Dear all,

The thread has tweaked a bit from its initial direction, and the binary opposition between « the west » and « the rest » might mislead us.

I am a westerner. I think that I am not totally closed to the rest of world.

I ask myself quite often : why is the « west » so tempting ? Why is it so that decolonized youths are dreaming of an urban lifestyle, even though they are aware of how destructive it can be ? How are traditional societies (I am talking of « aborigines » rather than peasants from the alps) adapting —and sometime making « profit » — rather than rejecting, and what can we (« westerners ») learn from this process : because I think that we are facing the same challenges ?
Of course, some obvious reasons are : the legacy of a destructive colonisation, the choice by most of the fresh independent elites to set up centralized administrations and invent a national identity, alphabetization and schooling, corruption, etc etc etc. 
But I also think that these are also scapegoats that serve to maintain the hierarchies and silos in place on all sides, and allow many people to avoid thinking in the deepest sense how difficult it is to change.
So, there must be something deeper. One, as I see it, is that it says : no social structure is « frozen » in its appearance. You, as an individual, can negotiate your being. And who would not be tempted ? Even if it is a painful challenge ? Who wants today to keep « traditions » untouched (or even : invent them, or carve them in the artificial attire of « cultural identity"), if it is not those who directly benefit from status quo ?

Maybe the best exemple comes from the coincidence between Ken’s link to « the uninhabitable earth » and this thread. I am personally less interested in the mechanics of climate change and the consequences on life (I don’t understand the scientific models), I don’t believe that the « material » or engineered solutions, whatever they are or would be, are of any interest : they go against any social transformation. 
Fear and guilt being incommensurate with the challenge, I assume that my individual efforts are vain yet precious (so this is a reason for doing them : they contribute to my transformation), and I think now : how can I contribute positively to the perspective of a short-term extinction of the world as we know it? It is not so very different from what happened to a huge number of ethnic groups in the past four centuries (we have documentation there). Or to put it in another way : we enter in the time of mourning, what can I learn from 5000 years of traditions about dealing with that moment, that can make it acceptable collectively. What is the « being » that should emerge to life under such a perspective and not think about « suicide ». Can I contribute to that ?


Coming to education, « the west » is not monolithic. For me —I am of the « old west », that is Europe—, the distinctions between education / schooling / 
skills / knowledge remain a matter of debate.
School as we know it (the state organized mandatory system through which all youngsters must go to learn reading, writing, counting) is a late 19 century institution. It was a political choice, with mixed motivations and purposes. University, in the sense of « liberal education » existed for a much much longer period. That primary / secondary / university develop as a linear process and open to the masses is only a few generations old.

For us (in the « old west »), we haven’t yet swallowed the loss of liberal education. To oversimplify it (so please, no one would take this personally !), we still see a huge divide between « fundamental research » and « applied research » : one is rooted in the « enlightenment » project, the other in a « bourgeois » culture of efficiency and purposefulness as a justification. One is there to make a free man (one that thinks autonomously), the other to make an economical actor, one that contributes to welfare. The former is in bad condition, the latter sets the rules more and more.
If I was to look for a scapegoat, I would say : the alignment on a certain american university culture is the source of the disaster. But I will add : we were so ready for that. If we choose elites that have no culture, for whom reading a book that is not a « management » cookbook takes too much time etc. we can’t complain. We let a solid ground turn into moving sands, we can’t cry if we get drowned.

But maybe this « climate challenge » will swing the thing back ? Maybe we’ll need more poetry and philosophy to shape humans instead of desperate survivors, rather than engineers and entrepreneurs who want us to take them to Mars, where they will keep the same lifestyle.

Best regards,

Jean

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