The word "savage"

[Kraut and Tea]

I got into quite some trouble recently on an English language politics forum for using the word savage rather frequently.

Until recently I had no idea that the word savage had such a negative conotation due to it`s use as a generalising swearword directed at native people in the US and else where.

To me a savage is someone whos views are direct attack on the values or even the complete concept of modern civilisation.

ISIS scum who behead people, Iranian Ayatolas who have people stoned to death because they had sex before marriage, Saudis who have people executed for being gay, Burmese warlords who recruit child soldiers and fanatical redneck American christians who want to inforce theocratic rule.

These are people who I would call uncivilised or savages.

The reasons why I use this word is because I think it is a better translation of the German word "Barberei" which is used here in debates to describe totalitarian regimes. And the English word "barbarism" in my opinion simply falls short of having the conotation I intend.

Anyway. I got into trouble for calling a person who insisted that: "people with certain ideologies should have their children taken from them like under Franco and the Argentine military government".

So is the word savage a word that has no place in this society as a word used to accuse someone of working against concepts of modern civilisation?

[SLN445]

Using a negative word to describe a group with negative positions seems fine to me, no different from any other insult.

[hellheaven1987]

behead people

I don't know French only became "civilized" after 1981.

[Fork]

To me a savage is someone whos views are direct attack on the values or even the complete concept of modern civilisation.

The problem is that ethnocentric racists used the same definition up to around eighty years ago. Native English speakers find the word either very old-fashioned or quite insulting.

[Stavroforos]

Perhaps this is a sign that I've been away from North America for quite some time now, but I honestly can't see the problem. Savages is meant to be a negative word, in that it describes brutality and violence, so when using it to describe ISIS, I can't see where the problem lies. Essentially using it as an adjective doesn't seem to be negative to me, but perhaps using it as a noun can be for North Americans. "ISIS are like savages" might imply some sort of racist analogy with the Native Americans (not to me, but to others), while I don't think "ISIS are savages" would be misconstrued.

[Caelifer_1991]

The problem with the word savage is that it accumulated a wealth of racial connotations during the 1800's and early 1900's. As a word, it should be fine, but due to history it isn't. If you call someone a savage based upon their ideological views then they will automatically assume that you are calling everyone in their demographic a savage as well simply due to its previously collectivist connotations. This applies particularly if its one ethnic group saying it to or about another of course, if a Black person says it to another Black person or if a White person says it to another White person then clearly that implication is no longer valid, but of course such circumstances are relatively rarer than one group saying it to or about another... even then, when it is one ethnic group saying it to the same ethnic group, the same connotation is still usually applied but in a nationalist sense, such as an Englishman saying it to a Frenchman or whatever, the same connotations will be extended to culture, to socio-economic group, to sub-culture or regional culture, or to a person's family.

You can't avoid it, the meaning of the word is formed by the history of its use, the same as with all others. While it would be convenient if it had a specific meaning with no connotations attached, that is not the case, and is unlikely to ever be. The word lost any objective meaning in the early 1800's if not earlier, and has become simply an insult, a word that one group uses to belittle another that it does not like, "free" of any objective quantification. If you attempt to attach an objective meaning to it, or to remove its connotations, then you will have to explain in every case what you mean by it, in which case it becomes more practical to simply not use the word at all, unless you wish to provoke someone to anger via misunderstanding.

[Roma_Victrix]

and fanatical redneck American christians who want to inforce theocratic rule.

Now that's edgy.

I don't see a problem with the word in describing brutal and violent people like ISIS, but I would cringe if someone leveled that insult against a Native American in this day and age. It was one thing even to call them "noble savages" back in the 18th century, but for anyone who remains outside the boundary of the modern civilized world, like some tribesmen still do in the Amazon rainforest, I would label them "uncivilized" instead of "savage," which does carry some negative baggage and connotation.

[Ludicus]

t for anyone who remains outside the boundary of the modern civilized world, like some tribesmen still do in the Amazon rainforest, I would label them "uncivilized" instead of "savage,.

