and return, and yet they did not. In fact, when they were “rescued,” they fled and hid from their rescuers.

Sometimes the Indians tried to forcibly return the colonials in a prisoner swap, and still the colonials refused to go. In one case, the Shawanese Indians were compelled to tie up some European women in order to ship them back. After they were returned, the women escaped the colonial towns and ran back to the Indians.

Even as late as 1782, the pattern was still going strong. Hector de Crèvecoeur wrote, “Thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those aborigines having from choice become European.”

I first read about this history several months ago in Sebastian Junger’s excellent book “Tribe.” It has haunted me since. It raises the possibility that our culture is built on some fundamental error about what makes people happy and fulfilled.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/the-great-affluence-fallacy.html?_r=0

I'm reminded of the WWII British civilian experience. Despite real hardship and danger, civilians commonly remember it as the happiest time of their lives. "There was this tremendous community spirit," they say. Everyone had common purpose. For once, you didn't have to see your neighbour as a competitor and your boss as an antagonist.

 

[Horatio Parker]

From what I've read, many Native America tribes readily adopted captured white children into their tribes.
Normally, life for Native American children was a lot easier than it was for white pioneer children. e.g. White kids began to do what we would consider 'adult work' before the age of 10 (Working on the farm, etc). By contrast, NA kids were allowed to spend much of their time playing and were encourage to do tasks they would most likely find interesting (like hunting).
Many white children taken by NA's for 1-3 years (and later returned) remembered this NA time with fondness.

Also in NA communities there wasn't the same obsession with food control. If you're hungry, eat.

 

[Derec]

Obviously we should all go back to a neolithic lifestyle. Note that today, not even Indians live that way. When they fish, they use fiberglass boats with outboard motors instead of tree-trunk canoes with oars. When they hunt, they use pickup trucks, snowmobiles and hunting rifles instead of going on foot with bows and arrows. And yet they protest every oil development, and every pipeline, close to their areas - what hypocrites!
When they get sick they go to a physician instead of a traditional witch doctor. And so on.

Sure, pioneer life in the 18th century was difficult and there is a certain sense of romanticism in the Indian neolithic way of life. That does not make it desirable to live that way in reality. Especially not in 21st century (as opposed to 18th).

 

[Derec]

If people today experienced a communal society, like the renegade colonials mentioned in the article; and were free to choose without outside pressure, I expect you'd get a similar exodus from 'civilization'.

There is nothing stopping you from going into the woods and starting a commune.

 

[braces_for_impact]

Perhaps it is the rise of Trump and his Alt-Right, Neo-Confederate, Proto-Nazi acolytes or perhaps it the fact that he has gone through his own divorce, or maybe he just had some really good pie, but at least for the time it took to write this piece, something was awakened in David Brooks that made me agree with him.

In 18th-century America, colonial society and Native American society sat side by side. The former was buddingly commercial; the latter was communal and tribal. As time went by, the settlers from Europe noticed something: No Indians were defecting to join colonial society, but many whites were defecting to live in the Native American one.

This struck them as strange. Colonial society was richer and more advanced. And yet people were voting with their feet the other way.

The colonials occasionally tried to welcome Native American children into their midst, but they couldn’t persuade them to stay. Benjamin Franklin observed the phenomenon in 1753, writing, “When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return.”

During the wars with the Indians, many European settlers were taken prisoner and held within Indian tribes. After a while, they had plenty of chances to escape and return, and yet they did not. In fact, when they were “rescued,” they fled and hid from their rescuers.

Sometimes the Indians tried to forcibly return the colonials in a prisoner swap, and still the colonials refused to go. In one case, the Shawanese Indians were compelled to tie up some European women in order to ship them back. After they were returned, the women escaped the colonial towns and ran back to the Indians.

Even as late as 1782, the pattern was still going strong. Hector de Crèvecoeur wrote, “Thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those aborigines having from choice become European.”

I first read about this history several months ago in Sebastian Junger’s excellent book “Tribe.” It has haunted me since. It raises the possibility that our culture is built on some fundamental error about what makes people happy and fulfilled.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/the-great-affluence-fallacy.html?_r=0

I want some of THAT pie.

 

[Jarhyn]

If people today experienced a communal society, like the renegade colonials mentioned in the article; and were free to choose without outside pressure, I expect you'd get a similar exodus from 'civilization'.

There is nothing stopping you from going into the woods and starting a commune.

Yes there is, actually. There are a lot of things. Mostly things associated with concerns of capitalism. But I do agree that it is foolishness. There is more art to be seen and made and more of nature to be experienced with the edifice of knowledge and larger sociery available. Then, I don't feel comfortable just laying down and letting nature take me and everything and throwing it into a nuclear furnace with nothing to show for it but a tiny chunk of dead metal zipping out into the cosmos.

