"By Their Works Ye Shall Know Them."
This breathtakingly beautiful photograph of rice fields in China seems to contrast strongly with the vista seen from the residences of most people in the Western world. They, poor souls, in the main live in polluted concrete, glass and plastic jungles. Mostly, they look at a sprawl of houses and street lights.
In these noise-filled ghettos there are some homes on individual lots (‘Little Boxes…made out of Tickytacky…’) but, because of overpopulation (which gives rise to suburban sprawl which, in turn, makes commuting difficult) and the high cost of land and building, the trend is moving more towards town houses and high rise apartments.
The result is that more and more people are jammed into a smaller and smaller space which brings with it crime and stress and the need for police, etc. They move from their home to work in small air-conditioned offices where the sound of birds and the wind in the trees or the scent of flowers or the warmth of the sun never penetrates.
By contrast, if you look closely at the photo you’ll see there is a small village clinging to the side of the hill. That is where the local farmers and their families live, where they retire to after the day’s work is done. The view isn’t bad, is it? The air there is unpolluted. There is no traffic noise. Everyone knows everyone and help is always at hand should a problematic situation arise.
But, importantly, the people living there are living a sustainable lifestyle. They create no pollution, the type which adds significantly to global warming. They have an affinity with the soil, the seasons, the cycle of nature. They understand what sharing means. They feel the sweat of their toil, they see the riches of their harvest at the end of the season.
Is either lifestyle ideal? No. But surely a mixture of the two would be better for the health of both our world and its human inhabitants.
But then, humans rarely achieve balance in anything.
What do you think?
I doubt whether the people whose lives are represented in the photo would call their way of life a life-style!
Aren’t you romanticising what is probably just as precarious a life as ours?
The concept of ‘lifestyle’ is one you might have a look at, for it is a concept produced by consumer capitalism, and I don’t think it is in any way applicable to the idyllic, rural way of life depicted in the photo. In other words, the concept of ‘lifestyle’ limits the sort of thinking we are able to do about modern civilisation; it limits it because ‘lifestyle’ is a concept of leisure-time, and of non-work consumption in the affluent West. It is meaningless when applied to communities that have no consumer-capitalist based leisure. In other words, there is no basis on which to compare the imaginary community of photo and the affluent west, that is able to blog and connect into the internet www.
Rice paddy fields create methane gas – a greenhouse accelerant!
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I am currently involved in a rural lifestyle, ag, that is I own land, carry out farming, etc. Once, I was involved in a city lifestyle and worked in an office.
Obviously, I have a different definition of lifestyle to you! Cheers.
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In this context we went wrong with
Thomas Robert Malthus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Malthus
Admiral Hyman Rickover
http://www.energybulletin.net/23151.html
James Earl Carter
http://www.mnforsustain.org/energy_speech_president_carter.htm
And many others.
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Robin, thanks for the links. I’ll follow them up and get back to you.
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The result is that more and more people are jammed into a smaller and smaller space which brings with it crime and stress and the need for police, etc.
Not sure I agree here. Is it really just smaller and smaller spaces that bring stress and crime. Or the sense of hopelessness that pervades badly designed, unsustainable urban environments? Lack of opportunity and so forth?
There’s a significant amount of evidence that intelligently designed high-density living is actually less harmful to the environment than many other “per capita” situations…at least in terms of resource usage. Personally, I find that I’m quite comforted by the close presence of people combined with a certain notion of personal space. Suburbs–don’t even talk to me about rural living–gives me the creeps.
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Once I felt like you, Kvatch. But as time moved on I changed.
Now I see cities as nightmares, as unnatural and unhealthy both physically and spiritually. Horses for courses.
Cheers.
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