Yo's-

None the less, useful to explore.

As I understand the history of this: 

The word "savage" is the English adaptation of the French word "sauvage" that originally meant "forest-dweller."  At the time of early European settlement in North America, the practice in Europe was that only members of the nobility had the privilege of hunting in the forests: "commoners" (that would be us) were forbidden from doing so, often under penalty of death.

The Europeans who settled in North America were highly surprised to see that no such restriction existed among the Native peoples: any and all tribe members hunted freely in the woods. 

The phrase "noble savage" originally referred to this: the idea that ordinary tribe members had what in Europe was a special privilege of the nobility, the freedom to hunt in the woods.  The European settlers envied the First Nations peoples for having a privilege that they themselves did not have.

The dynamic is quite real to this day, of city-dwellers' envy of rural peoples, and industrial-culture peoples' envy of hunter-gatherer peoples.  It's a generalization of "the grass is always greener in the other person's yard."  It works both ways: every axis of contrast between someone's own circumstances and someone else's circumstances can become grounds for comparisons that may risk turning invidious in some way.  And once that process gets started, it opens the door to all manner of psychodynamic smog. 

So about "killing it":

Seems to me that if we're concerned about (whatever issue), and we run across examples that may be entangled with racial/ethnic/religious/gender/etc. issues, the best thing to do is to stick to examples that come squarely from within our own subculture. 

And what's the most frequent example of embedded violent language in geek/nerd/maker/hacker culture?

How'bout "killer app"?  Let's start with that one.

-G.

(Back under the correct address now; thanks to all who helped fix that.)



On 13-05-03-Fri 3:18 PM, Anthony Di Franco wrote:
No worries. My response was a rhetorical answer.


On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 3:16 PM, netdiva <netdiva@sonic.net> wrote:
Dont worry, that was really just a rhetorical question.


On 5/3/2013 3:11 PM, Anthony Di Franco wrote:
Of course.



On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 3:08 PM, netdiva <netdiva@sonic.net <mailto:netdiva@sonic.net>> wrote:

    Did you actually just say this in public?


    On 5/3/2013 3:04 PM, Anthony Di Franco wrote:

        Doesn't the civilized psyche secretly crave the things it sets itself
        apart from and gives up and projects on its image of the noble savage
        though?

        Your description seems more like meditatively flowing through it.


        On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 2:58 PM, netdiva <netdiva@sonic.net <mailto:netdiva@sonic.net>
        <mailto:netdiva@sonic.net <mailto:netdiva@sonic.net>>> wrote:

        Here I was thinking "killing it" was just another example of
        appropriation of african american vernacular by the mainstream.




        On 5/3/2013 2:46 PM, Leonid Kozhukh wrote:

        "killing it" is a recently popular term to denote excellence and
        immense progress. it has a violent, forceful connotation.

        friends in the circus community - through empirical evidence - have
        established a belief that operating at the highest levels of talent
        requires mindfulness, awareness, and calm. thus, a better term, which
        they have started to playfully use, is "cuddling it."

        thought sudoers would appreciate this.

        cuddling it,

        -- len

        founder, ligertail http://ligertail.com


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