Farewell to Humanity’s Childhood

The idea that theories of yesteryear were developed considering tools and information available at the time leads us to understand the writings not as true statements but as the start of critical thinking by rejecting them using new data.

Because Jean-Jacques Rousseau was living at a time when Europeans were discovering a new continent and new people displaying what appeared rudimentary customs (or so they thought by comparison with life in Europe), he was led to believe that they were the exact model of a way of life before civilisation transformed humans into a social species. To say that these "savages" reflected what humanity was stuck doing for thousands of years (we are here talking about those who still harbour this same line of thinking even with modern archaeological advancements), it is foregoing our creative, inventive and curious nature trying to rise above our condition: too simple of a thought.

The example of people living on the islands of Papua New-Guinea opens the way towards a new thinking on how humanity has been exchanging goods. As described in the book, nowadays everything goes through the value of risk when talking about commerce. But let's imagine for a moment the idea of exchanging luxury items not for another one not to clear a profit and then find high end items, but to carry an idea from a people to another leads to more interesting implications. The authors explain these objects were used to transmit names and stories of people passing the object from a person to the next. Moreover could it be that the relay of an individual story plays a role in maintaining a connection between those cut off from one another by the sea, sharing information and values from afar and even learning of new cultural practices. Curiosity has always been the vector of our move forward.

An enlightened ideology under influence

Later on, the authors point out the counter history movement charged against ideas and ideals carried by people the Old Continent sought to subdue. Firstly, the destruction of these communities was done with a methodical way all the while Europeans were welcomed and exposed to habits and customs of natives (from the North and South). Then, contemplating another human community in this New World alongside with their way of life sprung new ideas in the mind of Europeans who then brought them back home where a layered society was considered as immutable since the dawn of humanity.

Natural rights, a major research subject of philosophers of the time, right at the corner of the Age of Enlightenment, was launched by deconstructing mankind till its natural state. And what a better way than observing human communities appearing to be primitive in order to get the closest to this natural state. However, it is mainly by ignoring the importance of history and culture of these people that philosophers did not understand these people were not an example of prehistoric humans but a variation of mankind that developed for millennia; an example of the way humans can evolve socially, politically and culturally while in complete isolation of their counterparts living on other continents.