Message-ID: <3393831B.B17@tpgi.com.au> Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 13:36:11 +1100 From: resolve <mailto:resolve@tpgi.com.au> Subject: Re: Common resources & common good To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
Everyone has been contributing such helpful thoughts, I wonder at the posting of "FAQ" and also wonder if those questions are indeed frequently asked. To press on, however, I'd like to initially say that as well as discussing "How" we can best transfer technology to poorer countries, it is important to first (and repeatedly) ask "Why" we want to transfer technology to under-developed/developing/third-world countries, "Who" is likely to benefit from it, "What" is it that is intended to be achieved by it and "Is it likely to be successful, given the current state of world affairs?" I believe this is what we have been doing in these theoretical threads and hope that everyone continues.The "tragedy of the commons" thread raised and made some very good points. I'm sure one or more of you has said it, but I would like to add my conviction that people in the developed world can be educated to care for and improve their environment, to reduce their consumption and repair the social fabric of their neighbourhood. What makes it difficult is the sleek and glamourous advertising industry driven by the consumer values set out by the Western economic model, which insists on constant growth (i.e. ever increasing consumption) in order to continue. The developed nations need to cut back, but economic rationalists insist on growth.
For some reason, it appears to be difficult to spell it out for economic policy makers that it's all going to end in tears. Therefore, it must come down to the consumers to simply consume less, and to personally fund NGO projects at the grass-roots level. Just as the "tragedy of the commons" makes the point that individuals who behave even a little bit selfishly create disasters en masse, so it must be driven home to all the viewers (ie recipients of consumerist propaganda) that if they each play a part in reducing pollution from traffic, litter and general carelessness, their environment will gradually improve. This has worked to some extent in the past.
Similarly, small-scale grass-roots projects in developing countries need to target citizens, rather than governments, in developed countries for support. Churches can send part of parishoners' tithes to NGOs and so on and so forth.
This is the kind of revolution that is needed: individuals quietly improving the quality of their everyday outputs for the good of the whole. A revolution need not be bloody and violent - I believe the word "revolution" was introduced into the conversation some time back when I posted a reply from an Indian woman. The word "revolution" was introduced by myself, and her response was that 'we might need a revolution, but not a marxist, or socialist, or any other "ist" or "ism" that gets bandied about' (paraphrase). I left that bit out when I posted it because it was her response to what I had written, and I thought the words themselves, ie "marxist" or "socialist" might be red flags to some of you, as apparently they were to her. It didn't occur to me that the word "revolution" would be too, but of course it is obvious in hindsight.
I'll quote again from my dictionary, as I find dictionary definitions quite illuminating, whereas popularly derived meanings become very muddied: "revolution: Complete change, turning upside down, great reversal of conditions, fundamental reconstruction..." It goes on to talk about the overthrowing of monarchies and so on, but again that raises connotations of violence and blood-shed, which was not what was intended when the word was initially added to the pot.
> In my experience, people won't do anything if you ask:
> "let's do this thing, it is something good."
> But if you tell them "Ah, you're so <something bad>,
> there's nobody elese like you", they wil try to recover
> from this <something bad> situation. So if you will be able
> to convince most of the population that they are nothing
> and that everybody will laugh at them until they don't have
> some better education, things will go upwards from themsevles.
> This convincing is quite easy to do: hire a western specialist
> in advertisement, and in three months your problem is solved.
> however, if the propaganda is not done by a skilled person,
> nothing will work.
I think Jurcovici has a point here, although s/he was arguing a different issue, and the kind of propaganda necessary to improve global living conditions, is that which convinces people living in high consumer societies that they will be better off in the long run if they forget about buying shiny new cars, and every disposable (ie non-user servicable) home appliance on the market, and concentrate on improving the soil in their own back yards, recycling whatever is possible, picking up more rubbish than they drop, solving more problems than they create in their various inter-personal relationships, and so on and so forth.
Instead, they are brainwashed daily by their television sets to consume whatever they can in order to feed an unsustainable economy, and if that means walking all over someone else, so be it; Arnold Schwartzeneger is waiting for us in the future with a big gun; the nice, attractive people in the movies all have lots of money and expensive accessories; the company with the best advertising campaign gets the most money for their product, which goes to the celebrites who endorse the product, the people in the advertising industry and the owners of the company - not into the product itself, or to the people whose labour produces it. Teenagers and children while away their hours vicariously beating, maiming and killing humanoid beings on video screens... Ah Western culture... I'll stop before I really begin to ramble.
And just to prove an earlier point...
> takes us back to blaming all the old colonialists, which is where this
> thread began with Lee's dramatic attack.
...actually, "blaming the old colonialists" was not my central point in, what you refer to as my "dramatic attack". I was enquiring as to the general knowledge of educated US citizens regarding America's present participation in third world exploitation. It was someone else who brought up "blaming" the old colonialists. I didn't really see how I could get an answer to the question if I wasn't pretty specific. For instance if I had said "Do US universities teach about America's role in the under-developed countries?", no-one would have known what I was driving at. This even more so if it weren't being taught in US universities, or were actively being suppressed.
I thank you for your attention.
Lee.
http://metz.une.edu.au/~kwebb/ncpreport/
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