Hermit wrote:
of course returning to hunter gatherer lifestyle is not realistic at this point, but slowly abandoning unnecesary technology and working on a sustainable agriculture towards self sufficiency is a real posibillity, an alternative to consumerism.
I agree, and I would like to find ways to spread the word to as much as possible. I hope you will be able to reach your goal of attending Janov's Primal Center, but have you thought about how you will live afterwards? Janov wrote that becoming 'post-primal' doesn't help people live in an unfeeling world.
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If some machines are going to improve this or that, well that's great but who's going to work? Who is going to waste his life working in factory?
Small community workshops could replace factories if consumerism was abandoned as an economic system. Without the endless production of goods which are purposely designed to become obsolete or 'unfashionable' much could be achieved with very short working hours. In any case, more than 50% of jobs today are in the service industries. Recycling of metals and plastics can be done effectively with very simple technology. These alternatives are viable today.
It's a tragedy that so many people are too brainwashed by the mass media to realise that a golden age could be created within one or two lifetimes. I truly believe there would be less depression, emotional illness, psychosis, cancer and other degenerative lifestyle illnesses if our highly competitive economic system was replaced with a network of small, autonomous communities that only needed to trade essential commodities with each other.
Nothing new has to be invented except a different way of organizing the socio-economic system. The kibbutz system thrives in Israel, even though their nation is an aggressor towards neighbouring Palestine (stealing thier land).
I think there would still have to be a global system of justice to prevent armed conflict or the exploitation of one group by another. Even primitive hunter gatherer societies indulged in tribal warfare -- unless all the anthropologists who studied them in the 19th and 20th century were lying.
The biggest obstacle I can see is that the developing world is overpopulated compared to the available sustainable resources. The United Nations predicts that the world population will grow to 9 billion by 2050 (see
http://esa.un.org/unpp/). Contraceptive pills have been available for 40 years, so more medical science isn't the answer. How can prosperous Western countries prevent them from pursuing conflicting goals through terrorism and warfare?
ian copeland