Oh and before anyone says "OMG how racist" I'll be happy to say that plenty of European tribes and societies were just as bad and worse. Bog bodies anyone? Even the Minoans are now thought to have engaged in human sacrifice, discoveries have brought a new light to Greek myths and in
Homer where the sacrifice of Iphigenia is flat out described. (edit: Euripides, Sophocles and later Homeric tradition dating from 6th-7th century BC)
Amazon tribes don't have a corner on being violent - its that tribalism often ends in violent behavior - wars and rituals which involve human sacrifice. It's been a long hard road from that tribalism and certainly we humans are not all there yet, but I don't believe in going "backwards" to some fictional history about one's ancestors, most especially one based on some kind of tribalism. It's fascist.
http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html Quote:
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TThe rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.
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Civilisation has the potential to make us better people, to add an "e" to human, to be humane. It's a tool, like clothes. Clothes might not be so necessary in the Amazon, but I guarantee you wouldn't run around naked in the winter in Sweden or any part of Canada, and wearing clothes to protect yourself from the elements is something most people in temperate climates do, no matter what continent or race of people. Also, the Incas were master weavers of cloth, and had a pretty advanced civilisation all things considered. But even they practiced human sacrifice.
Personally I would prefer to keep marching forwards, not backwards to some fictional history that never existed. People are not born "good" and then "corrupted" by civilisation. Civilisations sometimes do bad things, but that's no reason to not fix them and go back to living in a "state of nature" in a state of bliss that never existed.