Towards An Ecological Vision
During my time in Ladakh, it became clear to me that this traditional, nature-based society was far more sustainable, both socially and environmentally, than the Western consumer society I had been living in. The old culture reflected fundamental human needs while respecting natural limits. And it worked. It worked for nature, and it worked for people. The various connecting relationships in the traditional system were mutually reinforcing, encouraging harmony and stability. Most importantly, I am convinced that Ladakhis were significantly happier before the arrival of western development in the mid-1970s than they are today. And what criteria for judging a society could be more important: in social terms, the well-being of people; in environmental terms, sustainability? If we are to work towards an ecological vision of the future, we can learn valuable lessons of social harmony and environmental sustainability from traditional cultures like Ladakh.
Learning From Ladakh
Over the centuries, the Ladakhis succeeded in creating an ecologically benign society in an extremely demanding environment. Scorched by the sun in summer, the Tibetan plateau freezes solid for eight months in winter, when temperatures drop as low as minus forty degrees. This is the fiercest of climates: winds whip up tornadoes along the empty corridors of desert; rain is so rare that it is easy to forget that it exists.
The vast majority of Ladakhis were self-supporting farmers, living in small scattered settlements in the high desert; the principle crop was barley. Natural resources were scarce and hard to obtain. Soon after I arrived in Ladakh I began to learn how this hardy people managed to survive. I began, for example, to learn the meaning of the word frugality. Where Westerners would consider something completely worn out, exhausted of all possible worth, and would throw it away, Ladakhis would find some further use for it. Nothing whatever was just discarded. What could not be eaten by people could be eaten by animals; what could not be eaten by animals could be used as fuel, or to fertilize the land.
In such ways the Ladakhis traditionally recycled everything. There was literally no waste. Even with only scarce resources at their disposal, farmers managed to attain almost complete self-reliance, dependent on the outside world only for salt, tea, and a few metals for cooking utensils and tools.
With these few tools Ladakhis spent a long time accomplishing each task. Producing wool for clothes involved the time-consuming work of looking after the sheep while they grazed, shearing them with hand tools, and working the wool from beginning to end--cleaning, spinning, and finally weaving it. In the same way, producing food, from sowing the seed until the food was served on the table, was labour-intensive.
Despite the lack of labour-saving devices, I nevertheless found that the Ladakhis had an amazing abundance of time. They worked at a gentle pace and had an amount of leisure unknown to most working people in the West. Remarkably, Ladakhis only did productive work for four months of the year. In the eight winter months, they of course had to cook, feed the animals, and carry water, but work was minimal. Indeed, most of the winter was spent at festivals and parties. Even during the summer, hardly a week passed without a major festival or celebration of one sort or another. The myth of a life of preindustrial drudgery and never-ending work was therefore revealed as a product of centuries of Western infatuation with technological progress.
An important factor in the environmental balance in Ladakh was undoubtedly the fact that people belonged to their place on earth. They were bonded to that place through intimate daily contact, through a knowledge about their immediate environment with its changing seasons, needs, and limitations. For them "the environment" was not some alien, problematic sphere of human concern; it was where they were. They were aware of the living context in which they found themselves. The movement of the stars, the sun, and moon were familiar rhythms that influenced their daily activities.
The understanding that was gained through a life rooted in the natural world seemed to create a sense of kinship with plants and animals that nurtured a profound respect for the humble creatures that shared the world of the Ladakhis. Children and adults who witnessed the birth, rearing, mating, and death of the animals around them were unable to view those animals as merely a "natural resource" to be plundered.
No one could deny the value of this kind of authentic education of the young--that is, one which promotes the widening and enrichment of knowledge--in the development of an ecologically sustainable society. And yet, with the exception of religious training in the monasteries, the traditional culture had no separate process called "education." Education was the product of an intimate relationship with the community and its environment. Children learned from grandparents, family, and friends. Helping with the sowing, for instance, they would learn that on one side of the village it was a little warmer, on the other side a little colder. From their own experience children would come to distinguish between different strains of barley and the specific growing conditions each strain preferred. They learned to recognize even the tiniest wild plant and how to use it, and how to pick out a particular animal on a faraway mountain slope. They learned about connections, process, and change; about the intricate web of fluctuating relationships in the natural world around them.
Old Visions, New Future
We still have an opportunity to steer our society toward social and ecological balance. But if we are to do more than simply treat symptoms, it is important that we understand the systemic nature of the crises facing us. Under the surface, even such seemingly unconnected problems as ethnic violence, pollution of the air and water, broken families, and cultural disintegration are closely interlinked. Understanding that the problems are interrelated can make them seem overwhelming, but finding the points at which they converge can, in fact, make our attempts to tackle them a great deal more effective. It is then just a question of pulling the right threads to affect the entire fabric, rather than having to deal with each problem individually.
