The latest shiny pretty gadget called the iPad was released this week to much near-hysteria. But it too will be replaced by something even prettier in a few years and end up in landfill, thus continuing the wasteful and pointless cycle of consumerism. Humans have evolved to be attracted to shiny pretty things, and consumerism exploits this cunningly.
A post at the Naviblue.com forums linked to an interview with a writer called Derrick Jensen (I reproduced it as the original link has disappeared). He has a lot to say on how dysfunctional modern technological civilization is. Pre-agricultural societies are referred to as “primitive”, a word that has derisive overtones, but in many respects they are more wise than ours.
Another post at Avatar-Forums.com mentioned a book called Original Wisdom by Robert Wolff, which seems to have received positive reviews; it is also about traditional people’s ways of seeing and living.
An extraordinary amount of effort is put into creating imaginary worlds, though mediums such as gaming, movies and novels (and this also is tied to consumerism, in that people pay to view such efforts). Perhaps this is indicative of our society being so mundane and unpleasant that people seek to escape it virtually. Real life for many people is a dreary routine of trudging off to some irrelevant job every day in order to try to make enough money to survive – as the interview notes.
You were talking about how tribal people have a lot of leisure time. Most people in this civilization work for a whole year and maybe get 7 days of vacation time. That’s all the vacation time you get in 365 days until you’re 65 years old. A vast segment of your life has been sucked up by this vacuum which we call civilization. And that’s a crazy way to live. When I was in college I remember a lot of my friends were already looking forward to their retirement. They’re looking for retirement when they haven’t even started their life yet.
I certainly seek escapism myself, as I find my reality to be a dreary grey place (literally in urban areas, where Nature is smothered by concrete and asphalt). The Avatar movie resonated with so many people because it seemed such a magical and unspoilt place in contrast.
I suspect that those few people still living as hunter-gatherers in tribal societies would find such manufactured escapism bizarre. I find this so, when I look at it objectively, as if I were an alien studying such a culture.
The Australian Aborigines had (and still have) their Dreaming, in which the inner and outer worlds are merged, and time is circular. It’s a difficult concept for a Westerner to grasp, having been brought up in a society that emphasizes logic and has a strictly linear view of time and thus of progress.
There’s been a lot of dreary fuss and bother about a tax on resources mining in Australia. This mainly takes place in the vast Western Australia outback. When I see media footage of the red land being scoured and dug up by giant machines, I think of a quote from Avatar: “See the world we come from: there’s no green there. They’ve killed their mother, and they’re going to do the same thing here.” (A National Geographic article from 2007: “New Australia Mining Boom Taking Toll on Outback Life”)
