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GLOBAL THINKING IS IMPOSSIBLE
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- THE WISDOM OF THINKING SMALL
GLOBAL THINKING IS IMPOSSIBLE1. GLOBAL THINKING IS ILLUSIONARY; DESTRUCTIVE Gustavo Esteva, Academic/Activist, 1998 GRASSROOTS POSTMODERNISM, 22 The modern "gaze" can distinguish less and less between reality and the image broadcast on the TV screen. It has shrunk the earth into a little blue bauble, a mere Christmas tree ornament, an too often viewed on a TV set. Forgetting its mystery, immensity and grandeur, modern men and women succumb to the arrogance of "thinking globally" to manage planet Earth. We can only think wisely about what we actually know well. And no person, however sophisticated, intelligent and overloaded with the information age state‑of‑the‑art technologies, can ever "know" the Earth except by reducing it statistically, as all modern institutions tend to do today, supported by reductionist scientists.5 Since none of us can ever really know more than a minuscule part of the earth, "global thinking" is at its best only an illusion, and at its worst the grounds for the kinds of destructive and dangerous actions perpetrated by global "think tanks" like the World Bank, or their more benign counterparts ‑ the watchdogs in the global environmental and human rights movements.
Gustavo Esteva, Academic/Activist, 1998 GRASSROOTS POSTMODERNISM, 27 Global proposals are necessarily parochial: they inevitably express the specific vision and interests of a small group of people, ever) when they are supposedly formulated in the interest of humanity. In contrast, if they are conceived by communities well rooted in specific places, local proposals reflect the unique "cosmovision" that defines, differentiates and distinguishes every culture: an awareness of the place and responsibilities of humans in the cosmos. Those who think locally do not twist the humble satisfaction of belonging to the cosmos into the arrogance of pretending to know what is good for everyone and to attempt to control the world 3. THE LOGIC OF GLOBALISM CANNOT BE SUSTAINED Wolfgang Sachs, Professor/Activist, 2001 THE NEED FOR THE HOME PERSPECTIVE, 291 This premise of superiority [assumed by “developed nations]” has been fully and finally shattered by the ecological predicament. For instance, much of the glorious growth of productivity is fuelled by a gigantic throughput of fossil energy which requires mining the earth on the one side and covering her with waste on the other. By now, however, the global economy has outgrown the capacity of the earth to serve as mine and dumping ground. 4. TRADITIONAL ‘DEVELOPMENT’ IS OBSOLETE Wolfgang Sachs, Professor/Activist, 2001 THE NEED FOR THE HOME PERSPECTIVE, 294 ‘Development’, as a way of thinking, is on its way out. It has slowly become common sense that the two founding assumptions of the development promise have lost their validity. Fore the promise rested on the belief, first, that development could be universalized in space, and, second, that it would be durable in time. In both senses, however, development has revealed itself as finite. THE WISDOM OF THINKING SMALL1. LOCAL ACTIONS REJECT GLOBAL FORCES; AFFIRM A DIVERSITY OF ATTITUDES Gustavo Esteva, Academic/Activist, 1998 GRASSROOTS POSTMODERNISM, 24 How do we defeat the five Goliath companies now controlling 85 percent of the world trade of grains and around half of its world production? Or the four controlling the American consumption of chicken? Or those few that have cornered the beverage market? The needed changes will wait for ever if they require forging equally gigantic transnational consumers' coalitions, or a global consciousness about the right way to eat. In accepting the illusory nature of the efforts to struggle against "global forces" in their own territory, on a global scale, we are not suggesting the abandonment of effective coalitions for specific purposes, like the Pesticides Action Network, trying to exert political pressure to ban specific threats. Even less are we suggesting that people give up their struggles to put a halt to the dangerous advances of those "global forces." Quite the opposite. In putting our eggs in the local basket, we are simply emphasizing the merits of the politics of "No" for dealing with global Goliaths: affirming a rich diversity of attitudes and ideals, while sharing a common rejection of the same evils. Such a common "No" does not need a "global conciousness."
Gustavo Esteva, Academic/Activist, 1998 GRASSROOTS POSTMODERNISM, 25 All global institutions, including the World Bank or Coca Cola, have to locate their transnational operations in actions that are always necessarily local; they cannot exist otherwise. Since "global forces" can only achieve concrete existence at some local level, it is only there ‑ at the local grassroots ‑ that they can most effectively and wisely be opposed. People at the grassroots are realizing that there is no need to "Think Big" in order to begin releasing themselves from the clutches of the monopolistic food economy; that they can, in fact, free themselves in the same voluntary ways as they entered it. They are learning to simply say "No" to Coke and other industrial junk, while looking for local alternatives that are healthy, ecologically sound, as well as decentralized in terms of social control. 3. LOCAL, COMMUNITY-BASED ACTION MAKES THE ‘GLOBAL PROJECT’ HUMAN-SIZED Gustavo Esteva, Academic/Activist, 1998 GRASSROOTS POSTMODERNISM, 26 The time has come to recognize with the late Leopold Kohr that the true problem of the modern age lies in the inhuman size or scale of many contemporary institutions and technologies. Instead of trying to counteract such inherently unstable and damaging global forces through government or civic controls that match their disproportionate and destructive scale, the time has come "to reduce the size of the body politic which gives them their devastating scale, until they become once again a match for the limited talent available to the ordinary mortals of which even the most majestic governments are composed" 4. THE ZAPATISTAS REVEALED THE WISDOM OF LOCAL THINKING FOR GLOBAL PROBLEMS Gustavo Esteva, Academic/Activist, 1998 GRASSROOTS POSTMODERNISM, 27 No other call of the Zapatista movement was more successful than "Basta!" ("Enough!"). Millions of Mexicans were activated by it, shaping their generalized discontent and their multiple affirmations into a common, dignified rejection. The movement was able to encapsulate new aspirations in ways that affirm and regenerate their local spaces. They show no interest in seizing power in order to impose their own regime on everyone. Their struggle for a radically democratic governance attempts to take some of the political procedures of formal democracies, while combining these with those prevailing in their own traditions, in their communities. In their commons, the Zapatistas and other Mexicans are trying to govern themselves autonomously, well rooted in the spaces to which they belong and that belong to them. While affirming their dignity and their hope of flourishing and enduring according to their own cultural patterns and their own practices of the art of living and dying, they are joining in solidarity with all those liberating themselves from the parochialism of the "Global Project." Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 5.81 Mb. Share with your friends:
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