| The Wildlands Project Information Page
brought to you by the Central Coast Forest Association "But we cannot except all the changes to be progressive. Globalism will generate new power relations as the old national allegiances lose their sway. Just as the social costs to capitalism of environmental regulation are likely to be internally absorbed and handed on to consumers, so too, there are cultural costs to be borne in transforming people into global citizens. This goes well beyond the tendency, already well advanced, of passing on to individuals the deeply moralistic sense of assuming self-responsibility for the very largest ecological problems that ought to be borne primarliy by corporate executives and their stockholders. For most individuals, the new "natural" scarcity of a globally conscious economy will be exploited in the "national interest" of a few. This means more than a continuation of deprivation for many in the name of those few who benefit from creating conditions of scarcity. In cultural terms, global consciousness also means an erosion of diversity, a flattening and incorporation of cultural differences that the new "global economic/climate" can no longer "afford" to sustain - except, of course, in the postmodern realm of images, as representations of cultural difference a la Benetton. What is being erased are all those features of cultural difference that cannot be readily translated across cultures into the visual language of the global village, the polyrythms of world beat, and the ideology of market pluralism. As the race for global culture quickens, we must be prepared to make the same arguments about cultural diversity as ecologists have made about biological diversity. The attrition of cultural diversity, like the loss of life-species, decreases the chances of sustaining our social survival." |
