The Science of the Savage
Boas, Chiron, and the new Frontier.
Karl Marx was not the first socialist, or egalitarian. Egalitarianism is a product of universalism, which results from imperialism. It was Caesar who made his Gallic allies into senators, undermining the ethnic supremacy of the Latin nobility. Even Judaism, which has ceased to evangelize with the reforms of ben Zakkai, (the first “Rabbi” rather than “Kohen”) was originally imperial:
“[From] the provinces which are from India unto Ethiopia [..] many of the people of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them.”1
In Christianity, this was expressed as there being “neither Jew nor Greek.”2 This radical egalitarian (and therefore, imperial) doctrine was then buried beneath a mountain of popularization, codification, dogmatization, and canonization. Bureaucratic synods were organized to erect a distinct church hierarchy which became inextricably intertwined with the European aristocracy. Most priests were the sons of nobles, and most popes came from a select few Italian families.
It was not until the first rumblings of the Reformation that this pyramid of inequality, the great chain of being, was shaken and deconstructed, so that the original, radical foundations could be uncovered once more. The Reformation of Christianity, finally completed and fully established in the 17th century, then gave way to an international Freemasonic movement which sought to universalize beyond mere Christianity, seeking to incorporate both Jewish Kabbalah and Islamic Sufism. Freemasonry professed a worship in TGAOTU (The Great Architect Of The Universe).
The first anti-colonial revolution supported by Freemasons, the Algerian Revolt of 1831, was led by Emir Abdelkader (historically written as “Abd-el-Khadar”), who later became an open Freemason by 1862. Beirut established a Freemasonic Lodge in 1861, which then funded the building of the King Solomon Lodge in April 1868 in Syria. In Egypt, the 1882 Orabi Revolt was supported by Freemasons. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 was intertwined with Masonic networks.
There is a direct link between Freemasonry and anti-imperialism, universalism, and the myth of the “noble savage.” When Freemasonry is understood as “essential Christianity, stripped of Catholicism,” then its origins can be understood, rather than mythologized as “the devil incarnate.”
Jewish Assimilation and Noble Savagery
One mistake of antisemites is in linking Orthodox Judaism, as represented by the Talmud, with leftism. The truth is that Ashkenazi overrepresentation in leftism since 1848 is not a result of Orthodox Judaism, but a reaction and opposition to Orthodox Judaism. The Ashkenazi affinity for leftism has to do with the hatred of the ghetto, the shtetl, the rabbi, and the Talmud — not its embrace. Leftism is universalism, equality, and “essential Christianity.” Conversion to Christianity was a tricky thing for Jews since the Spanish Inquisition held all conversos in contempt. Freemasonry and leftism liberated Jews from this lingering discrimination.
It is no surprise then, when Franz Boas the “geographer”3 began his anthropological studies in 1883, he began to diverge from the popular racial science of his time, and to embrace the concept of environmental determinism, or what would later become known in psychology as “behaviorism.” This “behaviorism” was derived not from the Talmud, but from the philosophy of Christian missionaries.
When Christian missionaries were sent to America, Africa, and the Caribbean, they continuously found themselves in conflict with European colonial authorities. The authorities, whether they were soldiers, slave owners, or administrators, sought to control and subjugate the natives by any means necessary. This included torture, rape, family separation, denial of dignity, and general cruelty. For Christian theologians, both in the Roman and Anglican churches, this was counter productive to the ultimate mission of converting souls to the church.
When Boas produced his theory of environmental determinism, he was plagiarizing and secularizing Christian theology. Racial science, or the theory of gens, genus, breeding, blood, national or inherited character was an idea from classical Greece.4 It was essentially abandoned among the educated priest class of Christendom from 363 to 1492, and only reintroduced formally by Giordano Bruno in 1591 who proposed that there must have been other “first men” besides Adam to account for the diversity of human races.
By 1735, Carl Linnaeus reintroduced the concept of man as an animal. He introduced four "varieties" of man: white, red, yellow, and black. Still, Carl's father, Nils, was a priest, and his mother, Christina, was a daughter of a priest. Accordingly, in his 1737 tract, Critica botanica, he cautioned readers to not divide up God's creation into different species:
"[God] created one human, as the Holy Scripture teaches; but if the slightest trait [difference] was sufficient, there would easily stick out thousands of different species of man: [..] white, rosy, tawny and black faces; [..] giants and pygmies, [..] etc. etc. But who with a sane mind would be so frivolous as to call these distinct species?"
By 1758, however, this caution decreased, and Linnaeus described distinct races, each within its own dominant humor (choleric, sanguine, melancholic, phlegmatic), its own physiognomy, and its own mental qualities. He described the pure European type as blonde haired and blue eyed, while the Asiatic type was dark haired and dark eyed. It is from this classification that Nazis would later call Slavic people "Asiatic," referring specifically to their darker hair and eyes.
