"Noble Savage"

In the midst of repairing my wife's coffee frother, today (which was knocked into the sink some days ago and has been corroding the innards....which needed re-soldered to.... work....), I took a look at the title of the blog. I asked, "is this misleading? Will people get it?" I am spending all this time to communicate, not to form a soliloquy. Maybe I ought to be clear.

I worry that this is the image that comes to mind when “Noble Savage” is read:

This image typifies a romantic sentiment of "Man in a state of nature is true man." This is an icon so prominently on display, today. The victory of this image is near total. Most people of our age fail to recognize that it should even be contested. This is also "man in his 'original' desires is most purely man." This is said in contemporary thoughts: "what you are born with you are," meant in the twisted, don't strive for else," way.

But that's not what I want to consider. I want the phantasms of something different to run through the mind. Something that many might relegate, to cryptozoology (crypto-anthropology?).

The "Noble Savage" I want to conjure for you resembles this:

[The Mythical Cimmerians]

And not this:

[As much as I do love this movie]

I am not seeking the model of "beastial man with all desires trouncing through him as good." I am seeking the icon for valor, wisdom, and love.You might ask, how does the first one symbolize that. In the first "a mean, old father-tyrant" holds his "frighten child" at sword point.

Let's look a little more closely at that scene.

[In macro-zoom]

The son, look him over. This isn't the fear of terror. This is the fear of confusion, the apprehension at the edge of the veil, the bewilderment of mystery, with respect for it. He is caught by surprise. And why is that? Because there is something strange, something... unexpected. See his father.


Look into the father's eyes. There is not hate. 
        There is study.
Look at his hands. There is not anger, or rage. 
        There is firm gentleness- the same present when he first held his son.
Look at his sword. There is not the blade of war, edge held broadside.
        There is a blade of peace, one of its edges facing heaven, the other, earth, joining them together- illuminating, guiding, showing the way.

Here, we can look and say, "here is one who sees things as they are, knows their ways." But that's not enough, that, alone, makes one nothing more than a jaded mandarin. The noble savage is an ideal for me  where I can say all those things, and then, with the same breath, "no duplicity is found in him."

This is the noble savage.

Everything else that is apart from this way is brutish, ignoble barbarism. The regular kind of savage made of cruel tyranny and selfish evil.