Message-ID: <970105191920_745546731@emout11.mail.aol.com> Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 19:19:20 -0500 From: mailto:EUNSteve@AOL.COM> Subject: Re: pushing development--or pushing the status quo? To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
All,I would like share with you a note I received from Cameron Beatty--I hope he doesn't mind this sharing--and my reply to him
<<Subj: Re: pushing development--or pushing the status quo? Date: 97-01-05 13:51:16 EST From: mailto:cameron.beatty@snow.edu (Cameron Beatty) To: mailto:EUNSteve@AOL.COM
Sir: I haven't done the reading, probably won't, but I appreciate the articulateness with which you're making some pretty obvious(?) points. Most people don't realize that development is as much a matter of survival as anything else. They'd prefer to see it as a quasi-religious issue. More often, I think they want to keep the natives quaint for themselves and posterity.
It's like preservation of the wilderness: If you don't want to see it changed, put a fence around it and don't let *anybody* visit.
Thanks for your comments. I have friends who, without a lot of that much-maligned 'development' would be dead.
Cameron Beatty mailto:cameron.beatty@snow.edu>>
Mr. Beatty,
<< Most people don't realize that development is as much a matter of survival as anything else. They'd prefer to see it as a quasi-religious issue.>>
That's an important and helpful insight. Marx was a passionate prophet, and of course his followers were often willing to die for their faith--and totally convinced, as are some on this list, that those disagreeing with them were lackeys of capitalism who deserved to die. Or at least be excommunicated.
And such religious bodies as The World Council of Churches and "liberation" theology have embodied a religious version of Marxism in their practice--again with the best of motives.
Most unfortunately, many of the countries that have been "helped" by such liberators are littered with the bodies of the dead.
The true believers, however, have a built in and logic-immune explanation for the death and the failures: again, it's the West and the capitalists who made the realization of the dreams impossible, not the nature of the theology itself.
And no matter how many times the failure, and the hunger and dying is repeated, there is no "development", no learning on their part: still the same story of Western evil.
Fortunately, as have seen in the former Soviet Union, years of such propaganda fail to change the nature of the people assaulted by it, and when they can , they choose freedom--including the freedom of the market>
This is not to forgive our very real sins and errors, or to insist that future versions of the market and capitalism have a human face.
<<More often, I think they want to keep the natives quaint for themselves and posterity.>>
There is some of that, I think, but often unrecognized and denied.
<<It's like preservation of the wilderness: If you don't want to see it changed, put a fence around it and don't let *anybody* visit.>>
This is, I think, an illuminating example. We sometimes do really have to choose between spotted owls nd the loggers, and we sometimes have to cut down many trees to clear land for homes.
I have my home, of course, so I'd like to keep your country "unspoiled" so I can enjoy it, perhaps as a tourist.
I don't put it that way, of course: what I say is that I respect your indigenous culture and country, and don't want the barbaric hands and steam shovels of the West despoiling it.
You, of course, might want to get that ore out and sold, but that would "soil" the scenery .
<<Thanks for your comments. I have friends who, without a lot of that much-maligned 'development' would be dead.>>
Perhaps part of the differences that are being aired here are a function of the differences in our biographies.
Without Western opportunities I would be dead. Without the opportunities America afforded me and my immigrant parents, I would be illiterate and doing work that a horse can do better.
You and I recognize the errors and diseases of Western culture as well as the all-out critics: I hope we are better able than they to recognize and celebrate the glories of that culture as well.
Steve Eskow