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Date Posted: 12:46:31 02/16/00 Wed
Author: Anonymous
Subject: Can PNG avoid LOSS OF FREEDOM & INEQUALITY that comes w/ western development?
In reply to: 's message, "Nonsustainable = PNG logging" on 10:16:36 02/15/00 Tue

> Thus, the roads, aid posts, etc. all collapse with
> nothing to replace them.
>
> So what happens then? People get desperate. They want
> those roads and aid posts back. Thus, they want the
> forests cleared completely. They end up as
> smallholders, maybe with oil palm. They end up losing
> all the options for living that they used to have.
> They end up working like dogs.
>
The process just described has happened all over the world. People start out with land, and quite a bit of freedom to achieve the basic needs in their lives. In other words, some people can become good hunters, others can become good gardeners, some can become the authority on fighting, others the authority on bilum making. Many different roads to satisfaction. 'Development' in its real sense, is all about living a long, satisfying life. Happiness=development.

But the moment people have paradise, as so many of us in PNG, the same process of losing that paradise starts. People start overpopulating the land. The rich resources are lost (kunai grassland in the highlands being an historic example that occurred before any outsiders came).

When the attraction of money was introduced, it goes even further. People destroy more of their resources for the quick money. The loss of those resources, as you say, puts them in a bind. So they end up working harder, and have fewer options to get that money.

Is that process development? I agree with the other posters that it doesn't seem so. It certainly looks to be like less development than what our ancestors had.

The process also starts the inevitable loss of land. How many people in developed countries have the land that many of us still have? Did they never have land? Of course not, they used to have the same land we had. Look at Australia and America. There is lots of land. If that land was divided up by the population size, probably people would have as much land as we do. They bloody stole the land from the original people, the aborigines and indians. Land was free for the asking. So what's the excuse for them not having land now?

The fact is that their economic system has caused them to lose their land. Their education has allowed them to gain back some of the freedom that was lost when the land was lost. Unfortunately, not all people have equal access to education, and that's where the PNG system was far better than the western system.

PNG could have it all. But will we or will we just blindly follow the western system as we are doing now? Go to wantoks forum, and look at all the blind people there. Educated but blind.

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