On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 3:43 PM, Giancarlo Livraghi <[email protected]> wrote: > But it isn't happening even remotely as much as it could. The monstrous > growth of gigantic cities in many parts of the world (especially those with > severe poverty) remains a tragically strong trend.
If these mega city dwellers could escape it, would they? Science fiction literature is littered with depictions of mega cities in the future where people slave away in mindless existence, with a few outlaw cults that live off the scraps of the mega cities, but refuse to subject themselves to the ignominy of "civilized" life. Predictably, they are chased to the ground by the law because they offer hope in an alternative future. As agriculturalists and as settled peoples we've done the same to nomads, hunter gatherers and others who questioned our accepted wisdom. We've maligned them in our literature, erected social barriers and denied them their lebensraum. India and China as regions with prolonged experience of this conflict bear much evidence of this. Cheeni
