The West has been indulging an orgy of self-recrimination of late. One
element that seeps into this self-loathing is a strange hatred of
technology and a fear of progress. This has a weird Rousseau quality
about it, the poisoning of man's good nature by civilization. This
collections of Grand Wizards and Exalted Cyclopes oppose advances in
farming and cultivation, trade, fishing--indeed anything that hints of
an easier and healthier life. Evidence is offered whether it exists or
not and action often taken on the basis of induction as it "just feels
right." So trees are trapped to injure loggers and experimental farms
with innovative solutions to disease and hunger are vandalized.
Gordon Conway, the former president of the Rockefeller Foundation and a professor at London’s Imperial College, summarizes all this nicely. "People in the rich world love to dabble in a past they were lucky enough to avoid—you know, a couple of chickens running around with the children in the back yard. But farming is bloody tough, as anyone who does it knows. It is like those people who romanticize villages in the developing world. Nobody who ever lived in one would do that.”
Gordon Conway, the former president of the Rockefeller Foundation and a professor at London’s Imperial College, summarizes all this nicely. "People in the rich world love to dabble in a past they were lucky enough to avoid—you know, a couple of chickens running around with the children in the back yard. But farming is bloody tough, as anyone who does it knows. It is like those people who romanticize villages in the developing world. Nobody who ever lived in one would do that.”
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