Racist environmentalist FAIL on TV Tropes.

[miss_breeziness]

I enjoy browsing through TV Tropes, a little too much. However, seeing this added under the Real Life examples of the "Elves Versus Dwarves" section just reminded me not to rely on it too much

Comments

[jordan179]

It may seem strange that someone preaching the Politically Correct Thing To Say can be so racist, but it can happen.

The Politically Correct Thing To Say is usually racist, because it pre-judges groups of people by their ethnic origin, shoe-horning them into their PC roles, regardless of the facts. Thus, the Chinese as East Asians have to be "spiritual" and "unworldly," even if they have in real history generally been highly pragmatic and both economically and technologically forward-thinking, except for the period from around 1450-1975 (Ming turnaway from expansion to the death of Mao). The PC types miss this, because they are less interested in actual cultural diversity than they are in telling simple fables, using other cultures as characters; and they also tend to be ignorant of everything but relatively recent history.

The Chinese are an especially bad fit for the role of "spiritual unworldly natives," that's all.

[miss_breeziness]

"The Chinese are an especially bad fit for the role of "spiritual unworldly natives," that's all."

Totally. That was the whole point of this post. :)

"The Politically Correct Thing To Say is usually racist, because it pre-judges groups of people by their ethnic origin, shoe-horning them into their PC roles, regardless of the facts."

Yes...don't get me started on the movie Avatar. I actually managed to enjoy it, but the whole Na'vi as blue Indians in perfect harmony with their environment thing is problematic in so many ways. In Real Life, I heard the Native Americans were actually altering their environment to suit themselves as much as anyone, they just used techniques (such as burning down brush) that Europeans didn't recognize as "husbandry" for ages

[jordan179]

In Real Life, I heard the Native Americans were actually altering their environment to suit themselves as much as anyone, they just used techniques (such as burning down brush) that Europeans didn't recognize as "husbandry" for ages.

Yes. In fact, the concept of the Amerindians as just "noble savages" is insulting to their achievements. They had whole systems of agriculture and game management, some of which were responsible for the extraordinary fertility of North America when the Europeans came, and some of which allowed dense populations in areas from which even our current scientific agronomy cannot coax long-term large yields. Their traditional agronomy was highly successful: several major food and luxury crops, especially corn, potatoes and tobacco, still in widespread global use, derive from their millennia-long selective breeding and cultivation.

Also, speaking as someone who has actually read parts of classical Chinese literature, in Mandarin, I can honestly say that during those times of great advancement and

[miss_breeziness]

"In fact, the concept of the Amerindians as just "noble savages" is insulting to their achievements. They had whole systems of agriculture and game management, some of which were responsible for the extraordinary fertility of North America when the Europeans came, and some of which allowed dense populations in areas from which even our current scientific agronomy cannot coax long-term large yields. Their traditional agronomy was highly successful: several major food and luxury crops, especially corn, potatoes and tobacco, still in widespread global use, derive from their millennia-long selective breeding and cultivation."

I never knew that! Well, I did know that the Native Americans accomplished some pretty amazing things technologically, but didn't know the details.

I did know that Amerindians, or at least one group of them, had an advanced tower-building civilization that died out by the time the Europeans came, if that link posted by john_j_enright is right

[jordan179]

Specifically, a few people who have, in the Troper Tales pages, wished for the extinction of the human race. Seriously, it seems.

There is a tendency to confuse power with vice, weakness with virtue. Any powerful entity will do much evil in absolute terms, even if it does almost entirely good in relative terms, simply because any evildoing will be amplified by its power level. This applies to modern America compared to other nations; and it applies to the human race over the last ten millennia compared to other species.

Yes, it's true that lions haven't driven as many species into extinction as have men, but that's largely because lions lack the power. Lions with technology might be as evil as men, or more so.

[miss_breeziness]

"Any powerful entity will do much evil in absolute terms, even if it does almost entirely good in relative terms, simply because any evildoing will be amplified by its power level."

That's a good point. I've thought about it myself a lot, and wondered if good and evil actually both spring from a certain capacity. Humans have a lot more of that capacity, whatever it is, so they can be much more good and much more evil than non-sentient species.

Unfortunately humans also have a bit of an "accentuate the negative and forget context" thing. Especially, it seems, humans who have lives of relative ease and comfort.

I don't think it's a coincidence, either that (please correct me if I'm wrong) in fiction, almost all of those "elf" like sentient species who can live in perfect harmony with their environment, and look down on humans for not doing so by their standards, have some means of directly communicating with that environment and bending it to their will apart from, you know, having to directly go and find out what is good for one's

[jordan179]

I don't think it's a coincidence, either that (please correct me if I'm wrong) in fiction, almost all of those "elf" like sentient species who can live in perfect harmony with their environment, and look down on humans for not doing so by their standards, have some means of directly communicating with that environment and bending it to their will apart from, you know, having to directly go and find out what is good for one's survival or not, and actually use force on nature, as humans do in the real world. (The Na'vi in Avatar are a prime example.)

Well, the "elf" species tend to cheat, in that they have magic (or some magic-like technology) aiding them. To take the Ur-example, Tolkien's Elves literally cheated in that they had the wisdom of the Noldor taken from the Uttermost West against the specific orders of God's representatives on Earth. And Feanor was hardly harmonious, to anything save that which suited his own will. Now, in Tolkien, it is literally possible to listen to the "song" of Nature and "sing" back to it to cause

[miss_breeziness]

"I foresee a possible future in which we gain our power from nuclear fusion and space-based solar, do our heavy industry in orbit and on other worlds, communicating with them by space elevators and interplanetary craft, and turn the Earth into a garden as rich as the Pleistocene, if not more so. Of course, we could always screw up and devastate our homeworld -- that's our game to win or lose."

That sounds AWESOME. Unfortunately, one of the factors which may cause screwing up and devastation of Earth is...the insistence of mainstream environmentalists on economically unviable power, status quo thinking, and - in some cases - a nostalgia for human technology levels of the Pleistocene. How many save-the-earth types even KNOW your point about how modern industry generates so much more value for the amount of destruction it causes, compared to at the start of Industrial Revolution in Europe?

I wonder if you've read this article. It sets out some of the ideas you did. Of course, the very fact that someone needed to write an article titled

[nenena]

Uh, that particular example that you quoted was pointing out the racism in the original work, not making a racist statement in and of itself. The troper is using sarcasm to highlight the racism in the original work.

Edit: Oh fuck, never mind. It's in the Real life section. Fuuuuuuuuuck.

[miss_breeziness]

To be fair it's probably a twelve year old kid. As I said, anyone can get onto this site...including omnicidal misanthropes. I've seen some pretty bad spelling too. But whatever his/her age, this complete lack of historical knowledge apart from Hollywood movies on this person's part makes it hard for me to take them seriously.

I edited that entry now to say that this is the Theme Park Version view.

[babydoc3]

omnicidal misanthropes

It's a shame that there's even a need for the word "omnicidal" to exist. (This post was the first place I ever saw it.)

[miss_breeziness]

A total shame indeed.

Ironically, one of the reasons people give for hating humanity, supposedly, is that they are (according to the misanthropes) full of hate and kill members of their own species for no good reason. And they want to remedy this by...killing humanity for no good reason, out of hate.

Who's the real hater?