by Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
January 30, 2011
(SOAPBOX #85) – Cindy welcomes Helena Norberg-Hodge, an analyst of the impact of the global economy on cultures and agriculture worldwide and a pioneer of the localization movement. The destructive impact of globalization on our children is no less destructive than its historical impact on the Ladakh, an isolated Himalayan culture described in countercurrents.org here. Over the past three decades, Ms. Norberg-Hodge has studied this process in numerous cultures around the world and discovered that we are all victims of these same psychological pressures. In virtually every industrialized country, including the US, UK, Australia, France and Japan, there is now what can only be described as an epidemic of depression. In the US, a growing proportion of young girls are so deeply insecure about their appearance they fall victim to anorexia and bulimia, or undergo expensive cosmetic surgery. Why is this happening? Too often these signs of breakdown are seen as ‘normal:’ we assume that depression is a universal affliction, that children are by nature insecure about their appearance, that greed, acquisitiveness, and competition are innate to the human condition. What we fail to consider are the billions of dollars spent by marketers targeting children as young as two, with a goal of instilling the belief that material possessions will ensure them the love and appreciation they crave. But the reality is that consumption leads to greater competition and envy, leaving children more isolated, insecure, and unhappy, thereby fueling still more frantic consumption in a vicious cycle. In this way, the global consumer culture taps into the fundamental human need for love and twists it into insatiable greed.
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[DS added the videos.]
1 of 2 Helena Norberg-Hodge: Localization: Development without destruction
TraceFoundation | December 10, 2010
Speaker: Helena Norberg-Hodge is a director of The International Society for Ecology and Culture, and is a co-founder of both the international Forum on Globalization and the Global Eco-Village Netwrok. Topic: Localization: Development without destruction.
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see
Re-creating Revolutionary Communities (Part I) by Cindy Sheehan
Toby Hemenway: How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Earth, but Not Civilization
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there is a line from the band three dog night ”do you only care about the bleeding crowd, i need a friend …
this is the crux. in other words in reference to local giving back to local which is what i am involved with in charity work here , there can be a danger in becoming a little too utilitarian . the key is to continue to act of course , but while we are at it , the core of all this is just to ask your next door neighbor now and then ”how’s it going ?” and if you dont know those who live immediately around you that is a real problem that can be solved by getting to know them .
Consumption is not the problem, Uniformed product consumption is. The death of individual arts and crafts associated with a mass production based society breeds depression. For me anyhow.