about this back and forth:
> One approach which I favour is Bill Mollison's Permaculture. This
> involves
> using design. What it aims at is designing your surroundings and your
> lifestyle in an attempt to mimic natural ecology. It's a kind of
> compromise
> between the lifestyles of traditional tribal peoples, and all the
stuff
> being
> thrown at us by modern soceities. The idea is to re-invent ways of
"Aren't these the same people that are now reproducing at such an
alarming
rate? I mean don't most tribal cultures usually favor high rates of
birth
so that the children can help provide a saftey net for the parents when
they become old?"
Tribal culture has much to offer our culture. As is obvious of the past,
European contact with tribal groups was greatly destructive to
traditional ways (disease, alcohol, christianity, dominance). It is a
mistake to attribute these consequences to an inadequate philosophical
(some call it ethnophilosophical) system. The effects of colonization
and domination brought on by the European tradition are the root of
these ill consequences. An entirly new understanding of the world was
forced upon tribal peoples in a short period of time, of course there
have been, and still are, negative outcomes.
Philosophies, especially ones rooted in oral tradition, should not be
static. The earth is a rapidly changing place and any land ethic must be
able to adapt to this change. To dismiss an abundance of knowledge found
in diverse peoples we often classify as "tribal" based on a single trend
(high fecundity) is a mistake.
Just as we would not throw away all our old philosophy books if we
someday discovered a better system of philosophy, so should we not
disregard the philosophies of other cultures.
Additionally, it is not simply a matter of population, but also one of
consumption. Individuals in the U.S. and much of Europe have a
consumption rate 5-60 times higher than individuals in central Africa or
India. The U.S., despite its relatively slow population growth rate and
realtively low density rate, still has the highest consumption rate and
total overal consumption in the world. For more information on
consumption rates, there is an extremely progressive concept developed
out of the Unversity of British Columbia called "Ecological
footprinting", where individuals and populations can calculate the
amount of carbon fixing land they require to sustain their consumption
rate annually.
peace, Bryan
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