Thursday, November 6, 1997
Take a stand: stop destruction
HUMANITY: Education is useless for saving world if only money is
valued
By Willem Zwart
"What is the good of learning if in the process of living we are
destroying ourselves?" You might wonder whether this is true for us
at UCLA. Are we destroying ourselves in the process of living? I’d
like to consider some examples concerning UCLA, the United States,
and the world, while also introducing two people who have gone into
this question.
Let’s look at our eating habits here at UCLA: the most popular
foods are also the most unhealthy – burgers, snacks, and soft
drinks – to name a few. Are we aware that these foods are unhealthy
for the body? Are we aware of the abuse and horror animals undergo
in order to end up as our food? Did anyone teach us that eating a
vegetable-based diet is both healthier and ecologically more
sustainable, as less resources are needed to grow vegetables than
to raise cattle? Did anyone ever discuss with us the values of
modesty and simplicity, of taking no more than what is absolutely
necessary – of food and resources – so that others can also meet
their basic food needs? Probably not, as we’re too busy being
educated to become successful money-making-knowledge-machines
disguised as doctors, lawyers, businessmen, engineers, academics
and so on.
Then, there is the campus shopping mall, which is apparently a
source of income for "our" student government, USAC. It is ironic
that while USAC nobly condemns Proposition 209, racism, sexism,
homophobia, and recently, NIKE for exploiting laborers in – and
among others – Indonesia, one of its principal sources of income is
a place which indirectly, through product placement, supports
regimes known for long-standing atrocities against humanity.
I am, of course, speaking about China, which "peacefully
liberated" Tibet, and in the process of doing so, has been
responsible for over one million deaths, while turning Tibet into
the kind of industrial wasteland – deforestation, dumpsite for
waste, dams – the rest of the world is so fond of. It shares
practices such as torture, forced abortions and replacing the
native population with its own, with that other booming economy
popular with American investors: Indonesia, which has an equally
impressive record of human rights abuses in East Timor.
I understand that USAC has to draw the line somewhere in the
conflict between political correctness and the pursuit of funding.
It is unfortunate that the suffering of the people of Tibet,
Mongolia and East Timor, to name a few, are not considered in this
equation.
So "what is the good of learning if in the process of living we
are destroying ourselves?" Another way to measure the outcome of
education – learning – is to look at society, which is generally
run by educated people.
In Bonn, Germany, the United States recently was unwilling to
commit to reducing emissions from cars and factories to less than
1990 levels, which Europe would have liked to have seen. The
so-called "developing" countries of the world, on whose backs the
great Western nations were built, and infected by the greed and
ambition driving this "developed" world, did not want to reduce
emissions at all, as it is their ambition to become as rich and
powerful as the "developed" world.
Meanwhile, on Wall Street last week, the Chinese president was
received with enthusiastic applause by many traders, in a move that
to some of us seemed as absurd as if Stalin or Pol Pot had received
the same treatment. This is a man who denies that the regime he
represents has been responsible for genocide and other crimes
against humanity. But business, in its fast-paced desire to
maximize profits, cannot be bothered by attending to details such
as human rights or environmental concerns.
We live in a country which wastes natural resources like no
other. We are obsessed with meaningless entertainment and with
dreams of power and wealth, fed by advertisement-driven media. We
live in a world which is rapidly becoming like the United States,
with fewer and fewer people owning more and more of the wealth. In
a world which is increased by 250,000 people every day, demands for
resources like food, water, wood and fossil fuels are rapidly
becoming scarcer. This is a world which levels 140 square miles of
rainforest each day to meet rising demands for food. A world,
finally, in which war, oppression, increasing violence, nationalism
and religious intolerance, to name a few, are widespread.
The leaders of the world and the people in Bonn and on Wall
Street all have been educated at universities. They have been
exposed to the same knowledge we learn at UCLA. So, seeing all
this, the question comes up again: "What is the good of learning if
in the process of living we are destroying ourselves?"
This question was originally put by Jiddu Krishnamurti
(1895-1986). He recognized that each of us is the world; that
society, as small as UCLA or as large as the world, merely reflects
who we are psychologically. He saw individual psychological change
as the only way to change the relationship between many individual
human beings called society but was also acutely aware that the
desire to become better human beings has been ruthlessly exploited
by organized religion of any kind, and, as of late, also by the
psychological establishment, merely resulting in getting people to
conform to established patterns of destruction. The only thing that
can truly change, he said, is self-observation free from authority,
judgment, justification, condemnation, labeling, fear and choice.
Such observation leads to a clear understanding and, thus, to the
right actions.
Today, from 6 to 9 p.m. in Public Policy 2284, a video of
Krishnamurti discussing related issues together with David Bohm
(1917-1992) will be shown. Bohm, during his lifetime, was a
professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton and London
Universities, and held that the source of the problems facing the
world lies in the way we think. Bohm shares the same concerns for
"The Future of Humanity," as the video is called, as Krishnamurti
does. Together they look at thought, love, psychological
transformation, as well as at the nature of time and of reality in
relation to the current crisis facing the world.
Their discussion is one, when taken seriously, with real
implications for how we live "our" life at UCLA and in this world,
and for what the role of learning is in a society which is
destroying the natural world. The video is followed by a group
discussion. You are all welcome.