The scientific theory of human races, as proposed by Linnaeus, was only popular for 125 years, at most, before it was challenged by Boas. Boas did not come up with any new theory of anthropology, but merely secularized (essentialized) Christian theology, which had persisted already for well over a thousand years. Christian behaviorism, or the belief that Jesus could “civilize” the world, was replaced by Boasian behaviorism, the belief that “civilization” and primitivism were environmentally determined. Boas replaced spiritual determinism with environmental determinism. Racial determinism, by contrast, had only been taken seriously for a few short generations before Boas began to attack it.
Nationalism and Savagery
There are two divergent myths of the noble savage:
The first, so far described, proceeds from a Freemasonic and Boasian “egalitarianism,” which promotes cultural relativism and xenophilia. It is secular, universalist, and leftist
The second proceeds from a reactionary impulse, which comes from historical sensitivity and reaction to “over-socialization.”
This second type of admiration can be seen in Spengler, who contrasts primaeval Kultur with late-stage Zivilization. Rousseau, chiefly, is famous for popularizing the myth of the noble savage, and he did so out of a reaction to the Enlightenment, with its calculating spirit and Baroque aesthetics.
The dominant musical form of the Enlightenment was the harpsicord. The instrument itself represents a pure Apollonian delineation of melody, exactly mathematical in its tuning. The Romantic reaction was a return to nature, which reached its heights in the Wagnerian Opera. Romanticism was directly tied into nationalism, and to physical culture, gymnastics, and even nudism.
The procession from Rousseau to the nudists of the Third Reich is a story with many rich chapters. Frank Usbeck describes the connection between Nazis and Native Americans as a result of “Norse-taglia,” or nostalgia for Norse paganism, rooted in nature and ancient traditions.5 Additionally, German nationalists were interested in the concept of the “indigenous,” as they believed Germans were native to Europe, whereas Slavs were mixed with “Asiatic invaders” from the steppe. Like the native Americans who were wiped out by English speaking imperialists, the Germans also feared the destruction of their nation at the hands of Britain and the Soviet empire. Specifically, the Nazis used the example of the genocide of native Americans to prove that a noble race could be exterminated by capitalist interests.
In 1887, Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals used the term “blonde beast” to describe his own concept of a noble savage:
“At the centre of all these noble races we cannot fail to see the blond beast of prey, the magnificent blond beast avidly prowling round for spoil and victory; this hidden centre needs release from time to time, the beast must out again, must return to the wild: - Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, Homeric heroes, Scandinavian Vikings - in this requirement they are all alike. It was the noble races which left the concept of 'barbarian' in their traces wherever they went; even their highest culture betrays the fact that they were conscious of this and indeed proud of it.”
Before Nietzsche, European culture saw itself as Christian, and therefore opposed to the “beast man,” the man of flesh. Animal was lower than human in the great chain of being. The less savage man was closer to God.
Prior to the Christianization of Europe, however, legends of “beast men” were curiously common. Merovech, the kings of the Franks until Charlemagne, claimed descent from a mythical sea creature, the Quinotaur, half bull and half fish. Chiron, the Greek tutor of heroes, was half man and half horse. Herakles is made a hero because of his battle with the Minotaur, half bull half man, and because he wears the skin of the Nemean lion. The tribe of Judah, line of King David, was compared with a lion.6 Romulus and Remus were nursed by a she-wolf. Fehérlófia is a popular Hungarian folk tale which describes a boy who is nursed by a white mare. The Salar people of China, who speak a Turkic Oghuz language (extremely similar to Turkish), have a similar tale called “The Son of a Horse.”
Whereas the Boasian myth of noble savagery attempts to secularize Christian spiritual opposition to racial determinism, the myth of the “beast man” far predates both cultural relativism as well as European Romanticism. Savagery in Greece was not associated with stupidity. Anacharsis, a Scythian, was considered one of the Seven Sages of Greece. For the Greeks, the archetype of the noble savage was exemplified by the Thracians, the Scythians, and the mythical Amazonians. These peoples were inherently nomadic.
The Greek distinction between savage and civilized had to do with the Greek conception of the polis as a stationary settlement. Odysseus represents the Greek relationship to the polis as inherently complicated. On the one hand, Odysseus is morally compelled to return to civilization. On the other hand, every single impulse in his body instructs him to raid, pillage, impregnate numerous women, travel to new lands or even new dimensions (the realm of the dead), and transcend the cycle of life and death (through the acquisition of divinity by marriage to the Goddess).
For the Greeks, the hero was inherently complicated and tragic, split down the middle between civilization and savagery. Herakles also typifies this archetype, since he desires to be at home with his family, but sheer madness (originating from Hera) drives him to foreign lands and legendary feats. The hero in Greek and also Germanic mythology is necessarily a traveler. One cannot become a hero by remaining at home and defending the walls of the city.
