Ethnospere and ethnocide

A summary of:
Wade Davis (2004). A World Made of Stories. In Ausubel, K. & Harpignies, J.P., eds., Nature’s Operating Instructions: The True Biotechnologies. Sierra Club Books: San Francisco.

In this chapter, Davis (re-)introduces his term ‘ethnosphere’, “to describe a concept suggesting that just as there is a biosphere, a biological web of life, so too there is a cultural fabric that envelops the earth, a cultural web of life, the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, beliefs, myths, intuitions, and inspirations brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness. The ethnosphere is humanity’s great legacy. It is the product of our dreams, the embodiment of our hopes, the symbol of all that we are and all that we have created as a wildly inquisitive and astonishingly adaptive species” (215).

The central argument about the importance of preserving this ethnosphere comes from Margaret Mead: “Just before she died, anthropologist Margaret Mead spoke of her concern that as we drift toward a more homogenous world, we are laying the foundations of a blandly amorphous and singularly generic modern culture that ultimately will have no rivals. The entire imagination of humanity, she feared, might become confined within the limits of a single intellectual and spiritual modality. Her nightmare was the possibility that we might wake up one day and not even remember what had been lost” (218). And what would be lost? “Every view of the world that fades away, every culture that disappears, diminishes life’s possibilities and reduces the human repertoire of adaptive responses to the problems that confront us all. Knowledge is lost, not only of the natural world but also of the spirit realms, intuitions about the meaning of the cosmos, insights into the very nature of existence. This is why it matters that we tell these stories and make these journeys” (226). And importantly, he argues: “Whether this notion [i.e. the mythology] is ‘true’ or not is hardly the point. What is interesting and consequential is how a people’s conviction or belief mediates the relationship between human society and the natural world. In the high Andes, people believe that a mountain is an Apu, a sacred being that has the power to (225) direct the destiny of all those living within the shadow of its slopes. A young child coming of age in such a place will have a profoundly different relationship to that mountain than a kid from Montana raised to believe that a mountain is a pile of inert rock ready to be mined. Is a mountain a god or a pile of ore? Ultimately, who is to say? The important point is how the belief itself mediates and defines the relationship between the human and the natural landmark” (226).

But because of our faith in the mythology of progress (in Greer’s The Long Descent), we believe we are continually improving upon how to live on this planet. Davis reminds us: “Human beings as a recognizable social species have been around for perhaps 600,000 years. The Neolithic revolution, which gave us agriculture and with it surplus, hierarchy, specialization, and sedentary life, occurred only 10,000 years ago. Modern industrial society is but 300 years old. This shallow history does not suggest to me that our current way of life has all the answers for all the challenges that will confront us as a species in the coming millennia” (218). Even worse, however, there is a Western elitism at the heart of this so-called “progress”, which Davis describes (only to shatter) thusly: “There lingers a conceit that while we have been busy inventing the Internet or placing men on the moon, other societies have somehow been intellectually idle. This is simply not true. Anthropology has long taught that whether a people’s mental potential goes into technical wizardry or unraveling the complex threads of memory inherent in a myth is merely a matter of cultural choice and orientation. In the Sahara, for example, the raw potential of the human mind has been tapped in astonishing ways, some metaphysical, some boldly concrete, like the very capacity to orient oneself in an endless expanse of sand where there is no separation between horizon and sky, nothing on a human scale, no point of reference save the hallucinogenic waves of delirium that sweep over the unfettered imagination when the throat is scorched with a thirst impossible to describe, impossible to bear” (221). And then Davis writes the most wonderful few sentences:

“Genocide, the physical extermination of a people, is universally condemned by civilized societies. Yet ethnocide, the destruction of a people’s way of life, is often endorsed as appropriate development policy. Who is to say that American culture matters more than that of the Tuareg? At a more fundamental level, we have to ask ourselves, What kind of world do we want to live in? Most Americans will never see a painting by Monet or hear a symphony by Mozart, but does that mean that the world would not be a lesser place without these artists and their unique interpretations of reality?” (224).

What does this mean for the development of Web technology? Well Davis has a quite easily realizable plan: “to turn the Internet into a virtual campfire around which we might gather to share tales from all reaches of the ethnosphere” (224). I think this would be a noble effort, but it seems too limited by what we know of as the Internet now. I think what this chapter suggests, instead, is that we need to consider alternative visions for the Internet that make sense within other worldviews, in a way that doesn’t erode these cultures and homogenize them all into the kind of culture that created the Internet as it is now. And I think it means not encouraging uptake of our current Internet by other cultures as a desperate attempt for them to be heard. Maybe what it means, ultimately, is reconceptualizing cyberspace as something that need not be a purely technological creation. How would other cultures think about cyberspace?

(Davis also points out the fundamental flaw in the Western way of living, which is that it only works by establishing ranks of haves and have-nots, winners and losers; therefore it is foolish to think that it is our great philanthropic mission to bring Western development to the rest of the world. “Indeed the Western model of development has failed in so many places largely because it has been based on the false promise that people who follow its prescriptive dictates will in time achieve the material prosperity enjoyed by a handful of Western nations. Even were this possible, it is not at all clear that it would be desirable. To raise consumption of energy and materials throughout the world to Western levels, given current population projections, would require the resources of four planet earths by the year 2100. To do so with the one world we have would so severely compromise the biosphere that the earth would be unrecognizable. In reality, development for the vast majority of the world’s peoples has been a process in which the individual is torn from his past and propelled into an uncertain future, only to secure a place on the bottom rung of an economic ladder that leads nowhere” (217).)

(Davis also touches on the alienation as mentioned in the previous post: “We long ago liberated the individual from the constraints of community and with such finality that we forget what an astonishing innovation it represented in human affairs…. We forget that in most of the world the community still dominates, for without its strength the individual cannot survive. In embracing the cult of the individual, we secure an irresistible sense of liberation and freedom, but it comes at a cost, as is evident in the alienation and isolation that characterize too many lives in the West” (222).)