Post-development theory is powerful stuff, though quite tough to swallow and at times, it leaves me feeling really really cynical. Consider some quotes/points from Eduardo Galeanos To Be Like Them (1991): - “If the poor countries reached the levels of production and waste of the rich countries, our planet would die. Already it is in a coma, seriously contaminated by the industrial civilization and emptied of its last drop of substance by the consumer society” - 6% of the richest populations are devouring one-third of total energy available and resources in use. 1 average American consumes as much as 50 average Haitians. What would happen if fifty Haitians suddenly consumed as much as fifty Americans? - “To be is to have, says the system. And the problem is that those who have the most want still more; and that, when all is said and done, people end up by belonging to things and working under their orders. The model of life in the consumer society, which these days is imposed as a model at the universal level, converts time into an economic resource which is increasingly rare and expensive. Time is sold and hired. But who is the master of time? The car, the television set, the video, the personal computer, the portable telephone and other pass-cards to happiness, which were developed to ‘save time’ or to ‘pass the time’, have actually taken time over” - “freedom to squander one’s time; the consumer society does not allow such waste” - “The freedom of money, which distrusts all other freedoms, suffered no restrictions during the dictatorship of General Pichochet and contributed censurably to the general pollution. The right to contaminate is a basic attraction for foreign investment, almost as important as the right to pay minuscule wages. General Pinochet, in fact, never denied the right of Chileans to breathe shit” - “The state, which is no longer paternalistic but a police state, does not practise charity. That happened in a past that is over and done with: the age of rhetoric, in which those who had gone astray were domesticated by the virtues of study and work. Now that the market economy has become dominant, the army of the outcast are eliminated through starvation and bullets. The children on the street, children of the marginal workforce, are not and cannot be useful to society. Education belongs to those who can pay; repression is used against those who cannot buy it” -“In the civilization of unrestrained capitalism, the right to property is more important than the right to life”
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 02:38:17 +0000
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