In ancient forests all over the globe, from the Amazon to West Africa to New Guinea, traditional cultures are under attack:
Anybody can see that wherever we Van Gujjars live in the forest, the wildlife thrives. In this way we live in complete harmony with the forests and their wildlife and that is the only reason that our way of life has survived through the centuries. Also, we believe in the Ghandian principle that the 'Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not enough for even one man's greed' and we own only so many possessions that we can carry with us. We see the outside world today in a vice-like grip of consumerism and we have consciously kept away from this.
This eloquent (and possibly idealized) statement by a forest dwelling tribe in the foothills of the Himalayas, whose members would have preferred to have no need for making such statements, is one of many examples of the numerous collisions between expanding consumer capitalism and older ways of life. The Van Gujjars could have happily continued their forest existence for many more centuries were it not for the rise and encroachment of the "vice-like grip of consumerism" which continues to gather far corners of the world within its grasp.
In the life of the Van Gujjars there are many things missing: hot and cold running water, television, private automobiles, personal computers, well stocked supermarkets, large comfortable houses, electricity, public education, advanced medical care - all of the benefits of industrial capitalism which we enjoy and take for granted. And, in the face of our overwhelming technological prowess, the Van Gujjars are doomed - as were the native Americans, the aboriginal Tasmanians and many other indigenous tribes that have stood in the way of the "manifest destiny" of modern civilization. I wonder, however, if the victory of consumer capitalism may not be the mother of all Pyrrhic victories.
Jacques Ellul gave notice that all was not well in his book "The Technological Society"(1954). His analysis cast doubt upon the nature of our "victory",
The human race is beginning confusedly to understand at last that it is living in a new and unfamiliar universe. The new order was meant to be a buffer between man and nature. Unfortunately, it has evolved autonomously in such a way that man has lost all contact with his natural framework and has to do only with the organized technical intermediary which sustains relations both with the world of life and with the world of brute matter. Enclosed within his artificial creation, man finds that there is 'no exit'; that he cannot pierce the shell of technology to find again the ancient milieu to which he was adapted for hundreds of thousands of years.
Within that "shell of technology" it is as if a great weight of inertia smothers us all under a blanket of attractive, soothing, manipulative images and we snuggle down under our comfortable lives and continue, in spite of the troubling news we see each day about the breakdown of the natural world, on the very course which is causing that breakdown. Safely ensconced within the "myth of progress" we are enticed away from our uneasiness and anxiety, from our grief and despair, by the activities of a vast and omnipresent propaganda apparatus. Ellul, again, in "Propaganda" (1962) tells us
An individual can be influenced by forces such as propaganda only when he is cut off from membership in local groups. Because such groups are organic and have a well-structured material, spiritual, and emotional life, they are not easily penetrated by propaganda...The permanent uncertainty, the social mobility, the absence of sociological protection and of traditional frames of reference - all these inevitably provide propaganda with a malleable environment that can be fed information from the outside and conditioned at will.
And what is the content of this conditioning?
All propaganda must play on the fact that the nation will be industrialized, more will be produced, greater progress is imminent, and so on.
The myth of progress is the bedrock of our ever accelerating estrangement from the way of life such peoples as the Van Gujjars still continue to live on the margins of our ever accelerating take-over of the planet. The economy must continue to grow, corporations must continue to get bigger, highways must be continually widened, forests must be razed to make room for the continuing growth of housing developments. Any politician who dared to question the necessity for economic growth and more jobs would be wasting their money in their attempt to get elected.
Ellul ("Propaganda") tells us
Modern man is called upon for enormous sacrifices, which probably exceed anything known in the past. First of all, work has assumed an all-pervading role in modern life...Every modern man works more than the slave of long ago, standards have been adjusted downward. But whereas the slave worked only because he was forced to, modern man, who believes in his freedom and dignity, needs reasons and justifications to make himself work...One cannot make people live forever in the state of assiduous, intense, never-ending labor without giving them good reasons and creating by example a virtue of Work... Such dedication to work does not happen by itself or spontaneously. Its creation is properly the task of propaganda, which must give the individual psychological and ideological reasons why he needs to be where he is.
