Wade Davis Lectures: ERE from another perspective

[Surio]

Folks,

I don't think it is wrong to say that this ERE forum has a lot more rationals (NT dominant) compared to other types (As an NF who has strayed away from Zen blogs, I represent the relative minority), which has been a good thing. Indeed, because of this the financial case to ERE is well represented. However, I posit that like that famous Indian parable(*) that demonstrates the relativity or the inexpressible nature of truth, it represents one aspect (predominant or non-predominant, I leave it to your own individual bias) of ERE.

(*) A very enjoyable read for those that might enjoy their daily dose of philosophy
The others point of views also being brought out from time to time are environmental, minimalism, etc. There is one more aspect that I would like to point out in this thread. But before delving there I wish to tell a side story:
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When the book "The World is Flat" came out, it was hailed by large sections of the press, of course. I simply hated it, right from the choice of title. I couldn't explain why though.. It was pure 'feeling'. Due to its overwhelming approval among the company I kept, I never did voice my concerns/feelings. Then I read the book, for I tell myself not to judge the book by its covers or its titles. That the title was inspired by an Indian IT honcho was even more unpalatable to me (it was Nandan Nilekani - watch HIS TED talk, and you won't need sleeping pills!). And then there was Friedman's tone... God, I hated it.... The condescension.... the writing, the celebration stories of "assimilation", everything!..... But I read through it, filed it away and kept mum. I recently found that others like Venkatesh Rao, who are "global netizens" today, but "I was then newly-minted as a global citizen (having left India in 1997), and still capable of homesickness" (back then) also found it a tad poor! In one of Venkat's writings I found the phrase: "There are no strained metaphors (like Friedman's ("Flat")". YaY...
A reading of Mahatma Gandhi at some point later, revealed this nugget:

I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.

As you may all know already, most of Gandhi's ideas came from reading eclectic literature (Bhagavad Gita, Henry Salt, John Ruskin, Thoreau, Tolstoy....His bibliography IS long), and the man lived his words. He took the ideas, internalised them and gave them his own spin. So, in the end when they were they were put into practice they were original enough to be his ideas as opposed to copies of the first ideas that inspired him.
Finally, I was able to put a finger on what I found personally grating in Friedman's writing. He celebrated all of this "flatness" because it resembled "his" flatness", "his" worldview, and "his" fostered notions of what is construed progress. In effect, Friedman's flat world was where everyone spoke the same language (read, his language), in the same accent (read, his accent) and work to the same belief system (read, his belief system)...and so on. And I am sorry to report that I find his new book, "Hot, Flat, Crowded" suffering from the very same flaws.

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OK, by now I am sure you are all tapping your feet and wondering, "What's your point, Surio"?.

P.S: If it does not make complete sense don't be put off the links too, I might come back tomorrow and refine the idea again so, don't give up completely on me
The point is quite simply this: That of preserving diversity and celebration of richness of the world we live in. All the different indigeneous cultures of this planet have equal right to its resources. And in this present model of the world we live in, we are arrogantly destroying everything that does not reflect "our" model. ERE, practised in a larger sense would be the right solution to put brakes on this juggernaut that is destroying "everything" in its wake (and rolling towards its own destruction)!
And I found these sentiments being driven home in a much more cogent and lucid manner by Dr. Wade Davis (TED Bio with other links) in most of his talks. Here's a series of talks by Dr. Davis all of them available online. I request you to view them all, maybe one a day if you don't have the time for all in one sitting: at 15 mins, they are not overly long.
1. Endangered cultures

2. Worldwide web of belief and ritual

3. Massey Lectures: Scroll down the page to listen free

4. Why ancient wisdom matters
Thank you.

Surio.

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[Surio]

I am transcribing here, selective portions from all his speeches. Some aspects of it may appeal to some people, and some may not. Please listen to his lectures completely and then form an opinion (Like my full readings of Friedman :-] ):

And I know there's some of you who say, "Well, wouldn't it be better? Wouldn't the world be a better place if we all just spoke one language?" And I say, "Great, let's make that language Yoruba. Let's make it Cantonese. Let's make it Kogi." And you'll suddenly discover what it would be like to be unable to speak your own language.
Continuing from this point above in the Massey lectures: I cannot imagine a world where I cannot speak English, for not only is it a beautiful language, it is my language, the full expression of who I am. But at the same time, I do not want it to sweep away the other voices of humanity, the other languages of the world, like some kind of cultural nerve gas.

