Home » “Should Brazil keep its Amazon tribes from taking the lives of their children?”

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“Should Brazil keep its Amazon tribes from taking the lives of their children?” — 21 Comments

  1. Didn’t Iceland “cure” Down syndrome by identifying fetuses with the syndrome and then aborting them. As someone who knows a family with a child with this I can only think of the hole in this family if this child didn’t exist. He has been a real blessing to them. But on the other hand I don’t want to put myself in a position to question someone’s painfully worked out decision.

  2. Despite what is often reported about Amazonia and New Guinea, there exists only one truly uncontacted group of humans anywhere in the world. These are the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island, who have lived, totally ignorant of and uninfluenced by, the outside world for perhaps 50,000 years. They represent what the ancestors of all members of our species were like, once upon a time.

  3. My up bringing tells me all human life deserves protection. But I don’t live my life as a member of a tribe of hunters and gathers in a rain forest. However, I do live in a society that condones killing babies in the womb and selling the choice parts for profit. No moral high ground in America.

  4. This seems like a distinction without a difference. In the United States, a female can kill her unborn baby and must not be questioned as to motive. A whim, a desire, anything can be used to justify and terminate the baby’s existence. Who are we, to impose our warped sense of morality on these people?

  5. Well…I’ll aim for consistency.

    Since I believe that all human life is created in the image of God, and therefore bears an inherent integrity, dignity & holiness, I am equally repulsed by the pro-abort-at-will crowd AND by tribal customs that slaughter the weak, infirm, aged, disabled etc for tribal survival when we know there are other solutions.

    But the whole “white guilt” post-truth crowd will surely shout otherwise.

  6. Pro-Choice, including selective-child… selective-fetus, offspring, conventionally known as “baby”, is a progressive (i.e. monotonic) philosophy with liberal (i.e. divergent – simulating tolerance) roots.

    #HateLovesAbortion

    Didn’t Iceland “cure” Down syndrome by identifying fetuses with the syndrome and then aborting them

    Life deemed unworthy, inconvenient, or, perhaps, profitable (e.g. recycled-child), for social progress, no less. A wicked solution, a final solution, to an albeit hard problem (i.e. wealth, pleasure, leisure, narcissism, democratic leverage, and taxable commodities).

    #PrinciplesMatter

    That said, when, and by whose choice, does a human life acquire and retain the right t life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

  7. A human life evolves from conception to a natural or elective abortion. The only humane justification for the latter is in self-defense, and then there is still a choice and striving to save the life of the mother and child. Women, in fact, with two exceptions (involuntary and superior exploitation), actually have choice, choice — two choices — and choice — a third choice — followed by Choice (i.e. abortion rite). That said, the progress of abortion rites and after around one month (sentience): torture, of a wholly innocent human life, represents an unprecedented violation of human rights and civilized norms.

    We can do better. We must do better. In order to avoid progressive corruption and a dysfunctional convergence.

  8. There would be no conflict it instead of killing the child, the tribe that rejected the child was required by law to simply hand it over to a charitable organization for adoption or foster parenting.

    They can keep their barbaric customs, we’ll keep the child. Problem solved.

  9. The author seems to have adopted a form of moral relativism based on a cultural evolution hypothesis. In fact, people can frequently do evil for no good reason at all. We contribute to that evil when we stand by and do nothing.

  10. I do think the question is a little more complex.

    Generally in the west we have decided that the ‘white man’s burden’ and forcibly imposing our way of life on indigenous people is a bad thing. And indeed often it has been, and certainly it has been done it bad ways.

    The thing is, without our culture and way of life and the immense wealth that it has generated (i’m not talking about just 21st century wealth, but even enlightenment era wealth was immense to what came before) some of the things that we hold as necessary are simply unaffordable.

    For poor hunter gatherer tribes, that can at times include keeping your kids alive. If trying to do so would just mean that more would die, then choosing to kill one, so the others have a chance, might be the best of bad choices.

    Basically, this means it comes down to three choices.

    1) Force these tribes into the modern world.
    2) Let them remain primitive with all that entails.
    3) Somehow substitute them killing their children with instead giving them to others to raise (this has monetary costs and even in America children in ‘the system’ end up abused)

    Like the primitive tribesmen it seems to me we don’t really have a good and easy choice here, it is pretty easy to just these hunter gatherers as being ‘barbaric’ but I think it harder to create a solution.

