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- Newsgroups: talk.environment
- Path: sparky!uunet!wupost!usc!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!destroyer!ncar!vexcel!dean
- From: dean@vexcel.com (dean alaska)
- Subject: Re: Native People's leadership (!!)
- Message-ID: <1992Jul28.183126.4370@vexcel.com>
- Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder, CO
- References: <1992Jul27.203754.5809@iscsvax.uni.edu> <STEINLY.92Jul27185132@topaz.ucsc.edu>
- Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 18:31:26 GMT
- Lines: 42
-
- In article <STEINLY.92Jul27185132@topaz.ucsc.edu> steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes:
- >
- > real. This brings me to another question: why, when speaking of how some native
- > people's found a close balance between themselves and nature, is it pointed out
- > that they had all these diseases and only lived to be 50 and had very hard
- > lives... ?? Really now, tell me, do we really think that our QUALITY of life
- > has become so beautiful that "it was worth it?" I see SO much psychological and
- > other damage BEACUSE of this lifestyle we've created. STRESS.....!! Sure, we
- > live to be 100 -- unable to walk, talk and in a old folks home. Great.
- >
- >Yes. It is great. Try the alternative someday.
- >Remember that humans tend to scale crisis on a relative
- >scale, as major problems are resolved, lesser problems appear
- >more important - stress is quite frankly a trivial problem when
- >compared to hunger, and worrying about it is a luxury only
- >afforded by the sated.
-
- From your perspective. There still is a small minority in western
- culture (and I think its growing) who are willing to accept a
- significant decrease in material standard of living to get out of
- the "rat-race" and all its stresses and pressures. While starvation
- will never be a trivial problem, I am not aware that it was significant
- in native American societies, and we still have some in our society.
-
- The emphasis on success, wealth, achievement, etc. that exists in most
- western (and plenty of other) cultures is not true of all cultures.
- Out technology gives us a clear physical, but not moral,
- hegemony over other cultures.
-
- The decision on which culture is "better" is clearly relative, and most
- people will have a subjective opinion on this. I would leave a final
- determination of this to a distant historian.
- >
- >* Steinn Sigurdsson Lick Observatory *
- >* steinly@helios.ucsc.edu "standard disclaimer" *
- >* Just because there's a reason *
- >* Doesn't mean it's understood Specials, 1979 *
-
-
- --
-
- dingo in boulder (dean@vexcel.com)
-