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Languages of course have come and gone through history. Babylonian is no longer spoken in the streets of Baghdad or Latin in the hills of Italy. But again the biological analogy is useful. Extinction is a natural phenomenon, but in general, speciation, the evolution of new forms of life, has outpaced loss over the last 600 million years, making the world an ever more diverse place. When the sounds of Latin faded from Rome, they found new expression in the Romance languages. Today, just as plants and animals are disappearing in what biologists recognise as an unprecedented wave of extinction, so too languages are dying at such a rate, that they leave in their wake no descendants.

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There is no progression of affairs in human experience. There is no trajectory of progress. There's no pyramid that conveniently places Victorian England at the apex and descends down the flanks to the so-called primitives of the world. All peoples are simply cultural options, different visions of life itself. But what do I mean by different visions of life making for completely different possibilities for existence?

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[...] this man, Olayuk, told me a marvellous story of his grandfather. The Canadian government has not always been kind to the Inuit people, and during the 1950s, to establish our sovereignty, we forced them into settlements. This old man's grandfather refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his weapons, all of his tools. Now, you must understand that the Inuit did not fear the cold; they took advantage of it. The runners of their sleds were originally made of fish wrapped in caribou hide. So, this man's grandfather was not intimidated by the Arctic night or the blizzard that was blowing. He simply slipped outside, pulled down his sealskin trousers and defecated into his hand. And as the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of a blade. He put a spray of saliva on the edge of the shit knife and as it finally froze solid, he butchered a dog with it. He skinned the dog and improvised a harness, took the ribcage of the dog and improvised a sled, harnessed up an adjacent dog, and disappeared over the ice floes, shit knife in belt. Talk about getting by with nothing. (Laughter and applause from crowd!)

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Ethnocide, the destruction of a people’s way of life, is in many quarters sanctioned and endorsed as appropriate development policy. Modernity provides the rationale for disenfranchisement, with the real goal too often being the extraction of natural resources on an industrial scale from territories occupied for generations by indigenous peoples whose ongoing presence on the land proves to be an inconvenience.

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Indigenous languages are treasures of vast traditional knowledge concerning ecological systems and processes and how to protect and use some of the most vulnerable and biologically diverse ecosystems in the world. It is no coincidence that the areas where indigenous peoples live are the areas that contain the greatest biological diversity. In fact, biological, linguistic and cultural diversity are inseparable and mutually reinforcing, so when an indigenous language is lost, so too is the traditional knowledge for how to maintain aspects of the world’s biological diversity. The protection of indigenous languages is therefore not only a cultural and moral imperative, but an important aspect of global efforts to address biodiversity loss, climate change and other environmental challenges.

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And if we slip from the realm of the sea into the realm of the spirit of the imagination, you enter the realm of Tibetan Buddhism. And I recently made a film called "The Buddhist Science of the Mind." Why did we use that word, "science"? What is science but the empirical pursuit of the truth? What is Buddhism but 2,500 years of empirical observation as to the nature of mind? I travelled for a month in Nepal with our good friend, Matthieu Ricard, and you'll remember Matthieu famously said to all of us here once at TED, "Western science is a major response to minor needs." We spend all of our lifetime trying to live to be 100 without losing our teeth. The Buddhist spends all their lifetime trying to understand the nature of existence. Our billboards celebrate naked teenagers in underwear. Their billboards are manuals, prayers to the well-being of all sentient creatures. [....] And en route we took darshan from Rinpoche, and he sat with us and told us about the four noble truths, the essence of the Buddhist path. All life is suffering. That doesn't mean all life is negative. It means things happen. The cause of suffering is ignorance. By that, the Buddha did not mean stupidity, he meant clinging to the illusion that life is static and predictable. The third noble truth said that ignorance can be overcome. And the fourth and most important, of course, was the delineation of a contemplative practice that not only had the possibility of a transformation of the human heart, but had 2,500 years of empirical evidence that such a transformation was a certainty. [...] And of course, this is what the Tibetan monks told us: they said, at one point, "you know, we don't really believe you went to the moon, but you did. You may not believe that we achieve enlightenment in one lifetime, but we do".

