[s_q_b]

These arguments that primitive cultures produce stronger more capable individuals ignores the inherent massive trade offs.

Modern healthcare, farming, family planning, improved access to education, and the liberation of women cause an extended adolescence.

In exchange, you get to live like a king, enjoy unprecedented personal security, have a constant supply of goods from the world over, and very decreased likliehood of dying.

Of course primitive cultures produce more rugged individuals. It's not that their methods of living are superior.

It's that everyone else is already dead.

[kiba]

Doesn't really jive with the article.

Being self independent in a modern society means being able to find a job, tie one's shoes, take out the trash, do homework and so on all without active management by the parental units.

It doesn't mean surviving out in the wilderness.

[s_q_b]

"Able to find a job" sounds very easy from our vantage point. For the majority of people, it most assuredly is not.

And that is the root of the problem.

[antisthenes]

Finding a job is easy.

Finding a job that pays the bills and affords the worker a certain lifestyle is the difficult part.

[kweks]

I'm unsure that Jordan could be called primitive by any quantitative means.

The metric of 'having a constant supply of goods' equating to living like a king seems like a personal opinion.

As the article alludes: material possession appears to have little positive effect towards creating strong independant youth.

[venomsnake]

Which will lead to interesting clash of personalities with recent migrants in Europe. The guys that come - they may be anything else - but they are extremely tough. You don't survive trek on foot from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Nigeria to Berlin otherwise.

So not only they skew the male/female ratio in their age cohorts heavily towards male (Europe should work hard to increase single female immigration to balance, but no one is talking about it), but they posses toughness that few of their contemporaries in the West have - a trait that is generally liked.

The dating game for the people around 16-22 in the areas where the migrant influx is greatest will be quite interesting to observe.

[legutierr]

Why are you saying that Jordanian culture is primitive? It's rather insulting.

[s_q_b]

Scientific accomplishment, individual rights, human rights... Sorry, not a relativist.

N.B The parent was edited. The original text was substantially different, and referred to the Bedouin people.

[legutierr]

I don't know if it matters, but what I originally wrote was this:

"Why are you saying that Bedouin culture is primitive? By what standard?"

I edited it to better get my point across.

And, by the way, s_b_q, you don't need to be a "relativist" to recognize that using the term "primitive culture" in this context is not only imprecise, but also borders on being racist--regardless of whether we are talking about Jordanian or Bedouin culture--and detracts from the conversation.

[s_q_b]

Cultural criticism is not racist, and that word has been used for far too long to shut down far too reasonable discourse.

Bedouin culture is primitive, in the sense that it resembles the state of earlier societies in history.

It has norms that significantly conflict with basic human rights. Attempting to conflate comparative cultural criticism with racism is nonsense. We should not hesitate to criticize societies that condone the systemic abuse of women, lack basic respect for human dignity, and encourage outright brutality. To that say that culture is primitive is to put it mildly.

Bedouin culture is also significantly different than urban Jordanian culture. Thus editing the question significantly altered the debate.