Message-ID: <970106110120_644177376@emout16.mail.aol.com> Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 11:04:24 -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>
Brett,I'm not sure it is possible for us even to agree on the "facts", if there are any, so perhaps we try once or twice more and than face the possibility that we live in different worlds.
Here goes:
<< No, what I'd really like for us to do is learn sustainability from the only people who have ever really achieved it--the world's indigenous cultures.>>
First: many of the world's indigenous culures were ruthlessly antienvironmental, slashing and burning and abandoning. You are telling a story that is a romantic fiction.
Second, the problem is not learning from them. You have learned from them, I presume: but you continue to pollute with your automobile and capitalist devices. As you yourself have pointed out, you will not live in a sod hut: indeed, you will not even give up your car for a bicycle. You have learned from the world's indigenus; you choose not to practice what you have learned.
<< Before we force capitalism down their throats, I'd like them to show us how caring for the good of the community is superior than caring only for the profitablity of the individual. >>
We don't force capitalism down their throats: that is your construal of reality. The truth is much worse, Brett: as soon as they learn about capitalism they choose it. The only ones who prefer that they remain untouched by the market are Western intellectuals like you and their indigenous allies, usually indigenous intellectuals. The only way we can keep them from wanting television and "I Love Lucy" is to prevent them from ever seeing television. Is that what you propose?
You'd like them to show us that caring for the good of the community is superior, etc. After they have taught you, Brett, that lesson, how have you changed your lifestyle as a result of it? Why do we have to learn the lesson of community from indigenous cultures--don't we have models of community service in our culture? Indeed, couldn't it be argued that Americans have a long tradition of compassion and community service, and many agencies and institutions for helping and serving?
<<You suggest that the only way to "save" cultures is to destroy them--this is simply ludicrous. I>>
You miss the point. I say that any technology we transfer via development--including print literacy--carries with it untended consequences, sets off a train of events we did not want to occur. The cliche is, to the man with a hammer the world looks like a nail. To the new reader new ideas occur as he or she reads. Every technology begins the process of further transformation, and is thus the beginning of cultural destruction.
I<<t is the same empty capitalist rhetoric we use when dealing with environmental problems in third world countries--"how can they afford to clean up their mess if they don't have a strong economy," at which point we advocate mining, logging, heavy industry etc., which, ta-da! destroy the environment!!! >>
Who advocates this?
The mindlessness I find is on the part of those who talk of a "cashless communitarian" economy.
I suggest we agree on this: any culture that wants to remain as it is, without literacy, or double entry bookkeeping, or computers, or radios, or a market economy, should be allowed to remain untouched by capitalist hands.
If you find those happy cultures in place now, Brett, why don't you just leave them alone? Why do they need you or other "developers"?
Steve Eskow >>