Al G Smith

If you haven’t seen this film, based on Helena Norberg Hodge’s book Ancient Futures, then here is an opportunty to do just that…

And why, you might ask, should you want to?

Well — albeit that this video was originally published in 1993 — the film effectvely encapsulates the issues that beset developing countries, and indigenous cultures, as they become increasingly enticed by, and embroiled in, the media-manufactured demand for so-called ‘progress’. In the name of aspiring to acquire the supposed ‘benefits’ of western civilization, all that is good and wholesome about their long-established traditional way of life can soon be sacrificed… with a whole raft of well-recognized social inequities, malaise and issues taking the place of once beautiful and synergsitic ways of life.

In the name of cheap consumer gods — and typically coca-cola and fast food, too — centuries of traditional, successful, cooperative, community based lifestyle that has weathered even the harshest of terrains and provided a harmonious and happy basis for many generations to enjoy truly ‘living’ and providing for themselves is being eroded and, potentially, forever lost…

And as Norberg Hodge observes — this provides a great insight into what has already gone, and what continues to go wrong with today’s most ‘advanced’ societies! It also highlights that human tendency to fail to appreciate just what you have, until it has gone! Reclaiming that which you have lost, is so much more difficult (if not impossible) once certain things have changed… But then this seems to have been the way of the human race since the days of the Garden of Eden — and as the man one said (or, rather, sang) ‘when will we ever learn?‘…

Insightful, and by turns heartwarming and heartbreaking — well worth an hour of your day: