Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19981228171927.00b87450@mail.monmouth.com> Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1998 17:19:27 -0500 From: Wilbur Streett <mailto:WStreett@MAIL.MONMOUTH.COM> Subject: Re: LIFE IN REVERSE To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
At 11:58 AM 12/28/98 -0800, you wrote: >Hi,
>
>I am relatively new to this list and have been following the discussion
>between Wilbur and Jay with some amusement. I don't understand Wilbur's
>insistence that Jay proves that his postings are relevant to "International
>Development," unless Wilbur's definition of international development is
>very narrow.
This is a list of "Technology Transfer in International Development". Hence my request that Jay be somewhere near the stated purpose of the list.
>The following two quotes from Jay are especially poignant I think,
If they were quotes from Jay, that would be one thing, but they aren't from Jay, they are from other sources that Jay didn't properly quote.
>and go to
>the heart of the matter. I am interested in these issues as a Caribbean
>social scientist (I am from Surinam, a former Dutch colony) who studies the
>internationalization of the ideology of the market through economics
>education. One of the more important issues that social
>scientists/economists are not very well equipped to understand is precisely
>what Jay says: "To change society one must change individual men and women."
>Moreover, we have to have a vision of what we want to become.
If Jay had said it, it would be one thing. It also has nothing to do with "technology transfer" or "International development". Without a goal nothing can be achieved, so what?
>People who believe that, with the advent of industrial democratic society
>especially in its US form, mankind has reached the end of history, of course
>have no need to rethink the fundamental assumptions of the current social
>formation and the ways in which it reproducres itself. But being from a
>formerly colonized country, I have an inherent suspicion of claims that
>Europe or the US are the most superior models for social formation on this
>planet. As a postcolonial I am very aware of the mechanisms of IDEOLOGY,
>and thus not very impressed with the authority of sciences that support
>the ideology of market capitalism.
There aren't many people on this list that agree with the prevailing "wisdom" that is hammered by the capitalist media. But this isn't a poliical dissident list.. it's supposed to be "Technology Transfer in International Development". Yes, that is absolutely affected by the the current memes and messages being pushed by the established social powers, but only if Jay actually talked about "technology transfer in International Development" not how much he believes that the depletion of Oil is going to destroy the world.
>>To change society one must also change individual men and women. Man must be
>>ontologically reconstructed and redeemed as Homo economicus. What is
>>redemption if not the passage from one state to another, from darkness to
>>light? The virtues of the New Economic Man, whose dwelling place is the
>>market, are the will and the capacity to accumulate, to follow self-interest
>>and to maximize profit in all things. His wants are unlimited; to satisfy
>>them, he must learn to struggle against his fellows. Scarcity is a fact of
>>life. There is not enough to satisfy the unlimited desires of all nor to
>>provide a place in the sun for everyone. If unemployment in their country is
>>twenty per cent or more, the New Men and Women will pit themselves against
>>each other to find work at any price, at all costs.
>>
>>
>>If such endless growth is supposed to lead to an American or European
>>middle-class standard of living for over five billion people today and who
>>knows how many tomorrow, we already know this to be an ecological and
>>biospheric impossibility, even assuming tremendous and rapid changes in
>>technology. The Bank refuses to confront this last of all last things -- not
>>merely individual or societal death but the possibility of species
>>extinction, including that of the human species. Incantations like
>>"sustainable development" stave off the moment when the finite must at last
>>be faced.
>>
>
>
>I have a question for Wilbur? Are the people who worry about the
>environment wrong?
They would be if they did it here, without providing a linkage to "Technology Transfer in International Development". Indeed, to worry about the environment here with any relavance to TTIID is polution.
>Is it okay for us to do more of what we are doing in
>terms of the ideology of unbridled economic growth as the basis for
>happiness and wellness?
You decide what's right for yourself. I'm trying to get a list that I used to enjoy the discussions to be somewhere close to the charter..
>Am I crazy to think that if people in the Caribbean
>do not begin to rethink the definition of development, they will be
>contributing to their extinction?
Well, the dictionary definiton of development doesn't include "extinction of the Caribbean people.."
>Am I wrong to think that the narrow
>materialistic and reductionistic definition of development does violence to
>the complexities of human beings?
Materialism causes problems all over the world. What makes you think that it's not a problem in the "developed" nations?
But "the sky is falling, we're running out of Oil" doesn't strike me as a viable discussion of development in any sense. Particularly when Jay has failed to provide any real proof for his position despite being asked time and time again.
>After all, we have more needs than only
>material ones. We also have emotional needs (e.g. the need to be touched,
>to love and be loved), mental needs (e.g. need for intersubjective
>communication, status, free thinking), and spiritual needs (e.g. experience
>of transcendence and nonduality). In my opinion, all of these needs have to
>be taken into account when we envison what a developed society might look
>like. Material wealth then becomes just a small part of the whole package.
Well, Jay only sees it as Oil. Maybe you need to ask him the question.
>It is time that this list begins to look at those issues, and I appreciate
>Jay's attempts at rocking the boat.
You should read the archives of this list to see what sort of "rocking the boat" Jay has been doing on this list. I believe that he's probably posting his messages to numerous lists, and they are typically not his own writing anyway.
Wilbur
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