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The Sioux Indians did not stop being Sioux when they gave up the bow and arrow any more than an American stopped being an American when he gave up the horse and buggy. It's not change or technology that threatens the integrity of the ethnosphere. It is power. The crude face of domination. Where ever you look around the world, you discover that these are not cultures destined to fade away. These are dynamic living peoples being driven out of existence by identifiable forces that are beyond their capacity to adapt to.

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And it's humbling to remember that our species has, perhaps, been around for [150,000] years. The Neolithic Revolution -- which gave us agriculture, at which time we succumbed to the cult of the seed, the poetry of the shaman was displaced by the prose of the priesthood, we created hierarchy specialization surplus -- is only 10,000 years ago. The modern industrial world as we know it is barely 300 years old. Now, that shallow history doesn't suggest to me that we have all the answers for all of the challenges that will confront us in the ensuing millennia.

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Right now, as we sit here in this room, of those 6,000 languages spoken the day that you were born, fully half aren't being taught to children. So you're living through a time when virtually half of humanity's intellectual, social and spiritual legacy is being allowed to slip away. This does not have to happen. These peoples are not failed attempts at being modern -- quaint and colorful and destined to fade away as if by natural law. In every case, these are dynamic, living peoples being driven out of existence by identifiable forces. That's actually an optimistic observation, because it suggests that if human beings are the agents of cultural destruction, we can also be, and must be, the facilitators of cultural survival.

EDIT: one more transcript:

And nomadic cultures are profoundly different. How do you measure wealth for example in a society in which there is no incentive to accumulate material possessions? Well wealth becomes seen as a stretch of social relations between people because if those relations fray everybody suffers. By the same token, a certain form of generosity becomes reflexive because you never know when you will be the next to bring food to the table. Or who will be the next to bring food to the table.

[BeyondtheWrap]

I agree with you that it's important to have diversity. For example, I disagree with the UN's plans to make sure all people have education and employment.

[AlexOliver]

@BeyondtheWrap: I assume you're being sarcastic. But would we be here if we wanted employment...?
Compulsory education is a joke and trains compliant soldiers and factory workers rather than promoting knowledge and learning.
I'm wary of programs that "make sure people..." anything.

[Surio]

@AO,

Perhaps he is serious, but he does raise many interesting footnotes of history.
Such programmes are usually doomed due to a lot of factors... and Wade Davis calls to question such schemes in all his talks.
You may have seen this film, if not watch it. It discusses the famous failed attempt called "Stolen Generation". Wade also speaks about the Canadian Indians and the inuits as well as the French Polynesians were subjected to similar treatments. Oh and let us also not forget similar attempts with the African Bushmen
You know, I must also admit, India has been pathetic in this regard too with regards to Andaman Indians! But I suppose they had the last laugh! I quote "While newer settlers of the islands suffered the greatest casualties from the Asian tsunami, most of the aboriginal people survived because oral traditions passed down from generations ago warned them to evacuate from large waves that follow large earthquakes." :-/

This is the natural harmony that Wade speaks of that we are in danger of losing by bulldozing everyone into wearing a kurta and dhothi, because "us" civilised have always worn them!
Presumably,the UN will send English/French/... speakers to "educate" everyone so they can be "employed" back. Usually this ends in things such as this :'( (one Andaman tribe extinct in 2010)!
Lastly, even though the intentions may be good, usually such schemes end up antagonising everyone.
This would be a classic ERE case study! Some Excerpts!

every time an aircraft flew over Pen in Maharashtra’s Raigad district, children in the tribal village would look at it and say Bharti Sheed, one of their own, was on it. Sheed, 24, had made it to the first batch of a course specially designed by the state government for the tribal community at the privately run Air Hostess Academy (AHA) in Pune. Three years on, those dreams have rudely crash-landed for Sheed and more than 100 other tribal youngsters who had joined AHA. None of the students who passed out of the first batch of the course in 2008 or the second one a year later has got any aviation jobs.

