Lost tribes : we should learn from their mistakes, no idolise them

Well the main lesson at the moment is obviously, "don't fuck with 'em".

Dr Plotkin, who heads the Amazon Conservation Team advocacy group, said that while there was plenty that developed countries could learn from simpler lifestyles, he advised caution. "There is a risk of us over-romanticising them, just as there are risks in accepting Jesus and that you are going to live forever, or in moving to a city and thinking you are going to have two cars and a computer. Don't over-romanticise how they live, but learn from it."

Quite right, but the article is nothing but a selection of Utopian attributes about the tribes. Watch the documentary "Lost Tribes of the Amazon" for a much more warts-and-all approach. Living in the jungle is a shitty existence. More interesting, I think, are the bigger trends : that different societies have come up with radically different solutions, even in similar environments with similar populations. Some of those answers have completely failed, others have been more successful. I would have preferred it if the article also looked at aspects of these cultures that a Western audience would find less appealing; I see no point in ignoring mistakes.

I suspect most of these solutions simply wouldn't work on larger populations which are unavoidably more diverse, let alone ones which are dependent on technology. In spite of this - or perhaps because of it - it's still really interesting.

It is possible to live in complete equality - and it can make for a peaceful community. There's one catch: it involves becoming an anarchist. No government, no state, only the individual and their will to do as they please.

The Piaroa (who number about 14,000, live near the Orinoco River in Amazonas State, Venezuela) disavow violence, and don't punish children physically. They believe peace is achieved by dismissing concepts of ownership, competition, vanity and greed. No sports are played, land isn't owned, no-one can order anyone else to work and there's a strong emphasis on learning from other people. Not that there's a deference towards elders - that would make society hierarchical, and would mean not everyone was equal.

The idea of the individual is the most important thing, although that emphasis doesn't foster selfishness. It is up to each individual to choose what they do, how they do it and when they do it, and they do not pass judgment on others' decisions. And because this is a society of absolute equals, men and women share the same status (not that status is a thing). Anyone who tries to conform to traditional images of manhood, like the hunter, is subject to pity and is seen to lack self-control.

The idea of maturing into a man does not exist, Prof Overing writes. "Nor do Piaroa young men learn the self-regarding virtues of manhood that would set them as males against females, and, as such, superior to them. "Each woman is mistress of her own fertility for which she alone is responsible: the community has no legal right to her progeny; nor does her husband if they should divorce."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-46301059