...but first, we need to define "civilization". A checklist for civilization, perhaps? should we judge societies against a checklist of supposedly civilized characteristics? the word "civilization" denotes a certain type of society.
The question is, what type? a collective self-differentiation from a "sagave" word? are there patterns of civilizational development? a community who transforms the environment for their own ends?
What about the new barbarians/savages like an old red army ( first red army) general, Mikhail Tukhachevsky- we wanted to burn all the books, and wanted Moscow to become the "center of the world of the barbarians"- and what about the nazis who fantasized about folk paganism and the mythical quest of the preservation of the purity of the German heritage - were they civilized?
As Agatha Christie put it ,in the "Shadow on the Glass": "has ever struck you that civilization's damned dangerous?".
Does "more civilized" means "better"? what civilized mean? isn't true that some Africans "savages" excelled as civilizers of certain environments?...

--------------------

What is civilization? I don’t know. I can’t define it in abstract terms—yet.
But I think I can recognize it when I see it

Kenneth Clark

[athanaric]

"Savage" implies savage behaviour. So I'd apply it to anyone who behaves like that, regardless of their (supposed) level of cultural sophistication.

I got into quite some trouble recently on an English language politics forum for using the word savage rather frequently.

Then maybe that forum isn't worth visiting.

[Roma_Victrix]

...but first, we need to define "civilization". A checklist for civilization, perhaps? should we judge societies against a checklist of supposedly civilized characteristics? the word "civilization" denotes a certain type of society.
The question is, what type? a collective self-differentiation from a "sagave" word? are there patterns of civilizational development? a community who transforms the environment for their own ends?
What about the new barbarians/savages like an old red army ( first red army) general, Mikhail Tukhachevsky- we wanted to burn all the books, and wanted Moscow to become the "center of the world of the barbarians"- and what about the nazis who fantasized about folk paganism and the mythical quest of the preservation of the purity of the German heritage - were they civilized?
As Agatha Christie put it ,in the "Shadow on the Glass": "has ever struck you that civilization's damned dangerous?".
Does "more civilized" means "better"? what civilized mean? isn't true that some Africans "savages" excelled as civilizers of certain environments?...

--------------------

Kenneth Clark

That's easy, at least by the definition I use. If your culture has not yet developed to the point where it is building towns and cities, sustaining a larger population than just a small hamlet of mud or straw huts, then you do not possess a civilization. Civilization is dressed up with all its trappings: reading, writing, learning, bureaucracy, trade and integration with the outside world, etc.

Civilized people and uncivilized people alike are capable of "savage" behavior in my mind, as Athanaric has deftly pointed out. The people of ISIS are civilized because they operate a modern urban civilization, but their brutal tactics and miscarriages of justice is by all means savage.

[Ludicus]

building towns and cities, sustaining a larger population....

In fact Strabo, already some centuries ago, classified countries of his day that lacked cities as uncivilized. But I would say that civilization is a relationship to the natural environment, re-crafted by the human impulse, in which the adaptations (not necessarily towns or cities sustaining a large population) are forced on the nature, to meet human demands. If I remember well, the ancient Egypt was once described as "a civilization without cities"- it was characterized by a dispersed urbanism, before the New Kingdom period, prior to Akhenaten's capital Amarna. It was an urban civilization without cities.

[Caelifer_1991]

That's easy, at least by the definition I use. If your culture has not yet developed to the point where it is building towns and cities, sustaining a larger population than just a small hamlet of mud or straw huts, then you do not possess a civilization. Civilization is dressed up with all its trappings: reading, writing, learning, bureaucracy, trade and integration with the outside world, etc.

Civilized people and uncivilized people alike are capable of "savage" behavior in my mind, as Athanaric has deftly pointed out. The people of ISIS are civilized because they operate a modern urban civilization, but their brutal tactics and miscarriages of justice is by all means savage.

I find myself wondering where exactly that line is drawn however, as the vast majority of settlements around the world for the vast majority of human history have been composed of little more than a scattering of mud hut villages. Even most of ancient Greece's cities would be, by today's standards, villages, and not cities at all, and the vast majority of their architecture would not be the gleaming marble buildings of politics and religion as we think of but rather, well, a scattering of wood and mud huts just like most of the rest of the world at the time. I also question the prerequisite to trade and integrate with the outside world, China and Japan prior to their modernisation were on the extreme end of isolationism, and yet few today would say that they would not even warrant being called a civilisation.

