In Rousseau’s worldview the one to be esteemed was the noble savage. The noble savage was the one untouched and untainted by Christianity or civilization. The noble savage hadn’t been polluted with the sin of the social order environment. He was the one in touch with his purified self.
Today the theory of the “Noble Savage” lives on in the Western worldview EXCEPT the noble savage is no longer the indigenous people so much as it is the warped and perverted. However, the virtue of the noble savage myth is still anchored in the one who hasn’t been tainted or polluted by Christianity or civilization just as was true of the indigenous people in the 17th century. As such the Noble Savage is now the sodomite, or the transgender or the pederasts or the feminists. These alone have been untouched by a sinful environment and alone can show the way to enlightenment and understanding.
Because this is so, the modern noble savage is raised up on the totem of social importance. The modern noble savage has more being than anyone else and so is admired and emulated.
Rosseau lives and the West dies.
It is interesting that many of the societies I was taught were noble as a boy are highly ignoble. In a sane world, the anthropologist’s prayer would be a prayer of thanks for not being made a Maasai woman or a Papuan man. Upon reading a book concerning the Kham of Nepal and Tibet, I discovered a vulgar society that nothing in college or the construction crew or the warehouse or the mailroom had quite prepared me for. All but the most messed up white girls, in my experience, have more morality than the average Kham village girl, and I would much rather live in the worst white countries, and raise a daughter there, then live among the Papuans or the Maasai.