So they are ignorant of somethings which our society deems as important for them to know. The fact is, the reverse is surely also true by which I mean we are surely ignorant of some facts that their society deems highly relevant.
I disagree significantly!
I'm not suggesting that only they are ignorant. Ignorance is a lack of knowledge. Both cultures not in contact are ignorant, and both could learn. What I am saying is that it's very unlikely that the best decisions would come from ignorance, from either side. They should know the real possibilities of what might happen if contact began, and we should know what their motivations are for not wanting contact-- there are many possible reasons for that! Beyond this, there are more specific things that we could learn from each other, such as our medical knowledge and their knowledge of local plant and animal life.
The difference is, they don't feel the need to preach to us about it.
You can't possibly know that! They might be plotting at this very moment to convert us to their religion and just wondering how they can save us from our evil ways of technology. That's my entire point: you're assuming many things about these peoples.
My best guess is that the situation is based on fear, as the primary motivator. Everything else follows from that, whatever the details may be. They might want to preach to us about living as they do. They might not. We don't know. But I am fairly confident that they're afraid of us.
It's like a young child who goes to the doctor and needs a shot. Sometimes the immediate fear gets in the way of something that is actually beneficial.
I have no direct evidence for any of this (no one does), and that's exactly why I'm curious and asking these questions.
If they value cultural isolation and insulation, then no, a grad student with a mic and notepad would be precisely what the expect, in a sense.
The Native Americans often fear/dislike linguists because of what happened historically. Again, the problem may be communication and intentions rather than what it appears to be on the surface.
However, I'd be very surprised if your description there is accurate. I expect that on a daily basis they're much more concerned about the loggers who are tearing about the area where they live.
They may have little reason to share the intricacies of their language and culture with an outsider. They may value it as highly private or cherish its secrecy as part of their continued autonomy. They may well be right about that.
That's possible. But there's no reason to assume that's the case. It might be. It might not be.
Oh goodness gracious! Just HOW do they do it without those things?! (note sarcasm)
Hint: they do it just fine and have done so for quite some time now.
They do just fine without encycolpedias in the way you do just fine without their local oral traditions.
I'm not saying these are inherently good things. I'm saying that they just don't understand us. Equally true is the fact that we don't understand how they live without them. (Well, some of us more than others-- scientists [me among them] tend to at least hypothetically try to understand and value variation.)
The problem is that when they see the airplane in the video (which represents perhaps 50% of their contact with other humans) they may think it's an attack, or a god, or a spy [it is, perhaps!].
If there is a good kind of contact to be had, then clearly the best way to do that would be by somehow first establishing communication and limiting ignorance. As for encyclopedias, I'm talking about ones that would describe the rest of the world. They know their own culture well, but they have little information about what else is out there. If I'm going to visit Russia, I'll first look up information on Wikipedia. They don't have the resources to do that.
As for the internet and so forth, I mean that those would be useful technologies for contacting them. These aren't teenagers who have "blocked" you via instant message. They aren't fully aware of what will happen if they unblock you. They just don't know what will happen, and are certainly afraid of that. They also might not want to contact us because they don't care or want to be isolated, but I see no reason to assume that. Independence and isolation are not bound together.
As if linguists and scientists are the outsiders that they want to meet! How presumptuous!
There are three reasons:
1. Linguists and scientists are not violent or threatening. Most of their previous contact has probably been with threatening individuals with guns. So perhaps the cast of
American Idol could be the first ones to show up, whatever. As long as they don't have guns, that's an improvement.
But linguists are usually calm and patient, which would help more.
2. Linguists and scientists are (uniquely?) prepared to understand and respect diversity and to learn to communicate with these people. I would say the same thing about any situation where cross-cultural communication is difficult. Very simplified, translators would be needed. The fact that Russia and America have ambassadors doesn't mean that the two cultures are any more similar now; it just means that there is a way to have communication when it's needed. At the very least having a linguist (=translator, primarily) as ambassador seems like a reasonable idea; then we'd know what they want and could answer their questions.
3. We'd benefit from contact with then without doing massive damage. For example, compared to loggers we would not destroy their homes. And this is, I freely admit, also selfish: we'd like to know about them.
Yes, codify their language, commidify their culture and then give it away to journals who will publish it and raise your publication index. What do they get in return? Well, they get to meet you! How congenial!
That's overly simplistic of you. There are many possibilities.
Meeting us could be helpful. Linguists are often involved in political activities that support the rights of diverse populations. If we knew more about these people and what they wanted (whether that's remaining "uncontacted" or just to be allowed to live!) then we could help them via knowledge.
Many linguists are not primarily motivated by funding and publication but by the ideas of science. For practical reasons there is often an effect, of course: we might not make a year long trip to the rain forest for this without funding, but that's a valid concern: would it be appropriate? That doesn't mean we shouldn't consider it. It might be that the best thing to do would be to make a gamble: show up, see what they would like, and then
not publish if they don't consent (after, of course, communication is possible).
Many fieldworkers are dedicated to protecting and promoting the rights of the individuals and cultures they work with! I read an article recently with copyright held not by the author or publisher but by the community of speakers of the language, because that was most respectful and was what they wanted. He was working for/with them, rather than just taking from them. Preserving their language could help them in the future when, perhaps inevitably, some evil company destroys their homes by logging. Linguists are rarely the cause of major problems like that, and then the question is whether they can help (or, if in bad circumstances, they go along with it, adding to the problem).
Doing nothing can be just as wrong.
How so?
I wrote about Easter Island above. Those people actually needed help. Though it came from the Europeans as a form of discrimination and mistreatment, they still needed the help. At least in that case, it's perfectly imaginable that a different group to make first contact would have simply been helpful-- giving them food, and giving them space.
In this case, there are two possibilities for why no contact could be a bad thing:
1. Sharing knowledge and resources might benefit everyone involved.
As a simple argument, I bet their life expectancy is not as high as for other "contacted" cultures, due to nutrition and a somewhat harsh environment. (Our life expectancy has increased for the past 1000 years or so; there's no reason for theirs to have done the same.) So while there are lots of factors to consider in a decision, it's nothing to laugh about that we might be able to extend their lives by 30 years or so. Perhaps they don't value long lives. I don't know. But very simply, there are ways it might benefit them. They might just love watching TV or skateboarding. Should they be "preserved" in a way that they'd never get to tell us?
2. Contact can promote understanding and help to protect them. If no one understands these peoples, then at some point someone is probably going to ignorantly destroy their cultures. I think we can all agree that would be bad. So if linguists were able to promote their cultures as worth preserving and explain how to do it (for example, do they need us to not log within 5 sq. miles of forest, or 500, or 50,000?) that would actually be the start of ensuring their futures.
In the end, you might be right. But it's not certain that you are. That's why it's worth discussing, and, in my opinion, it would be great to discuss it with them.
A simple argument against contact is: they aren't initiating it, and if we do it might be dangerous for everyone. Fair enough. But as I said, we don't know why they're not initiating it and there are arguments to be made for why it would help to have contact.
