And if the culture is a so-called traditional one, the way to proceed demands considerable work before anything can be done directly in the area of population policies, in cooperation with locals who share our views. In Uruguay, social ecologists who also are supporters of the deep ecology movement, work among the 'poor' whose old traditions contain many ecologically sound ways of production and consumption, trying to revive and strengthen them and warding off the unecological ways introduced by Westerners and the power elite of their own country. Here also the cultural aspect is of paramount importance. Supporters from the West are nevertheless capable of cooperation with a minority in the traditional society and widen that minority. Not much of the supporters' time is spent on writing and theorizing.
Supporters work on personal, social and political levels.
On the personal level I assume that people have a significant range of freedom of decision, a considerable range of choices. They may have within a certain framework the opportunity to work out their own guidelines of conduct in life. They need to hear more about alternative ways of behavior and thinking. For people with certain kinds of background, it is not only a convenient but potentially wholesome activity when trying 'to live according to one's teaching'. It helps development in the direction of 'living according to reason' as viewed by philosophers and others who have a Spinozist bent.