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David Emery's avatar

I appreciate your efforts in the world, both the physical efforts and those that reside outside our senses.

I am your neighbor, so to speak, living in northwestern Cambodia since 2006. My wife, son and I have a 1-hectare farm. High expectations for this tiny piece of earth: the place where my son learns how to take care of himself in a changing world (the villagers where we live know more about the living world and how to survive in it than I will ever learn), as a source of water, food and fiber and home, and a place my wife can produce the things she needs to survive should I no longer be here or unable to work as I do now. Of course, we have successes and failures nearly every day. As you are probably well aware, when tiny humans attempt to create a functioning ecosystem that produces things civilized humans need on a small piece of damaged earth, you are trying to achieve the impossible.

Like you, I try to explain to people what is happening here in Cambodia and in the Asia Pacific. That people here, almost to a one, want to live modern, affluent lives and are willing to work very hard to achieve this, and are also willing to destroy the living world to get what they think they deserve, as many countries have already done and continue to do.

I originally came to Cambodia to work for a nonprofit doing climate change adaptation/mitigation projects. Strangely, while in Cambodia doing this ‘save the world work,’ I realized not only could I not ‘save the world,’ but that the living world was almost assuredly screwed.

Working, learning and traveling around South, Southeast and East Asia (where 55% of the world’s human population lives) for the past 20 years, it became clear that the people living in these regions, as societies, believed in and lived the myth of human supremacy just as profoundly as those living in more ‘affluent’ regions of the civilized world. For example, the material culture in rural Cambodia when I first came here—as much as a white man from the USA can understand this— was based on subsistence agriculture and rooted in a spiritual ecology of Animistic Buddhism. The simple material living and the deep understanding of their land lured me into believing I’d found my place and people in the world. But as the forests around me were felled for green revolution agriculture and the karst hillsides disappeared to build highways and dams, the people mostly cheered. While the rural communities and households who took part in our rooftop rainwater harvesting, home-scale water filtration, organic agriculture, and community bank projects were happy to be a part of them and worked hard to make them successful, nearly all these people wanted for themselves and assuredly for their children, by their own and open admission, to live modern, affluent lives. They wanted to drive cars to work in air-conditioned offices, shop in supermarkets, have large homes equipped with all the modern conveniences, go to shopping malls, etc. In short, they wanted to thrive in an ecocidal economy.

As a person who grew up with all the benefits of ecocidal living—the effects of the steady collapse of the biosphere were not as obvious when I was growing up as they are now— it is hard to talk about modern, affluent living being ecocidal, without coming off as an asshole, perhaps rightly so. Still, when I think of the destruction of habitats and ecosystems in the name of building a global omnicidal culture, it is heartbreaking.

Sorry for such a long rant. I wanted to let you know that someone appreciated your writing and efforts at creating a more life-centric world.

I wish you and your loved ones long lives filled with love!

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Helmut's avatar

The Main problem is: There are too many people living on earth. So, not all of them could live like you, even if they wanted to.

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