Europe was not as civilized as we have been taught. Not all Europeans were blinded by a sense of superiority, but many were. There are always sharper minds.  Take Montaigne for example. In this book On Cannibals, he described what happened when Europeans kidnapped 3 Tupinamba natives from Brazil and brought them to “civilized” Europe so that they could see what “savages” were like. They were brought to France so that the boy-king Charles IX could see them in 1562 and this is what Montaigne said:

“The King talked with them for some time; they were shown our way of living, our magnificence, and the sights of a fine city. [I] asked them what they thought about all this, and what they had found most remarkable. [They said] they had noticed among us some men gorged to the full with things of every sort while their other halves were beggars at their doors, emaciated with hunger and poverty.  They found it strange that these poverty stricken halves should suffer such injustice, and that they did not take the others by the throat or set fire to their houses.”

The “savages” of Tupinamba knew the truth about European civilization. They saw it was a corrupt shell. Actually, it reminds me a lot of what seems to be happening in the world now (both east and west) with its incredible widening inequality where Jeff Bezos earns $1million dollars every 50 minutes while his employees earning minimum wages are not allowed to take bathroom breaks. Some of them have to wear adult diapers to work on the job. In our own society we also have to ask who are the savages? As Ronald Wright said, “The Tupinamba saw through Europe’s alien splendor to the flaws of society. The answer to their question, as they perhaps knew only too well, was that the poor of Europe were cutting throats and burning houses in America.”