Dance of Diversity

Let us celebrate the wisdom of traditional cultures and move sensitively towards the continual renewal of the human spirit.

MY MOTHER USED to tell me a Jain story when I was a child. Adam was lost in the jungle where he encountered two wild elephants.  They began to chase him.  In order to escape from these frightening beasts Adam climbed a tall tree nearby but the elephants were not to let him go so easily; they curled their trunks around the tree and began to shake it furiously. It so happened that above the branch Adam was holding was a beehive.  As the tree shook, honey began to drip down, straight into Adam’s mouth.

At that very moment some angels in their chariot were flying past and upon seeing the desperate plight of Adam they slowed down and said “Come, we will rescue you, come into our chariot”. “Oh, how kind of you. But please, let me have this sweet drop of honey, then I will come”, said Adam.

The angels were kind and patient, and so they waited. “Alright, you got your honey drop! Come now, be quick”. “Please, let me have just one more drop”, Adam pleaded.

The angels were astonished.  They said, “You are being stung by bees and any time now the elephants will pull the tree down.  You greedy fool, you cannot let go of the desire for that drop of honey! Come, this is your last chance, come now or we will go.”

“Please, please, let me have one more drop of honey, it is so delicious.” said Adam. The angels waited for a little while longer but in the end they could not draw Adam away from his imminent death and they left.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE LIKE Oren Lyons are the angels of our time.  They are calling on us to refrain from the momentary gratification of economic growth which is like the honey drop. The planet is threatened by global warming, rivers are polluted, rainforests are disappearing, human population is exploding, biodiversity is diminishing, and traditional cultures are declining – all this in the pursuit of economic growth, so that we can have the sweet drop of consumption. 

To sustain our desire to consume we have created a world of monoculture. We have uniformity rather than unity, divisions rather than diversity.  We seem to celebrate sameness – wherever we go we are confronted by the same kind of architecture, shopping centres, houses, foods, clothes and culture, education and entertainment.  Behind the rhetoric of choice and competition, government, businesses and industries promote monopoly, monoculture and sameness.

The vested interest of the established order is good at the use of sweet-sounding words such as liberty, freedom, democracy and sustainability; but their policies and actions lead to the concentration of economic and political power in fewer and fewer hands.  Dignity, equity and equality are sacrificed at the altar of global greed.

Traditional cultures which do not fit within the paradigm of economic growth, commercial expansion, consumerism, globalisation and mass production are labelled at best as idealist dreams, lacking realism. Traditional cultures are condemned as underdeveloped and backward.  The systems of industrialisation, globalisation and centralisation are proclaimed as symbols of progress and development.

But one has to ask, where has this progress and development led us? What have the realists and pragmatists achieved? After 100 years of relentless destruction of Nature and culture, where are we now? How can we take satisfaction in so called progress and development while global wars, global warming and global poverty rage?  How can we rejoice in the wealth of the few while millions of men, women and children suffer in hunger and deprivation?  How can we rest when bio-diversity and cultural diversity is constantly and dangerously under threat?

The time has come to stop and take stock; the time has come to look at the evidence and ask ourselves where did we go wrong?  In spite of the triumphs of science and technology, why do we live in the midst of multiple crises and conflicts?

Written by Satish Kumar

First published in Resurgence - an inspiring and distinctive magazine bringing you a positive outlook on the environmental challenges we currently face.