In short it seems to me that the definition of civilisation is to each polity, different, and essentially guaranteed to be overly flattering to those forming the definition at the expense of everyone else. I would also say that, aside from being subjective, that it is also extremely relative, not just to position but also to time. What is civilisation in 5000 BC would be seen as anything but by today's standards, indeed, even if we were to travel back to 1800's Europe prior to the establishment of basic infrastructure such as sewerage, with the high religiosity, tendency for war, propensity for crime, civil disorder, and so on, then it is unlikely that, if not for it being our own history, we would consider it to be civilised by today's standards.

[Roma_Victrix]

In fact Strabo, already some centuries ago, classified countries of his day that lacked cities as uncivilized. But I would say that civilization is a relationship to the natural environment, re-crafted by the human impulse, in which the adaptations (not necessarily towns or cities sustaining a large population) are forced on the nature, to meet human demands. If I remember well, the ancient Egypt was once described as "a civilization without cities"- it was characterized by a dispersed urbanism, before the New Kingdom period, prior to Akhenaten's capital Amarna. It was an urban civilization without cities.

Even in the absence of proper cities in the Old Kingdom to compare with the metropolises of the Middle and New Kingdoms of Egypt, so long as the Old Kingdom Egyptians had small towns they could be said to have upheld a civilization. Especially considering all the other markers of civilization: a much more complex stratified social order than tribal villagers, leading to the diversification of labor and the rise of the sophisticated scribal class, the clear separation of their world from the natural animal world, etc.

I find myself wondering where exactly that line is drawn however, as the vast majority of settlements around the world for the vast majority of human history have been composed of little more than a scattering of mud hut villages. Even most of ancient Greece's cities would be, by today's standards, villages, and not cities at all, and the vast majority of their architecture would not be the gleaming marble buildings of politics and religion as we think of but rather, well, a scattering of wood and mud huts just like most of the rest of the world at the time. I also question the prerequisite to trade and integrate with the outside world, China and Japan prior to their modernisation were on the extreme end of isolationism, and yet few today would say that they would not even warrant being called a civilisation.

In short it seems to me that the definition of civilisation is to each polity, different, and essentially guaranteed to be overly flattering to those forming the definition at the expense of everyone else. I would also say that, aside from being subjective, that it is also extremely relative, not just to position but also to time. What is civilisation in 5000 BC would be seen as anything but by today's standards, indeed, even if we were to travel back to 1800's Europe prior to the establishment of basic infrastructure such as sewerage, with the high religiosity, tendency for war, propensity for crime, civil disorder, and so on, then it is unlikely that, if not for it being our own history, we would consider it to be civilised by today's standards.

I don't think China is a good analogy here. By "trading and integrating with the outside world" I was not referring to the establishment of trade and diplomatic relations with far-flung kingdoms and empires (which Han China achieved by the 2nd century BC with the establishment of the Silk Road in Central Asia, during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han). Trade and integration with the "outside world" could mean something as simple as trading with the neighboring town, or a town down the river from yours, or a town a couple valleys away, or a town possessing a similar culture that exists some 100 miles away. That perfectly describes China's first Bronze Age kingdom led by the Shang dynasty during the mid-to-late 2nd millennium BC, a time when writing was also invented in China separately from the outside world of the Near East where writing had already existed centuries before. Imperial China wasn't so much isolated as it was insulated, seeing how even during the most severe bouts of isolation the royal court saw fit to conduct trade and tributary diplomatic relations with its smaller neighbors in Central Asia, Tibet, Southeast Asia, Korea, and Japan. Of course the Treasure Fleet of the Ming dynasty admiral Zheng He ensured that Chinese tributary relations extended as far as East Africa in the Indian Ocean, leading to the Ming-Kotte War with Sri Lanka in 1410-1411 AD where the Ming overthrew the local Sinhalese ruling government to replace it with a Chinese-friendly one.

As for ancient Greece, Mycenaean-era Greece had palace towns - like Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Athens and Thebes - that were large enough to consider them having a unified and cohesive civilization. The commoners not living in impressive dwellings like the stone palaces of Mycenaean kings seems like a moot point, because even with housing edifices that aren't impressive you can still maintain all the other facets of civilization. I would certainly characterize the Chalcolithic Age Old Europe culture as maintaining a civilization due to the fact that they built large towns.

