Comments on: Why Do They Have to Develop?

By: Tom Billings

Tom Billings — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:45:38 +0000

Phil, the specifics of these arguments have cycled over the last 4 decades, but have not much changed. They combine multi-culturalism with Deep Ecology environmentalism. They amount to arguments against one particular culture, not for primitive (read agrarian, pastoral and hunter-gatherer) cultures. That one culture is Industrial Culture, wherever it is growing and thriving.

These arguments are propounded by people and groups that feel threatened by the advance of other people’s industrial freedoms of action. The praise for other groups stops, the moment they shift decisively to industrial culture growth.

As industrial culture around the world moves out of an environment where people are desperate for individual survival, actions have begun for mitigation of initial problems with the environment, true. In spite of that, it even more intensely reduces the ability of many elites to keep their position of high status in society. Not surprisingly, we see bogus negative extrapolations from these groups about industrial trends, while masking their basic hostility to industrial culture with praise for “primitive” culture. Other people feel little for the tool that is culture, while empathizing deeply with those still strapped to the wheel of agrarian toil. The elites praise “culture” as the true measure of human worth, and demand all cultures be treated alike, except industrial culture.

Their fears power their own behavior. We should not let their fears power our behavior, no matter the mask laid over them.

By: Sally Morem

Sally Morem — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:44:58 +0000

“Ok why do under developed nations even need power honestly? Can’t they just stay under-developed forever?”

Yeah, why can’t they be good little peons and enjoy their poverty?

Because they are human beings, that’s why. They have hopes and dreams like everybody else.

Fortunately for them and all of us, our non-zero sum economic game is becoming more and more non-zero sum as technology accelerates.

By: Christian

Christian — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:22:27 +0000

Avatar has it’s flaws, sure. But equating what was depicted there to the “Noble Savage” yarn misses a point: The giant smurfs in Avatar had an extremely tangible direct connectivity to their biosphere with their USB hair. That’s a massively different paradigm than Earth’s “savage” peoples, much less the “civilized” ones. I can envision Earthlings moving through a nuts-and-bolts/wires-and-bits tech phase into a longer-term-sustainable state that is better integrated with the biosphere. And maybe that will look a lot less “constructed” and more “naturally integrated”. Maybe not Pandora-esque, but hopefully less rape-and-pillage-y and maybe even a little Dr. Dolittle-ian.

By: Orion

Orion — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:53:19 +0000

Well, let’s start off with a society of lotus-eaters on a tropical island like Tahiti. Aside from the occasional typhoon the weather is mild, there’s plenty of food and water for relatively little effort. As long as they don’t breed themselves to extinction the society can go on essentially forever, with little advancement from one generation to the next. Sudden changes to their environment (invaders, disease, pestilence, etc.) tend to wipe them out, however.

By: rjschwarz

rjschwarz — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:12:33 +0000

The Amish are about the best case example of an undeveloped yet successful society and I don’t see a lot of people beating down the doors to join up.

Simpler life=shorter, harder life.