Many might stop reading here and say something like, "Now, wait a minute! 'Modern man works more than the slave of long ago'!? This is ridiculous!" This common reaction is something which requires careful consideration. Compare the two following quotes:
The bushmen usually don't work very hard and at the same time they really enjoy a surprisingly high standard of living. Generally, they have plenty to eat with more food available to them than they need. They manage to capture or gather this food and perform nearly all other necessary maintenance tasks by working an average of only about two to two and one-half days a week ("!Kung Vs. Utopia" Robert E. Jenkins 1997)
With two young boys the dual-career couple was spending 55-60 hours a week at work and commuting. The time they got the boys (ages 3 and 6) home, fed, bathed and ready for bed it was 9:30 PM. They had no free time and had to hire people to clean their house, cut their lawn and maintain it. 'We thought, "This is crazy. If this is what life is all about, its not for us,"' recalls Sheri, 28. 'We had no time to even read to the kids.' (Ann Meyer, Chicago Tribune)
This contrast is profoundly illuminating, given the outrage that might be felt about working more now than slaves in ancient times. The myth of progress and Work is powerful indeed; the propaganda apparatus is quite successful.
One of the keys to this issue lies in the definition of success; in the tools we use to measure it. The standard measure in industrial nations is the Gross Domestic Product which adds up the total value of all the goods and services produced by a nation's economy. A higher and ever increasing number is "success" and "growth." If this number goes down, then leaders become somber and put forth serious measures to correct the "recession," or in extreme cases the "depression." According to this measure both the manufacture and purchase of the bullets used to kill and wound the students at Columbine and the ambulance and hospital services required to care for the injured increased the American GDP and thus contributed to our "success." The GDP of the Van Gujjars, remaining unchanged year after year and century after century, would be considered a dismal recessional failure.
On a personal level this warped measure of sucess leads to the overvaluation of such measures of success as monetary income and net worth and discounts such intangibles as peace of mind and successful, intimate relationships. But it goes even deeper than this. In "The Culture of Narcissism" Christopher Lasch describes an emerging pathology,
For all his inner suffering, the narcissist has many traits that make for success in bureaucratic institutions, which put a premium on the manipulation of interpersonal relations, discourage the formation of deep personal attachments, and at the same time provide the narcissist with the approval he needs in order to validate his self-esteem. Although he may resort to therapies that promise to give meaning to life and to overcome his sense of emptiness, in his professional career the narcissist often enjoys considerable success. The management of personal impressions comes naturally to him, and his mastery of its intricacies serves him well in political and business organizations.
It is difficult to imagine such a personality being successful in a traditional tribal culture where relationships are multi-generational and intimate knowledge of one another precludes shallow manipulation. There is nowhere for the narcissist to hide in such small groups where deep personal attachments are the rule. As models of psychological health it certainly seems that ancient, tribal styles of relating in which we have spent hundreds of thousands of years and in which change is very slow and gradual are more compatible with our psyches than a fast paced, rapidly changing technological society which has wrenched us from those slow, quiet lives in intimate contact with the natural world and thrust us into a much harsher place in which we find ourselves lost, confused and anxious within the isolation of our "technological shell."
If, as Ellul says, we are no longer able to "pierce the shell of technology to find again the ancient milieu to which [we were] adapted for hundreds of thousands of years" then perhaps these profound psychological dislocations occuring within us, if brought to conscious awareness would bring a new urgency to the design of new, more humane, systems which can integrate technical prowess into a more natural and psychologically healthy way of living.
Perhaps these disruptions can lead to an understanding of why there appears to be such massive inertia within that "vise-like grip of consumerism." It begins to appear to be less vise-like; there may be more cooperation on the part of those within its grasp.
That grasp will be loosened - one way or another. There is deep, profound change afoot.
We are not separate from nature. Our connection with the web of life, our membership in the web of life, is a reason for deep, authentic joy. It will be necessary to recapture the meaning of success away from maximizing the consumption of things – to remember that the purchase, ownership and use of stuff can never bring true happiness. It will be necessary to move from the temporary commercial “happiness” of convenient consumption to the long-term authentic happiness of sustainable community – to heal our relationship with the earth, our home. As Thoreau said,
This curious world which we inhabit is more wonderful than it is convenient, more beautiful than it is useful, it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.
And Gary Snyder says,
A culture that alienates itself from the very ground of its own being – from wilderness outside (that is to say, wild nature, the wild, self-contained, self-informing ecosystems) and from that other wilderness within – is doomed to a very destructive behavior, ultimately perhaps self-destructive behavior.
An alcoholic cannot continue drinking for the long term; continuing to consume alcohol will lead inevitably to self-destruction. This is an unsustainable lifestyle. Wilderness ecosystems are sustainable; they remain unchanged over thousands of years. Unsustainable refers to anything which cannot be sustained, cannot be continued, for the long term.
Our system of consumer capitalism, based upon continuous economic growth, is unsustainable. It cannot be continued for the long term. However, as we have seen, a cessation of that continuous growth is a disastrous and harmful recession. Yet that very cessation of growth is required for our long term survival.
It requires as fundamental a change in lifestyle for an alcoholic to stop drinking as it will be for our civilization to become sustainable.