Besides, by the time of Classical Greece and Hellenistic Greece, Greek cities like Athens and Corinth became huge by the standards of the day. Judging it by modern standards is completely wrongheaded simply because we can sustain much larger populations in modern times. In that case cities like Alexandria, although smaller than modern-day Mexico City and Tokyo, were the virtual Mexico City and Tokyo cities of its day.

[Copperknickers II]

The term has changed in meaning. It was once a general term for primitive peoples, and was not even really an insult: 'the noble savage', but in recent times it has taken on a much harsher meaning. It refers not just to people who are uncivilised or backward, but specifically to people who participate in aggressive and violent behaviour. You can't really call a homophobe or a Fascist a 'savage'. To be honest it's really about action rather than views, you have to have actually done something violent to merit the term. Even Hitler wasn't really a savage, the savages were the SS and the Einsatzgruppen who got their hands dirty.

[Caelifer_1991]

Even in the absence of proper cities in the Old Kingdom to compare with the metropolises of the Middle and New Kingdoms of Egypt, so long as the Old Kingdom Egyptians had small towns they could be said to have upheld a civilization. Especially considering all the other markers of civilization: a much more complex stratified social order than tribal villagers, leading to the diversification of labor and the rise of the sophisticated scribal class, the clear separation of their world from the natural animal world, etc.



I don't think China is a good analogy here. By "trading and integrating with the outside world" I was not referring to the establishment of trade and diplomatic relations with far-flung kingdoms and empires (which Han China achieved by the 2nd century BC with the establishment of the Silk Road in Central Asia, during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han). Trade and integration with the "outside world" could mean something as simple as trading with the neighboring town, or a town down the river from yours, or a town a couple valleys away, or a town possessing a similar culture that exists some 100 miles away. That perfectly describes China's first Bronze Age kingdom led by the Shang dynasty during the mid-to-late 2nd millennium BC, a time when writing was also invented in China separately from the outside world of the Near East where writing had already existed centuries before. Imperial China wasn't so much isolated as it was insulated, seeing how even during the most severe bouts of isolation the royal court saw fit to conduct trade and tributary diplomatic relations with its smaller neighbors in Central Asia, Tibet, Southeast Asia, Korea, and Japan. Of course the Treasure Fleet of the Ming dynasty admiral Zheng He ensured that Chinese tributary relations extended as far as East Africa in the Indian Ocean, leading to the Ming-Kotte War with Sri Lanka in 1410-1411 AD where the Ming overthrew the local Sinhalese ruling government to replace it with a Chinese-friendly one.

As for ancient Greece, Mycenaean-era Greece had palace towns - like Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Athens and Thebes - that were large enough to consider them having a unified and cohesive civilization. The commoners not living in impressive dwellings like the stone palaces of Mycenaean kings seems like a moot point, because even with housing edifices that aren't impressive you can still maintain all the other facets of civilization. I would certainly characterize the Chalcolithic Age Old Europe culture as maintaining a civilization due to the fact that they built large towns.

Besides, by the time of Classical Greece and Hellenistic Greece, Greek cities like Athens and Corinth became huge by the standards of the day. Judging it by modern standards is completely wrongheaded simply because we can sustain much larger populations in modern times. In that case cities like Alexandria, although smaller than modern-day Mexico City and Tokyo, were the virtual Mexico City and Tokyo cities of its day.

Well fair enough then, though under these definitions I struggle to think of many places without civilisation in recorded history, wherever humans settled down to a lifestyle of settled agriculture, they created towns, and wherever there were towns there were trade routes connecting them, limited only by geography. I suppose the only determinant that isn't universal in that regard is written language, but if we must exclude civilisations on the basis of lacking a written language then we must exclude a great many of them indeed, such as the Aztec's (unless written language extends to pictography in any case).

[Roma_Victrix]

Well fair enough then, though under these definitions I struggle to think of many places without civilisation in recorded history, wherever humans settled down to a lifestyle of settled agriculture, they created towns, and wherever there were towns there were trade routes connecting them, limited only by geography. I suppose the only determinant that isn't universal in that regard is written language, but if we must exclude civilisations on the basis of lacking a written language then we must exclude a great many of them indeed, such as the Aztec's (unless written language extends to pictography in any case).

