I have more respect for a Warrior that protects life—for us, for our children and grandchildren and future generations –than for a false civilization and their interests!
While newspapers and television talk about the lives of celebrities, …the chief of the Kayapo tribe received the worst news of his life: Dilma, 'The new president of Brazil, has given approval to build a huge hydroelectric plant (the third largest in the world).
It is the death sentence for all the people near the river because the dam will flood 400,000 hectares of forest. More than 40,000 Indians will have to find another place to live. The natural habitat destruction, deforestation and the disappearance of many species is a fact. ’
What moves me in my very bowels , making me ashamed of being part of Western culture, is the reaction of the chief of the Kayapo community when he learned of the decision—his gesture of dignity and helplessness before the advance of capitalist progress, modern predatory civilization that does not respect the differences …
My friend just sent me this story by Stewart Vriesinga and translated from Spanish by Gonzalo Cesar
It made me wonder about people on the earth, and if we are just doomed to making things worse.
Is it too late to change the direction of so called “progress”? Do we even want to? and if it were possible to heal the earth, what would be the best way to go about doing it?
My belief is the earth and humanity is in a symbiotic relationship. If we push too much away from what we need the hearts of the people will crave our natural habitat. The more we go towards a modernized and unnatural world, the more people will decide not to live or involve themselves with it. This may take generations but the balance will be restored.
On a macro level we have the wide scale disregard for the environment in the name of the industrial revolution and the ‘almighty dollar’ that continued well past the industrial revolution time, the response is the conservation or lands, cleaning up contamination and laws enacted to ensure a cleaner environment and open space preservation. Now industry can co-exist with what people need of their natural world.
On a more micro level, I have seen and do see many people stuck in city jobs who’s only outlet is to get away and walk into the woods on some hiking trails. Their very sanity is tied to their access to the natural world.
So I’m not sure what that chief was feeling, but it would make sense to me that it would be sadness but acceptance that despite the best efforts of man to destroy the natural world they will also need to restore it one day so nothing is ultimately lost.
People on Earth are indeed doomed to making things worse. Some few of us have the resources and the awareness to comprehend the snowballing tragedy, but we lack the will and the means to influence the vast momentum of human “progress.”
We cannot protect wildlife because we are wildlife. We are as much slaves to our biological imperatives as the creatures we aspire to protect.
Our first and foremost biological imperative is to procreate and prosper. But, the best way we can heal the Earth is to stop procreating and prospering. So the current answer to your question is no; as a species we don’t want to change our direction, and we don’t want to heal the Earth.
“But that is foolishness,” you cry. Yes, but can you imagine any politician or leader in any circumstance getting elected or approved on a platform of less population and less prosperity? They couldn’t sell that based on direct human benefit, much less the abstract value of the biosphere.
You ninja’d me by 1 minute, but as long as I’m, typing:
That is the reasoning I used to come to terms with it. There have been a bunch of Ice Ages in the past hundred thousand years, and there have been several big species extinctions in the past few hundred million. What we do or don’t do is only of concern to us right now, really. In the big picture, nature will recover.
Well sure. Except that we humans can have preferences as to which state we prefer the Earth to be in. Like, if your house caught fire and then burned up and then burned down, that’s a bummer but it ain’t a death sentence. The Earth will be just fine with your burned up burned down house. Except you’ll be pretty sad about it.
So yeah, it’s not a death sentence for the Earth if we kill all the elephants and tigers and pandas. Except I’d rather live on a planet with pandas than a planet without pandas, just like you’d prefer to live on a planet where you house is intact than a planet where your house has burned to the ground. Now go leave your house lights on all night to annoy the liberals.
I’d agree with the OP more if it didn’t link questionable technologic advances and their impact on people with “the advance of capitalist progress”. Some of the worst population displacement and human suffering in recent times have come in communist societies (for instance, Soviet collectivization of agriculture and China’s Three Gorges Dam project, which is displacing 1.4 million people).
What “moves me in my very bowels” is coffee, but that is another matter.
Well, let’s look at other sources that also have a liberal bent.
It is sad that people will be affected, but it would be even more sad in the future if Brazil had to instead generate electricity with fossil fuels.
What I do know at looking at history is that it is usual to give just peanuts to the people that will be affected, what needs to happen is to give more to the people affected as their culture will be affected for the better or for the worse, there is precedent in the USA and other places of communities that united to demand and get from the construction companies to rebuild complete communities out of the terrain that was going to be submerged. There should be pressure, even international ones, to ensure that better reconstructions or facilities guided by the natives will be done and more to help preserve their culture.
I just want to add-If the crude drawing itself is what you were linking to, then I’d have to say that it really doesn’t add much to the conversation…unless the only response you are striving for here is us saying “How horrible!”, with a tear in our eye.
I googled the writers name, and found it, and wanted to share. Not trying to to get you all upset.
My response is that it horrible, and I thank you for sharing. I look for different points of view on it.
I have no answers, but my mind is open.