  11. Another case of the well fed telling the starving how to live.

    The practice of killing “the disabled, the children of single mothers, and twins” are in place because culturally it was REALLY hard to feed everyone. These were the least likely to survive anyway. Tough life means tough choices. Just because it’s been a millennia or so since such choices were faced by your ancestor doesn’t mean that others are exempt from such choices.

    Cultural norms evolve for a reason. In this case such norms that in the well-fed West we consider abhorrent. In other places they’re called survival

  12. @Hangtown Bob

    My understanding is that abortion is only legal in cases of rape and if it’s the only way to save the life of the mother.

  13. I find myself genuinely conflicted on this. Please let me explain.

    While it is true that these tribes live in Brazil, they are essentially autonomous. Out of both choice and logistical necessity, the government long ago decided to let these tribes maintain their traditional lifeways, including no doubt, many practices that are barbaric. How many tribes still display their enemies heads on pikes?

    Since these tribes are living as hunters and gatherers in a harsh and unforgiving environment with little or no contact with the national government, the practices they developed to deal with their situation are still relevant. They simply do not have the luxury of keeping around people with disabilities, who consume resources but cannot contribute to the tribe’s wellbeing.

    Someone mentioned above that the tribes should simply hand over their unwanted children to the state, but Brazil’s orphanages and slums are already overflowing with unwanted and feral children. There is almost no chance of adoption for any of them, particularly those who are defective in some way.

    It seems to me that Brazil faces a choice here: Either leave the tribes alone and let them do what they will in all its savagery, or forget protecting their lifeways and try to assimilate them. They can’t really be lukewarm about this.

  14. High school teachers are still assigning Shirley Jackson’s classic horror story, “The Lottery” in which — spoiler alert — each year a member of a small town is selected by lottery then stoned to death by the townsfolk.

    However these days millennial students are not so quick to condemn the town’s “custom” just as they are reluctant to condemn female genital mutilation in cultures which practice that.

  15. The thought that immediately came to mind when I read this was God’s (or the human authors’, if you prefer) horror in the Torah at the Canaanite practice of child sacrifice. Only tribes who practiced it were to be extirpated. Other tribes, such as the Midianites and Ishmaelites, even if warred against, were not.

    P.S. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of American couples who are trying to adopt but are blocked by the lunatics in Social Services departments all over the country. They would love to have the opportunity to adopt a Brazilian child.

  16. Indigenous tribes are vanishing from the earth at a prodigious rate. Many have populations in the low hundreds. Allowing them (or encouraging them) to kill their own is a bad way to help them survive. And killing children because they are disabled, their mothers are single, they’re a twin, or someone thinks their life will be a failure is a “value” that is not different from our culture’s but identical to it.

  17. Ishmael:

    I don’t think that word “identical” means what you think it means.

  18. @ huxley: I’m surprised. You’d think some teacher or administrator would comb through the classics and eliminate such works, after all it’ll be a matter of time before someone declares it sexist (spoiler: mother is chosen and her children assist in her death). But maybe one might interpret it as a fine example of a patriarchal, backwards society and therefore it must be retained and taught through these lenses.

  19. ….It goes almost without saying–although I suppose it’s necessary to say it–that indigenous peoples develop customs that for the most part are motivated by and adapted to the conditions they face. But the conditions that prevailed long ago are not the conditions of today, and these people are now living in Brazil. The broad question that this issue raises is not limited to Brazil and is not limited to child-killing, but has to do with whether a country or a culture that is dominant has the courage of its own convictions and moral codes, and believes there are also universal moral codes that need to be enforced under all circumstances if possible.It goes almost without saying–although I suppose it’s necessary to say it–that indigenous peoples develop customs that for the most part are motivated by and adapted to the conditions they face. But the conditions that prevailed long ago are not the conditions of today, and these people are now living in Brazil. The broad question that this issue raises is not limited to Brazil and is not limited to child-killing, but has to do with whether a country or a culture that is dominant has the courage of its own convictions and moral codes, and believes there are also universal moral codes that need to be enforced under all circumstances if possible.It goes almost without saying–although I suppose it’s necessary to say it–that indigenous peoples develop customs that for the most part are motivated by and adapted to the conditions they face. But the conditions that prevailed long ago are not the conditions of today, and these people are now living in Brazil. The broad question that this issue raises is not limited to Brazil and is not limited to child-killing, but has to do with whether a country or a culture that is dominant has the courage of its own convictions and moral codes, and believes there are also universal moral codes that need to be enforced under all circumstances if possible…

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