[....]

Maharashtra’s Minister for Tribal Development Babanrao Pachpute blames the students themselves, saying they were lacking on many fronts — particularly physical assets......

“They are not physically appealing and because of their strong local accent they are not good communicators too.",.... adding that the government would consider implementing the project by trying to get the girls jobs in the hospitality sector.
“Despite being poor we spent money to buy blazers, high-heel footwear and cosmetics. Now we have to throw them all away,” Sheed said, speaking for her classmates.
Last year, Sheed applied for vacancies advertised by Air India under the ST quota but didn’t make it. “I was rejected on grounds of not having the mandatory three-month experience in the industry,” she said.
Students say far from getting mandatory in-flight training, they were not even shown a real aircraft. They could not even intern as cabin crew and had to settle for internships as ground staff, hotel receptionists and in call centres. What the year-long training included was effective communication, hosting and serving and life-saving skills, plus knowledge of first aid and customer care. The girls learnt to shed their inhibitions, from speaking in English without an accent to wearing make-up and short skirts with stockings.

Very fortunate for them, those tribals in question did not end up in brothels and other dangerous pawns of disenfranchisement, as Wade mentions about other societies in his lectures.
Certainly I despair to think how badly we will scar the entire world with the intention of "educating, clothing and jobbing them", and then finally turn the tables and point out once a savage, always a savage :'( *tears*
Surio.

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P.S: - Please check all those links provided, to better understand what I am saying.

[JeremyS]

May I add, for the people who like paper, Wade Davis' recent book The Wayfinders:
http://www.amazon.com/Wayfinders-Ancien ... 0887847668
JeremyS

[Surio]

Thanks JeremyS for the link.

The Massey lectures were transcribed and released into a book; see link above.
I've just discovered another website, that provides those Massey lectures as podcasts for free downloads (mp3 format)
Here's the link

Massey Lectures from CBC Radio

Blurb:

Does it matter to the people of Quebec if the Tuareg of the Sahara lose their culture? Probably not. No more than the loss of Quebec would matter to the Tuareg. But I would argue that the loss of either way of life does matter to humanity as a whole. On the one hand it is a basic issue of human rights. Who is to say that the Canadian perspective on reality matters more than that of the Tuareg? And at a more fundamental level we have to ask ourselves: What kind of world do we want to live in?

You can download Wade Davis' lectures from here for easy listening later.
Laters,

Surio.

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[tlaloc]

Surio,
I've been listening to the Massey lectures during my commute. Thanks for the links. I have been absolutely enthralled. At the end of one of the lectures (can't remember which), I almost cried out of having my mind so blown. None of the meta/worldview/abstract-ideas talked about are particularly new to me, but the lectures really reinforce and reiterate some of the ideas bouncing around in my head. For me, the coolest bits are learning about each of the cultures.
PS, i'm another NF and have been enjoying your comments and your perspective (mostly because I relate well to your relational/emotional approach ). Having you around is slowly pulling me out of my lurking status...
PPS In reference to another thread, I'm able to follow your comments fairly well

[Surio]

Hello tlaloc,

Nice to run into a kindred spirit and fellow NF.
I am very glad you liked the lectures. They offer a window to the world that we are never even aware of most of the time!
> ......of having my mind so blown
Indeed, the "Wade Davis talks" experience is something like this:

To have that powder blown up your nose is rather like being shot out of a rifle barrel lined with baroque paintings and landing on a sea of electricity. It doesn't create the distortion of reality; it creates the dissolution of reality.


- that's a Wade Davis quote
Good to know there's going to be more people to highlight the relational/feeling aspect along with the well represented rational side here.
I am pleased you're able to follow my "paintings in progress" . It feels good when you know people got the idea that you're earnestly trying to convey
Yours Aye,

Surio.

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[Surio]

In connection with this slightly old thread, I just wanted to place a link to the guest post on my blog by Ted Heistman, who explores somewhat similar overarching empathy themes that Wade Davis also explores in his talks. Thought some of the forum members might be interested in reading and leaving their comments for Ted.
Thanks.