The Aztecs, and the Mayans before them, most certainly possessed their own pictographic writing systems, but it's interesting to know that the Incas of Peru had no writing! They only had the Quipu "talking knots" number system to maintain administrative and commercial records. Yet despite the lack of a literate culture, the Inca were able to build large cities and maintained virtually all the other trappings of civilization.

[Caelifer_1991]

The Aztecs, and the Mayans before them, most certainly possessed their own pictographic writing systems, but it's interesting to know that the Incas of Peru had no writing! They only had the Quipu "talking knots" number system to maintain administrative and commercial records. Yet despite the lack of a literate culture, the Inca were able to build large cities and maintained virtually all the other trappings of civilization.

Well (avoiding the topic of language and the nature of its development, and the relative lack of any fixed boundaries between stone age cave paintings, modern writing, and everything in between), that's my point. No matter what variable you use you'll find civilisations that were clearly great accomplishments in the development of mankind the world over, that existed without them.

Indeed, if I had to summarise my point further, and I suppose to bring me to my final point: civilisation as a word appears to be essentially arbitrary, human development exists along a spectrum, there are no fixed boundaries or stages involved. The existence of the word itself, and the black and white, clear cut separation of humanity into the two orders on either side of it, will never be more than an abstraction that serves the purpose of aggrandising those that set the definition of the word.

[athanaric]

I find myself wondering where exactly that line is drawn however, as the vast majority of settlements around the world for the vast majority of human history have been composed of little more than a scattering of mud hut villages. Even most of ancient Greece's cities would be, by today's standards, villages, and not cities at all, and the vast majority of their architecture would not be the gleaming marble buildings of politics and religion as we think of but rather, well, a scattering of wood and mud huts just like most of the rest of the world at the time.

Population size is not the most important defining feature of a city. Ancient Greek cities that were considered as such had several of the defining traits - a central square for the town assembly, a variable number of sacred sites including temples, a town hall, maybe some water distribution or drainage, a variety of resident craftsmen, and so on. Population size as a factor, beyond a certain minimum, is mostly important in the context of the total population of the area and the technological means available (the more sophisticated your engineering is, the bigger your towns can be).
Regarding the degree of civilization, there's also the technological level to consider.

I also question the prerequisite to trade and integrate with the outside world, China and Japan prior to their modernisation were on the extreme end of isolationism, and yet few today would say that they would not even warrant being called a civilisation.

The extreme isolationism of China and Japan is more a phenomenon of the modern age, between the 1400s (China IIRC)/1600s (Japan) and the 20th century. Before that, they did trade with outsiders, and engaged in foreign diplomacy, especially China.

[IZob]

"Savage" implies savage behaviour. So I'd apply it to anyone who behaves like that, regardless of their (supposed) level of cultural sophistication.

This. Op, Come back to live in 2014 please.

[Caelifer_1991]

Population size is not the most important defining feature of a city. Ancient Greek cities that were considered as such had several of the defining traits - a central square for the town assembly, a variable number of sacred sites including temples, a town hall, maybe some water distribution or drainage, a variety of resident craftsmen, and so on. Population size as a factor, beyond a certain minimum, is mostly important in the context of the total population of the area and the technological means available (the more sophisticated your engineering is, the bigger your towns can be).
Regarding the degree of civilization, there's also the technological level to consider.


The extreme isolationism of China and Japan is more a phenomenon of the modern age, between the 1400s (China IIRC)/1600s (Japan) and the 20th century. Before that, they did trade with outsiders, and engaged in foreign diplomacy, especially China.

Well yes, all of those things are importance, but again all of those things have been present in small towns and villages the world over throughout all human history. You could have gone to the farthest backwater village of Norway in the dark ages and found that they had all those things, perhaps excluding the town square (though they, like everyone else, would have had their own gathering locations anyway), yet they could hardly be considered civilised, what with being essentially a collective of subsistence farmers supporting a permanent caste of raiders and pillagers, from which the entire economy was based. The same applies to craftsmen and temples, they are all essentially universal wherever there has been settled agriculture, and indeed even in many places without such.