Re: GAS-L: Conquest of the Land Through Seven Thousand Years

[Eric Bruce Johnston <ericbj@club-internet.fr>]

Peter Singfield a écrit:

(Folks -- this is "tongue-in-cheek")
(...)
>From the book by Dean Koontz -- Mr. Murder

"The shopping malls, elaborate transit systems, glittering centers
for the performing arts, sports arenas, imposing government
buildings, multiplex movie theaters, office towers, sophisticated
French restaurants, churches, museums, parks, universities, and
nuclear power plants amounted to nothing but an elaborate facade of
civilization, tissue-thin for all its apparent solidity, and in
truth they were living in a high-tech anarchy, sustained by hope and
self-delusion."

I know this is not the place to expound on this, but bear with me a brief 
instant.

According to my latest theory of the state of the world, there are four (4) major problems confronting us :-

1.     Lack of real person-to-person communication.  Despite the so-called communications explosion, most of the communicating is done by mass-media, which filter what is heard and seen, in function of vested interests, and allow no real feedback.  Since problems are now global, solutions must be global, albeit enacted first and foremost at the local level, starting with each and every one of us (this is what is called standing on your feet, as opposed to standing on your head).  The means to this end is potentially here  -  the Internet.  It will be ever more present when the average householder has access to it via his TV, although in many poorer countries access will necessarily be shared.  I say the means is potentially here, for this depends upon the Internet remaining essentially open and uncontrolled by economic  interests.  To this end we may have to exert severe pressure on politicians, more pressure than the vested interests can muster.  So be prepared.
2.     Lack of democracy.  This comes down largely to the scale of our society (we must scale down) and to lack of dialogue between people (see #1 above).  Don't kid yourself that democracy is a question of merely voting every five years or so for someone who when elected goes off and does exactly as he pleases.  If you want to know what democracy is, go and live amongst New Guinea villagers.  It can be very frustrating for a westerner who is not used to it.  It takes ages  -  days, maybe weeks, maybe never  -  of negotiation to get a decision, because they have to come to a decision that is acceptable to everyone.  And the elected representatives  -  since the colonial power had introduced in many areas local government councils  -  would simply not take a decision until their electors had discussed the question at length and themselves come to a decision.  They saw themselves as the spokesmen  (sorry, I saw no elected women) of their electorate.  To western eyes, this is a hopeless time-wasting procedure.  But is it?  It makes for a cohesive, largely self-regulating society.  (Do not take that to mean they are problem free!)  Of course native affairs officers could take many decisions quite arbitrarily, thus giving them very bad ideas.
3.     Population explosion.  The New Guineans had a simple answer to this, before being forbidden it by an uncomprehending colonial power.  It amounted to this :  whittle down the numbers of your neighbours to prevent them from becoming too powerful and bumping you off.  Thus was the balance of power maintained.  This was generally carried out on a tit-for-tat basis, although I remember on one occasion something like 56 bodies were washed downriver from an area not yet penetrated by our patrols.  Clearly some village had been wiped off the map, except that it was never on the map.  The foregoing method of population control has been tried on a large scale in Europe a couple of times over the past century.
4.     The accumulation of material possessions as symbols of social standing.  In New Guinea society in general (a necessary qualification as there are many different forms of society there) a man acquires status by what he gives away, not the reverse as with us.  Keeping things for yourself is ill-regarded.  Goods are mainly perishable anyway : food.  The more wives a man has, the more food he can produce (the women do most of the work : nothing new under the sun, eh?), the more feasts he offers, the more status he thereby acquires - since others are thus indebted to him, they owe him a feast.  Furthermore land is communally owned ; only the rights, to the fruits of a particular tree, for instance, are individual ; but those rights are not passed on in direct line of descendance.  No inherited wealth or power! Or rather it is very much diffused.

Technology, on the whole, is neutral.  It is the ends for which we
use it that matter.  When you decide upon the ends, you decide what
technology to use to achieve it.  The trouble is that at present those
decisions are not made with a view to the social needs of the many 
(work should be primarily a social - and sociable - activity) but of the
economic - the status - cravings of the relatively few.  Go for nuclear
energy for example and you divert collosal resources into the creation
of a very few jobs.  Change the objectives of society, go for alternatives,
and we can create a liveable world, with plenty of worthwhile activities
for multitudes of people.

I also would not choose to go back to the Stone Age, having known people who were still there.  Villagers with only stone axes and bamboo knives would come in and labour hard on airstrip construction for a month in return for one small steel hatchet, worth thirty shillings Australian at the time (a little over one pound sterling).  Exploitation you say ?  It was worth a fortune to them.
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