OhCanada said:
What are we talking about when we say primitive? Here in North America it is a nolstalgic look at the Indians, the same Indians who gave up flint knives when someone introduced them to the wonderful properties of steel. Did the Indians suddenly become all the less noble because they saw and used the properties of steel knives and pots?
What are we talking about when we say primitive? Are we talking again about those "wonderful" Indians? The Indians who lived in the very same time period as you Englishmen who had known about the usefullness of metal for thousands of years while the Indians were still using flint.
Makes you wonder...
I believe that the point here is not the romantic aspect or what is considered wonderful and cool. The problem is about efficiency.
You are cutting a tree with a stone axe and it goes very very slowly and the trees have time to grow back. You get an axe and people are happily embracing the more efficient tool. Now they are much faster building more and more houses and getting more kids, the kids get more axes still the forest grows faster back than they are able to cut down.
The nice thing at this state of development is that you dont have to reason with them, talk about the moral of taking out too much etc. They simply dont manage to cut the forest down. So even if the human population stays stupid there is no danger.
Unfortunatily our story goes on:
Give them a chain saw and they are happily embracing the new tool, cutting more trees than they would need for personal survival. Still they want to grow, because than they can sell the overproduction, getting richer, hiring workers working for them in the forest so they can sit home or go fishing. At this stage of our story we got a lot of families in the forest all with their chainsaws wanting more and more and really managing to get the forest faster cut down than he can grow back.
Now comes the very new thing I see around me. The businessman got rich by selling his overproduction, he wants to get more by firing the workers and keeping one single man with a chainsaw robot. That is the new gospel, growth and efficiency. These kinds of machines we have here in the forest they are a marvel of destruction. Only one man is operating the crane. The arm of the crane grabs the tree, a chainsaw cut the tree in one go, the crane turns the entire tree horizontal and sips off all the branches. It takes only a couple of minutes and an entire tree is laying flat in the forest without branches, ready to go. One single worker can manage over 100 Trees before Lunch.
Now we are in a situation where nature doesnt have a chance anymore to grow new trees if mankind doesnt change their hunger and greed for growth. Now we are facing the problem to tell people sense and moral. Before we didnt need it.
Even a stupid, blind and greedy person could not cut down the forest faster than the forest would grow trees. Today we have to talk sense to the money lovers. And I am afraid we are loosing the battle because of the global fear.
The talk goes that if we dont cut and sell the trees someone else is doing it.
And people up here want jobs and money to buy all the nice toys the neighbor has.
The question now is that: Is efficiency good? Is growth good? Is development good? Even if you check on creativity, cooperation and all the things we think of being good. First mankind being stupid could not act out their stupidity. Now we can spread our stupidity and greed faster and faster.
It is not about "wonderful" or romantic but about survival of our natural resources and ultimately of us humans.
Cheers
Abbe