The fabric of industrial society is to a great extent determined by the interaction of science, technology, and a narrow economic paradigm--an interaction that is leading to ever-greater centralization and specialization. Since the Industrial Revolution, the perspective of the individual has become more limited while political and economic units have grown larger. I have become convinced that we need to decentralize our political and economic structures and broaden our approach to knowledge if we are to find our way to a more balanced and sane society. In Ladakh, I have seen how human-scale structures nurture intimate bonds with the earth and an active and participatory democracy, while supporting strong and vital communities, healthy families, and a greater balance between male and female. These structures in turn provide the security needed for individual well-being and, paradoxically, for a sense of freedom.
Decentralizing in order to create smaller scale political and economic units will also help to foster diversity. Cultural diversity is as important as diversity in the natural world and, in fact, follows directly from it. Traditional cultures mirrored their particular environments, deriving their food, clothing, and shelter primarily from local resources.
One of the most effective ways of reviving cultural differences would be to lobby for a reduction in unnecessary trade. At the moment, our taxpayers' money is going to expand transport infrastructures and to increase trade for the sake of trade. We are transporting across whole continents a vast range of products, from milk to apples to furniture, that could just as easily be produced in their place of destination. What we should be doing instead is reinforcing and diversifying local economies. By reducing and eliminating subsidies for transportation, we would cut waste and pollution, improve the position of small farmers, and strengthen communities in one fell swoop.
It is often said that there are too many people and not enough land for a demographic shift into rural areas. But in many unseen ways, today's centralized systems take up much more space. The relationship between the vast urban centres of today and their physical requirements is analogous to the way we use more land the higher up on the food chain we eat. A beef cow does not take up nearly as much room in itself as a vegetable garden, but when you take into account the fields of grain to feed the cow, the water to irrigate the fields, and the land that dried up because of the diversion of that water, it is clear that a cow actually takes up much more land.
The process of decentralization would involve a succession of changes in the whole socio-economic system. It is important to remember, however, that we are not talking about dismantling a static entity but rather about steering in the direction of change. The scale of our society is growing year by year, and the logic of centralization is progressively being carried to new extremes. The pace is such that we would need to actually implement plans for decentralization simply to stay where we are now. That alone would be a significant achievement.
The need to belong to a group is in itself an important reason for human-scale social units. Here we can learn directly from Ladakh, where families are large, but communities small. Children are nurtured by people of different generations, benefiting particularly from the special bond with their grandparents. Though the relationships in this larger family are close, they are not so intense as those of the nuclear family. Each individual is supported in a web of intimate relationships, and no one relationship has to bear too much weight. In Ladakh, I have never observed anything approaching the needy attachment or the guilt and rejection that are so characteristic of the nuclear family.
Decentralization is a prerequisite for the rekindling of community in Western society. Mobility erodes community, but as we put down roots and feel attachment to a place, our human relationships deepen, become more secure, and--as they continue over time--more reliable. While decentralization is the most necessary structural change we must make, it needs to be accompanied by a corresponding change in world view. Increasing ecological distress has clearly demonstrated wide-reaching interconnections in natural systems, but most academic institutions continue to perpetuate ever more narrowly focused specialization. This reductionist perspective is, in fact, one of the root causes of the malaise of industrial culture. Paradoxically, a trend toward smaller-scale political and economic units would help us to develop a broader world view--one based on interconnectedness. Instead of narrowing our vision, an intimate connection to community and place would encourage an understanding of interdependence. Our static and mechanistic world view has reached its limits, and some scientists--particularly quantum physicists--now speak of a paradigm shift away from the old "building block" view of reality to a more organic one. In direct opposition to the trend in mainstream culture toward greater specialization, we need to actively promote the generalist--the one who sees connections and makes links across different disciplines.
Throughout the industrialized world, many people are making these changes in their search for a better balance with nature. In the process, they are starting to mirror traditional cultures. In fields as diverse as hospice care for the dying and mediation as a way of settling disputes, striking parallels are emerging between the most ancient and the most modern cultures. New movements are springing up, committed to living on a human scale, and to more feminine and spiritual values. The numbers are growing, and the desire for change is spreading. These trends are often labeled "new," but, as I hope Ladakh has shown, in an important sense they are very old. Just as Ladakhi villagers have always done, increasing numbers of people are making the kitchen the centre of their household activity, eating whole foods that are grown naturally, and using age-old natural remedies for their health problems. Even in more subtle ways, such as a reawakened interest in oral literature and storytelling, a renewed appreciation for physical work, and the use of natural materials for clothing and construction, the direction of change is clear.
We are spiraling back to an ancient connection between ourselves and the earth. The process, however, is often an unconscious one. Our mainstream culture encourages a linear view of progress, one in which the goal is to free ourselves from our past and from the laws of nature. The modern-day mantra "we cannot go back, we cannot go back" is deeply ingrained in our thinking. Of course we could not go back, even if we wanted to, but our search for a future that works is inevitably bringing us back to certain fundamental patterns that are in greater harmony with nature--including our own human nature.
We are in fact rediscovering values that have existed for thousands of years--values that recognize our place in the natural order, our inextricable connection to one another and to the earth.
©1998 Talking Leaves
Winter 1999
Volume 8, Number 3
Visions of an Ecological Future