Message-ID: <19970106221902912.AAA139@smtp.persocom.com.br> Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 22:19:04 +0000 From: Joaquim Moura <mailto:joaquim.moura@PERSOCOM.COM.BR> Subject: pushed/pulled cultures in Brazil To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
At 10:44 04/01/97 -0500, Dr. Steve Eskow wrote: ... >
>I conclude this:
>
>All of us who see ourselves as "change agents" are in the business of
>cultural destruction, whether we like it or not.
Don't be so cruel with yourselves, Steve. As a Brazilian who researches our cultural reality through the last 40 years, I can tell that here were not the:
>Teachers. Therapists, Counselors. Evangelizing Christians. Developers.
>Transferrers of technology and even anthropology students, who don't understand
>that living in a village as they do with their notebooks, and cameras and
>tape recorders are helping to change a way of life.
... who have changed our way of life. This happened through a long process, during the last 50 years, pushed by American business and entertainment system, and pulled (from inside) by our own business people, politicians, artists (and disk jockeys), journalists etc.
In this process, we have changed our way of life, very influenced by the American style, but don't blame just yourselves... The American style is also the technological style, and every man (and woman) deserves to develop or enjoy our technological human portion (any human person should be able to travel as I can, or have access to the same amount of information as I do so fast, even if this person is a Xavante indian from Xingu (in Brazil) or a aborigine from the Kalahari...).
But what we don't need - and we are having plenty of it - is that your commercial interests, your cultural industry, destroy our cultural qualities (other than the technological ones) as in food, in dressing, in music, in being true Brazilians, not Americans... What we have here - and I am afraid that this is a process that soon will be globalized - is that the populations who used to be just ignorant - but who also had their wisdom - are becoming wholly imbecilized by the cultural-commercial industry...
>So: I'm for participatory approaches. And sustainable development. And
>respect for indigenous cultures. And all the more noble approaches to
>development. But I have to begin by acknowledging that no matter how much the
>participation, how little the external control, the school that I help to
>build, the seeds that I bring, the battery-powered transistor radio I
>distribute: all of these are part of a process that will undo the culture
>that has endured for so long.
Don't be ironic: the problem is not the schools, the seeds, the radio... The problem is the commercial culture, the commercial food, the commercial attitudes, the consumism, the imbecilization process, the brainwashing through ads and TV etc. As I wrote here once, some months ago, I would like to recall Ivan Illitch who, many years ago (In Society without Schools) said that the communication-information and transportation are the only (or the main) technological/industrial industries that deserve keep growing, till be accessible to everyone who wishes to communicate or travel more widely.
The other industries could very well reduce their outputs (the medical industry, the military industry, the food-processing industry etc.), substituted by less consumism, more local (community or self) productivity, and preventive health caring, peace promotion, organically grown live food, handmade clothes and homes etc. If we reduce industrialism to what is really important to produce human-community-environment development and cannot be produced by other means, than we can keep the Earthen resources for the next generations and their descendants.
>Change agents change. There is no escape.
And who doesn't need to change? This is not the problem (the changes that the change agents strive to accomplish), but the changes promoted by the commercial and financial interests, without any counteracting from the governments, the academies, the NGOs, the media etc... _______________________________________________________________ Joaquim Moura
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