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
> --
>
>
