Are western people all surprisingly happy? Does the western system work perfectly without harming anyone? And even if that would be the case - would that allow the western people to force all the other peoples to live by the same rules and in the same way?
Yes, I said "force". Now many people would argue that the west does not force anybody, that other peoples and cultures would want to learn how to read and speak English and so on.
Is that really the case? I suggest to take a deeper look.
So what is the west actually doing? And let me say, by "the west" I mean mostly the 1%, the corporations, the money-makers, the head of the game - and of course all the people that work for them not seeing the big picture yet, so the 99%.
First the west goes into regions where people live in small, sustainable communities in harmony with nature and they call the people there "uncivilized". The west robs them of their food, their water, their land. So the people have to start work for the west to sustain themselves, because the way they have sustained themselves for thousands of years doesn't work anymore, the west has taken it all. Now they are dependant on the west for work, for "generous" donations etc.
But that's still not enough. They have to be "civilized", they have to be "schooled". Why? Because they have to be good workers. It is as simple as that.
So the west tells them, that they would be dumb, they wouldn't know anything, that their way of life would be bad and the western way of life would be good. The west does this until the "uncivilized" people start to actually believe that they would be uncivilized. From then on it seems to be easy. The "uncivilized" people are now fighting themselves to get the western education and the western teachers go into these countries believing they would be doing something good. They have the best intentions, yes. But are they really helping? Or are they not just strengthening the dependency of more and more peoples on the western system and thus making the 1% richer and more powerful?
These indigenous peoples have adapted to their surroundings, to the nature they live in, they very often have a vast oral tradition, they have a huge knowledge about how to grow ones food, how to build a house, how to live sustainably so the future generations can survive too. They have rich cultures, full of music and art. They have a strong sense of spirituality...
I do not want to idealise indigenous peoples, but there are certain facts:
- They manage to deal with topics the west has problems with: sustainability, making communal decisions, living self-sufficiently.
- Every way of life is unique and nobody would want other peoples just marching in and forcing there way of life unto ones own.
Again, I do not want to say that everything about indigenous peoples would be perfect. But neither is everything perfect in the western world - far from that actually.
So who are we to just force our education and with that our way of life on other peoples and who are we to be so arrogant as to think that the western knowledge is worth more than the non-western knowledge?
How could a written tradition and with that the need to write and read be worth more or less than an oral tradition and with that the need to have a huge amount of knowledge and wisdom in ones head?
So, who are we to judge other traditions?
Imperialism still exist, it just goes through the backdoor now.
And the missionaries are now teachers who are preaching the western life to "those who have to be saved".
In my opinion, we as humans and earthlings should work together and learn from each other instead of forcing each other to learn to live in one specific way. Every culture has something to offer, we all could learn so much. Or in the words of Sitting Bull:
Documentaries about this topic:
I highly recommend this documentary!
""Schooling the World" takes a challenging, sometimes funny, ultimately
deeply troubling look at the role played by modern education in the
destruction of the world’s last sustainable indigenous cultures."
To find out more about the film and how you can get involved, visit http://schoolingtheworld.org
Ancient Futures - Learning from the Ladakh
"An important and interesting documentary based on the same named book by Helena Norberg-Hodge. This documentary describes the untouched land of Ladakh, when Helena first arrived in 1975, on how everyone is so happy and contented. In the "olden" world, Ladakhis women enjoyed high social status and families and communities ties were very strong.
Then the documentary moves over to showing how the peaceful land of Ladakh changed socially, ecologically and economically when "development" set in. Ladakhis starts to enjoy the comfort and convenience of modernization, at the same time, increasing greed, intolerance, unemployment, inflation, pollution etc. set in and is threatening the ecological balance and social harmony which were maintained over the past centuries.
The film and book raise important questions about the whole notion of progress, and explores the root causes of the problems faced by a highly industrialized society to create awareness.
Is this 'development' truly progress?"