In this sense, Beowulf, Perseus, Apollo and Orpheus are all frontiersmen. They leave the known world behind to journey into the unknown, the cave of the dragon. This is what defines the American cowboy: he lives on the edge of civilization, among wild men, in a land of lawlessness, where the only law is the right of the stronger.
Summary
Franz Boas and his school of behaviorists, in their attempt to promote cultural relativism, found some usefulness in the archetype of the noble savage. Instead of dismissing Australian aboriginals as inherently deformed, as racialists did for 125 years, Boas wanted to demonstrate that all human beings had equal value and worth, and were all capable of adhering to civilized norms. Towards this end, it became useful to imagine that other cultures were not “better or worse,” but simply different. This spawned an industry of “primitivism,” where the supposed ancestral wisdom of ancient tribes was marketed and sold as a consumer product. This reached its height in the 1960s, typified by liberals such as Stanislav Grof, who criticized Western civilization, while extolling the virtues of African, South American, and Australian aboriginal peoples.
Yet the idea of the “noble savage” is not inherently anti-western. In fact, the idea is central to the western concept of the hero, who is stripped of all outward trappings of civilization. Robinson Crusoe, Conan the Barbarian, and Bear Grylls are all reflections of this deep tradition. Just as Boasian anthropology was commodified into a cheap consumer product by the hippies of the 1960s, the “man beast” is now being sold as the character of “Liver King” and a endless stream of “manosphere” grifters.
This hall of mirrors or simulacra can only be broken through the return of the original spirit of savagery by other means. Savagery is nihilistic in the sense that it shakes the foundations of morality.
American Psycho is a negative portrayal of the savagery as an impotent fantasy of an inherently neurotic type. Patrick Bateman kills the defenseless, but he is an animal in a cage, symbolized by the last line, “This confession has meant nothing.” In other words, Bateman’s rebellion against morality is useless, inconsequential, unrecognized, and does not challenge the system. American Psycho presents the Nietzschean beast (loved by meme-makers) as secretly insecure and self-doubting (ignored by the meme-makers, and irrelevant to the meme).
Mailer’s Noble Savage
By contrast, Norman Mailer's 1957 essay The White Negro attempted to valorize a concept of amoral sexuality and violence which transcended both class, race, and even politics:
the middle class and upper middle class is composed primarily of the neurotic-conformists, and the saint-psychos are found in some of the activities of the working class (as opposed to the working class itself), in the Negro people, in Bohemians, in the illiterates, among the reactionaries, a few of the radicals, some of the prison population, and of course in the mass communication media.
For Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle, and so its appeal is still beyond the civilized man.
Before Jonathan Bowden used the term “cultured thug,” Mailer used the term “philosophical psychopath.” Mailer suggests that these “philosophical psychopaths” will lead a “psychically armed rebellion”:
“A time of violence, new hysteria, confusion and rebellion will then be likely to replace the time of conformity.”
Mailer lived in New York City, and his words were prophetic. The period between 1950 and 1990 saw a massive increase in homicides. While homicides have decreased, irresponsible and unsanitary sexual practices have resulted in all-time highs for STDs.
The problem with Mailer’s “philosophical psychopath” is that this too has been commodified. Black Lives Matter became a corporate slogan. Even AIDS has lost its edge, and is no longer a killer. School shootings and manifestos are an occupational hazard of child imprisonment in K-12.
AI and Neuralink are the current challengers to a system which Mailer described as American totalitarianism. It remains to be seen whether or not these technologies allow for the creation of a new frontier outside of civilization, or if they reinforce the dominance of the bureaucracy over the masses. More obtusely, the attempt at space exploration to create a new frontier is entirely symbolic and almost a “cargo cult.” It would be easier to found a colony on the bottom of the ocean than on the surface of mars.
True frontiersman would go for even lower hanging fruit: the greening of Antarctica. Antarctica likely has oil, gas, shale, coal, and minerals under the ice. If global warming is real, then this unexplored continent will open up for colonization. In either case, the collapse of human fertility, if allowed to persist uninterrupted by war or disease, will result in several generations of senile gerontocracy. Such a fragile, dogmatic, and inflexible regime will, like the decay of Rome, present opportunities on the fringes for savage men — not in the sense of their violence, but in the sense of their lack of settled life.
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Esther 8:9 and Esther 8:17.
Galatians 3:28.
Boas was extremely well read in Kantian philosophy and the science of his time, but his PhD was in geography.
I argue elsewhere the possibility that the hereditarian idea may have an older parallel in the laws of Manu, or the Egyptian caste system.
Fellow Tribesmen: The Image of Native Americans, National Identity, and Nazi Ideology in Germany. Frank Usbeck, 2015.
Genesis 49:9.