When we think of “development,” it is usually about economic development of the so-called “developing nations,” that is, nations whose economies have not caught up with the “advanced” industrial nations of North America and Europe. Without question, the most advanced technology and its application to the full range of industrial processes, from extraction to product delivery is “Western” in that sense. Of course, some Asian nations are right up there in technology if not in its deployment into their own economies. Then there are the rest of the nations, trying to “catch up.” But if you look at the world with those Western rose-colored glasses removed, another picture emerges.
- First, the assumptions of progress through economic growth are failing. Only the most complex, most powerful, biggest, and “nano” technologies are considered “advanced.” Simpler “appropriate technologies,” though increasingly necessary, are not even considered by the endless-growth model of development.
- Second, the ‘view from the West’ is shaped by a Euro-centric perspective, the latest iteration of the racism of colonial and imperial times. Any people whose culture does not value the most complex technologies of growth economies and most powerful large-scale organizations is considered “backward.”
- Third, the conventional framework of thinking about ‘development’ turns out to be unsustainable in context of what we now know about the relationship of humanity to the changing planet. Sure, the less industrially advanced nations are more and more caught up in the same mindset, but that will not make it viable any longer than if only westerners thought in these ways.
- At the same time, growing elements of civil society around the world are recognizing that the onslaught of Western industrialization may very well not be the best solution for shaping their future, especially, for example, where the invasion of GMO seed and industrial fertilizer products not only destroy native seed stocks, but bankrupt indigenous farmers. The many other examples of destructive development could fill a book.
The kind of development of a nation’s economy driven by industrial capital rather than social need or necessity, was once envisioned as the wave of a bright future for mankind, but it cannot survive much longer. It will implode as it destroys its host. Yet, a core strategy used by international industrial capital to capture markets is to draw developing nations into relations of financial and trade dependency which require continued resource extraction/export and importing the products and “services” of the industrial nations.
The development of new forms of social-economic organization for civil society is as necessary as it is desirable for the future of humans on the planet. Creative indigenous ecologically sound development must replace destructive corporate development. To move along a path of creative self-determination requires first escaping from the traps set by the Monsantos of this world. It also requires recognition that following the old path of Western development has already become unworkable. India comes to mind as a major victim of this dilemma. Some of the most politically powerful corporations there are driving indigenous farmers off the land (with the military’s help) to establish giant industrial and extractive projects that cannot sustain the population but will make those corporations very rich in the short term of their ecological destruction.
Systems in place tend to stay in place until conditions or trends force them to change. Western efforts to “develop” the non-western nations have extracted great value for corporate predators, leaving death and destruction of indigenous peoples and ecologies in their wake. Scientific knowledge of the unsustainable future of such “development” has grown quite certain in recent years, but the forces of conventional development for the sake of economic system growth for corporate profit, not social development, are quite committed to their path.
Today, both changing environmental conditions and rapidly emerging requirements for human survival demand the kinds of change in the social order that have barely even been imagined until now. Many possibilities must be discussed that have yet to be tried at any significant scale.
The future survival of peoples around the world will more and more depend upon their ability to wean themselves off imperial dependencies and develop social and economic relations internally that reflect a viable bond to their local environments. Ironically, if they make such a break, their success will become a model for the peoples of the fading industrial nations. That is what human survival in the coming decades will be about.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 