 

[coloradoatheist]

So the public outcry this week should be, "We don't need Epi Pens anyways since Native Americans didn't need them"?

 

[coloradoatheist]

If people today experienced a communal society, like the renegade colonials mentioned in the article; and were free to choose without outside pressure, I expect you'd get a similar exodus from 'civilization'.

There is nothing stopping you from going into the woods and starting a commune.

Yep. Several states have communes. There is also tent cities. And Christopher McCandless lived in a bus in Alaska.

 

[laughing dog]

It has haunted me since. It raises the possibility that our culture is built on some fundamental error about what makes people happy and fulfilled.

What is it about that sentiment that is driving all these ridiculous straw men about reducing the economic standard of living to the mid 1800s? The OP is about the feeling of inclusion within a community which may be jeopardized by a single focus on the creation and acquisition of wealth.

 

[Axulus]

You might get to enjoy a little bit of community if you can survive continuous WWII levels of violence:

In the 1960s, cultural anthropologists led by Marvin Harris argued that conflict among prestate people was mostly over access to scarce protein. Dr. Chagnon disputed this, arguing that Yanomamo Indians' chief motive for raiding and fighting—which they did a great deal—seemed to be to abduct, recover or avenge the abduction of women. He even claimed that Indian men who had killed people ("unokais") had more wives and more children than men who had not killed, thus gaining a Darwinian advantage.

...

Recent studies have confirmed that mortality from violence is very common in small-scale societies today and in the past. Almost one-third of such people die in raids and fights, and the death rate is twice as high among men as among women. This is a far higher death rate than experienced even in countries worst hit by World War II. Thomas Hobbes's "war of each against all" looks more accurate for humanity in a state of nature than Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "noble savage," though anthropologists today prefer to see a continuum between these extremes.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

In a world of abundant wealth, why can't we live a life where we value kith and kin over profit and loss? What is it about living today that demands people work the hours they do, own all the stuff they do, and spend so little time just being with one another? Not only don't we spend time just being people, but we are developing a peculiar morality that looks at working longer hours as a worthy goal and time spent sitting on a porch just talking to your kids is waste of talent and treasure.

now I get it. Some who post here have no family, few if any friends and generally are frightened of being hurt so they limit their interactions with others. But trust me, the hurt you fear isn't worth the isolation you live in.

 

[RavenSky]

It has haunted me since. It raises the possibility that our culture is built on some fundamental error about what makes people happy and fulfilled.

What is it about that sentiment that is driving all these ridiculous straw men about reducing the economic standard of living to the mid 1800s? The OP is about the feeling of inclusion within a community which may be jeopardized by a single focus on the creation and acquisition of wealth.

^^^ that

 

[coloradoatheist]

In a world of abundant wealth, why can't we live a life where we value kith and kin over profit and loss? What is it about living today that demands people work the hours they do, own all the stuff they do, and spend so little time just being with one another? Not only don't we spend time just being people, but we are developing a peculiar morality that looks at working longer hours as a worthy goal and time spent sitting on a porch just talking to your kids is waste of talent and treasure.

now I get it. Some who post here have no family, few if any friends and generally are frightened of being hurt so they limit their interactions with others. But trust me, the hurt you fear isn't worth the isolation you live in.

Actually when looking at how parents spend time with kids we spend a lot more time with our kids today, especially dads. We're just guilted into feeling that we don't spend enough time.

 

[Valjean]

Obviously we should all go back to a neolithic lifestyle. Note that today, not even Indians live that way. When they fish, they use fiberglass boats with outboard motors instead of tree-trunk canoes with oars. When they hunt, they use pickup trucks, snowmobiles and hunting rifles instead of going on foot with bows and arrows. And yet they protest every oil development, and every pipeline, close to their areas - what hypocrites!
When they get sick they go to a physician instead of a traditional witch doctor. And so on.

Sure, pioneer life in the 18th century was difficult and there is a certain sense of romanticism in the Indian neolithic way of life. That does not make it desirable to live that way in reality. Especially not in 21st century (as opposed to 18th).

Yes, modern technology can make a better canoe and cure dangerous diseases, but access to these requires a certain degree of participation in the system.

There is nothing stopping you from going into the woods and starting a commune.

There's a lot preventing me from leading a neolithic lifestyle. You can't just plop down on a piece of land and begin building farming, hunting, fishing, lumbering, &c. Land is owned by someone, and these subsistence activities are regulated, game and fish are scarce, water is polluted, then there is compulsory education, vaccination, &c. Nor do people have the skills today to lead such a life. How many native Americans know how to make a bow, tan a skin or make a wigwam or tipi?

 

[Horatio Parker]

I wonder if the colonial era wasn't a golden age for the NA lifestyle. Metal tools, weapons, cookware, domestic animals all would've made life easier.

Would all those captives have remained in true Stone Age conditions?