Message-ID: <199610050058.AA20344@mail.crl.com> Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 17:57:26 -0800 From: Gary Berlind <mailto:gberlind@CRL.COM> Subject: Re: Sustainability To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Ruth Moench wrote:>I have a question that was argued in a class I attended Wednesday. Were
>traditional societies truly sustainable or were the negative
>environmental effects negligable because of the small size of the
>societies, thus making the use of those technologies on a large scale not
>any more effective than what we currently have? With the introduction of
>"modern medicine" and other development projects increasing the life
>expectancy in Third World countries, will these cultures truly be able to
>sustain themselves with an increased population?
>
>Ruth Moench
**My answer to question (1): From what I've read, I gather that sustainability (i.e. respect for the earth) was of such importance to these people that there might not have been any negative environmental effects at all. Rather, the people considered it their responsibility to keep nurturing the earth so that it could be left to their descendents.
My answer to question (2): What I have read on the subject leads me to believe that "traditional" societies had a keen sense of what the optimum size of their population should be, and bred accordingly. If this was indeed the case, then longer life expectancies (and more older people hanging around) would and should probably be taken into consideration.
One could, of course, ask how anybody could know for sure, since we're talking about societies from a long time ago. The answer seems to be that there are still a lot of "indigenous" people still alive today (I've seen estimates as high as three quarters of a billion people!). Many/most of these indigenous people have already been abused and clobbered by us nice guys. But not all. And some cool researchers have spent a lot of time interviewing and researching these people, and have drawn their conclusions based upon such first-hand contact. And even those indigenous folks that have been stomped upon apparently continue to maintain, as a central part of their culture, traditions and ideals that indicate that they thought along respectful and sustainable lines since time immemorial. They're just waiting for us to kill ourselves off so that they can get back to being fully alive again.
---------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Berlind (Berkeley, CA) mailto:gberlind@crl.com Q: "Why was the Creator able to build the Universe in only six days?" A: "Because he didn't have an installed base." ----------------------------------------------------------------