From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Subject: Re: Population growth and cultural destruction (Re: Nasty ...)
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 17:49:41 GMT

In article <STEINLY.92Dec10134815@topaz.ucsc.edu> steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes:
>In article <1992Dec10.184439.8324@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>
>   >Steinn Sigurdsson says:
>   >
>   >>The problem is what happens to these stable cultures when you tell
>   >>them about sepsis. If they adopt modern health care - to any extent -
>   >>even only smallpox vaccinations, then the life expectancy goes up
>   >>and infant mortality down. Now, even if they had some stabilising
>   >>mechanism to balance death&birth rates before, it is usually adjusted
>   >>for high infant death rates and therefore doesn't need to be efficient
>   >>in reducing conception. It is far from clear that such cultural
>   >>mechanisms could be stretched to reduce the conception rate low enough
>   >>to hold the population stable...
>   >
>   Such cultural mechanisms never get the opportunity to "stretch" to this
>   task because they are destroyed as part of the whole process.  It is
>   unclear, and certainly unproven, that they couldn't deal with the
>   population problems in cultures that are modernizing.  The paragraph
>
>True, but it is also the case that the cultural mechanisms break when
>they fail to stretch, and some of the cultural disruption may be
>caused by the sudden population surge and demographic shift rather
>than be the effect. I don't know how much each factor contributes,
>it is certainly possible to envision cases in which either is
>dominant.
>	For an example of birth/death rates and population shifts
>driving cultural changes because they forced the demographics
>beyond the cultural stretch limits I would suggest western
>Europe 1200-1500 AD.

The situations I have been describing are where the modernization is
brought from the outside.  The dynamics in western Europe would likely
be much different since it was home-grown - and also much slower.  I
don't doubt that the specifics vary for different cultures.  I would
certainly agree that cultural mechanisms break when they fail to
stretch but do we need to stretch them so much?  For example, 
the imported education in many traditional cultures teaches many
children to look down on their cultures, and to actually view their
parents and communities as primitive and in a negative light.  
This cultural effect isn't caused by an antibiotic shot,
it is caused, for example, by using
schoolbooks, often of colonial heritage, that criticize many things
among the local culture that are healthy and well-evolved for the
local area. Norberg-Hodge described a schoolbook that taught rural Ladakhi
children how to properly fold their handkerchiefs and which drawer
to put them in in their dresser. Such irrelevant lessons, and other
more relevant ones that teach children that local methods are almost
always wrong, send strong
subliminal messages that directly leads to the breakdown of families and
other cultural support mechanisms.  In Ladakh, new manufacturing
technologes required scarce water, which made long-established
local irrigation impossible.  The people are now dependent on food
from the outside to be trucked in.  Other factors contributed to
the loss of local food production, such as subsidized food aid.
What if the Indian government or aid agencies have a bad year 
financially and can't bring in so much food?
>
>   above implies that health care is the primary factor in population
>   growth in such societies.  I challenged this earlier and listed some
>   other factors that contribute to the problem.  If health care is just
>   one component of the problem, then the removal of other culturally
>   destructive practices that accompany "modernization" would certainly
>   help alleviate population problems.  
>
>Maybe; if the current cultural mechanisms are intrinisically incapable
>of coping with the magnitude of physical changes forced by technology and economic
>development, trying to stretch the old culture may simply prolong the
>agony. The alternative of course is to withhold the technology and
>economics, but few people are willing to do so, medical technology in
>particular, which is why I focused on that as a driving force.
>(Note: medical technology does not refer to CAT scans or heart
>transplants but simple points like vaccinations, septic theory,
>rehydration therapy for diarrhea and theory of infection...)

This is the common false dichotomy, IMO.  The choice between complete
cold turkey development or complete withholding of all advances.  There
are organizations that are bringing in health care and appropriate
technologies that help the people and soften the transtitions.  
Appropriate technology, a much maligned phrase, simply refers to
technologies that fit into the local ecology and can reasonably be
operated and maintained by local people without a huge dependence on
outside expertise and energy, which is difficult to get reliably
given hard currency conditions in the developing world.  Such
technologies will continue to be useful to the local people whether
or not the country can afford expensive spare parts or oil.  
Unfortunately, much aid is also designed to boost developed world
economies, which would prefer to sell the same stuff they use at home,
even if is not what is best suited to the aid receiver.

In a sense, we get back to the same issues of rate-of-change and rates of
adaptability that are central to so many ecological issues.  These
developments occurred much more slowly in Europe, and the people had
more time to adapt.  Also, the development happened in an evolutionary
way that fit the local conditions.  I would still challenge, on
sustainability grounds, whether development, called "progress" in the
west, is following an optimum path for us.  But it is not being
imposed from the outside.
>
>*  Steinn Sigurdsson   			Lick Observatory      	          *
>*  steinly@lick.ucsc.edu		"standard disclaimer"  	          *
>*  Ain't you heard of the the starving millions?     			  *
>*  Ain't you heard of contraception?  "Too much too young" Specials, 1979 * 

-- 

		dingo in boulder	(dean@vexcel.com)
Newsgroups: sci.environment