Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.970105222031.19204A-100000@fox.ksu.ksu.edu> Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 22:35:28 -0600 From: kerry miller <mailto:astingsh@KSU.EDU> Subject: Re: pushing development- To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Steve, >
> for a long time we were ignorant of the prices we would pay for the rush to
> "development".
>
And getting more ignorant by the minute, as long as we fail to recognize that development is not hardware, its preservation of values despite the hardware - and that the general trend of capitalism ( probably any large scale 'macro-economic' system, but caputalism is the one I'm familiar with) is to undermine values in its methodical process of "alienation from family, community, God."> But you're missing the opportunity to tell the part of the story that's often
> overlooked when the conventional story of Western evil is mindlessly
> repeated.
Who's asking? Its' obviously not in 'the system's' interests to empathize with the ore that's torn from its mother lode - and human values are exactly the same kind of resource. Convert 'custom' to 'consumption,' and 'habit' to 'fashion' and neighborliness to contract managed care - and make a buck.
> People live longer now, and suffer from fewer plagues (I know about AIDS).
> Ordinary people by the millions are now freed for part of each day from
> backbreaing toil, and cn spend time with a child or a book or music.
FWIW, the latest UN figures are that 30% of the adult population is unemployed...
> Yes, I think your very presence and intervention and work alters the culture
> you live in, and I resectfully suggest the confusion may be yours.
'Alter' is not a synonym I accept for 'set off an uncontrollable process.' Putting culture up as something static (and thus 'preservable') is a straw man. That's why I insist on looking at - and sharing - values rather than artifacts.
>
> <<The literate level, ... does not take account of the personal
> pleasure (e.g. of affordable shoes), or dignity, or desperation, or
> responsibility or any other such off-topic nonsense.
> In this perspective, a phrase like "trying hard to respect and preserve"
> *seems* to make sense - but of course it doesn't mean a thing. (Try to
> explain it to an illiterate...) >>
>
> Are you perhaps suggesting here that you and others here who read and write
> have some superior insight that immunizes them against the effects of
> literacy, cures them of intellectual and cultural diseases which callous
> folks like me have?
>
Not at all; you may have missed my sly ironic dig at the Rafe Ronkins ;-) What I am saying is that the Grand Generalisation is endemic, and it is next to impossible to get people loose from its effects, once they start arguing about 'developers' and 'ordinary people' and 'religious parents' and the like.
> When you're in your own culture, your own interpetative community of
> discourse, you get into arguments and debates of the kind we're having, but
> the outcome and the impact is not the same as when you change the
meaning > perspective of another person or group.
>
Why is that, if it is not that in this particular culture of ours, we assume equality of perspective until shown otherwise? (Where status differentiation exists, of course, we call it 'specialization,' and defer to medical or legal or other such expert opinion, pulling our forelocks all the while...)> Teaching someone to read, for example, sets off a train of consequences that
> can not be controlled, no matter who tries to teach them with pictures and
~~~~~~ > generative words so that they understand that they are the "oppressed" and
~~~~~~~ > the others, including the evil West, are the "oppressors."
>
Typical literate strategy, right ;-? You are still missing the point: if you are going to communicate you have to have a darned good idea of your co- respondent's perspective: what it *feels like* to be illiterate in this case --and I don't mean, "in a literate world," but in *hys* world. Once you've accomplished that, then you can start to deal with the 'literacy question.' I predict, a) it's going to look a lot like oppression out there, b) you'll have your hands full, demonstrating not only that not everything in print is to be believed, but that literacy is just like any other tool, with appropriate and inappropriate uses *as measured by hyr traditional standards*. It's not an impossible job, but its one which has usually been shrugged off - mainly because we havent learned to care about 'traditional' values in the first place, either hys or our own. Like I say, we need help.kerry