Thank you for your recognition that commercialism, corruption and
environm,ental degradation are part of the development export package; i
would add that not only the 3d world but the 1st world as well can do
without this degradation which benefits profiteers and corrupt politicians;,
if moral duty and spirituality were behind their motives, then worldwide
equity would be more of a reality than it is today. How does one sit by
and watch 'things fall apart' and not be motivated to contribute to the
solution? Someone asked me two days ago what he 'should' do about the
problems we face in the world (we being the whole); I responded
'anything you can'. Helen Rowe [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Tue, 27 Sep 1994,
Moojan Momen wrote:
> This is very difficult ground, isn't it? On the one hand, we have Teresa
> Flores saying that the belief that the 3rd World desperately needs
> development is the root of the 3rd World's ills. But on the other hand
> are we really going to just sit back in our relative luxury and say
> that they are better off if we do nothing? It strikes me that, as someone
> else wrote, we cannot dismiss the beneficial effects of development
> (health, education, etc.). What the 3rd World can do without, however,
> is commercialism, corruption and environmental degradtion that goes with
> the arrival of the 1st World. In my own experience one of the worst
> aspects is the arrival of mass tourism in an area.
>
> So how can we achieve the beneficial effects without the harmful effects.
> One observation that can be made is that most of the harmful effects
> stem from the desire of Western companies to make a profit in the
> 3rd World. So really I think this is a question of morality. The 1st World
> needs to recognize that it has a moral duty towards the 3rd World not
> to be greedy and to try and make large profits out of people who are
> already very poor. The 3rd World also needs morality in that much of
> the worst effects of the impact of the West are mediated through corrupt
> officials.
>
> The most potent source of morality is spirituality and religion. The
> awareness of a spiritual world and the consciousness of that worldly
> wealth cannot in fact buy happiness (a concept taught in every religion)
> are sources of the sort of morality that can bring a change to the
> present sorry situation where all the money and effort that is being
> poured into development is, in most cases, not only failing to improve
> matters but even making them worse.
>
> Moojan Momen
>
>
>
> -
>
> > According to Teresa Flores:
> >
> > HC_ELLIS wrote "that the 3rd world needs desperately development", this
> > believe is the root of most of the Third World ills.
> > T.Flores ( a third world indian woman)
> >
> >
> > I just want to support what Teresa has said here. We in the
> > West seem to think "our way is automatically the best way" and
> > that the are doing everyone a big favor to help them along
> > toward being "more like us". This applies to the missionary as
> > well as the developer. Isn't it possible that we are just
> > spreading the problems our over development has created??
> >
> > Sherry
> > --
> >
> >
>
