"Consume! Consume! | Enough is Enough! | Enough is not Enough" - Arne Naess

“Industrial Society, Postmodernity, and Ecological Sustainability”

By Arne Naess

[From Ecology of Wisdom: Writings by Arne Naess. Ed. Alan Drengson & Bill Devall]

Introduction: Two Sorts of Human Beings

According to Arne Naess, there are two sorts of human beings, those who for many years lived in a nonindustrial country and those who have spent many years together with tiny living creatures in grand mountains.

Comparing nonindustrial with industrial societies, including the fate of local communities, one sees that many of the nonindustrialized societies have shown a continuity and strength that the industrialized societies cannot hope to achieve, because industrial societies are unsustainable ecologically.

The Shift from Premodern to Postmodern: Enough is Enough!

Today’s nonindustrial societies will experience a development from premodern to postmodern cultures. The postmodern state of affairs implies the satisfaction of the vital economic needs of the total population, but not affluence. The key slogan would be “Enough is enough.” When vital economic needs are satisfied, there is enough in terms of material richness.

Hence, the near future of the industrial countries, let us say, the period until 2050, should emphasize a reduction in the use of energy and in material production. The next step would be to reach full ecological sustainability.

The Slogan – Consume! Consume!

In the years after World War II, a mighty slogan asked for a vast increase (mostly material) in production. When production and productivity in the richest countries soared as never before, a new powerful slogan appeared: “Consume! Consume!” because of overproduction. Today, this reason is replaced by an appeal to consume to overcome unemployment. “Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption . . . we need things consumed, burnt up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate.”

Need of the Hour: A Decrease in Consumption & Population

As a firm supporter of the deep ecology movement, I hold that a decrease in consumption and a slow decrease in population will not necessarily result in a decrease in the quality of life. There will be a transition period, during which some people living according to the slogan “Enough is never enough” will have difficulties. But provided the downscaling is effectuated with a strong sense of justice, major uprisings may not occur.

Disrespect of One’s Own [Nonindustrial] Cultures

Disrespect in the nonindustrial cultures of their own culture seems to have increased formidably, especially among the young.

Depreciation is often expressed in front of representatives of the West. In Beding and other Sherpa communities of Garwal Himalaya, monks had libraries of old Tibetan scripts, for example, prayers directed to Tseringma (“the long good life’s mother”), a formidable 7,146-meter-high peak directly above the village. In the 1950s and 1960s, the villagers showed reluctance to admit that they had such things. People hid such documents as shameful signs of backwardness. They were ashamed of their tradition of a cult of holy mountains going back many hundreds (or thousands?) of years.

Disrespect of the Land

Disrespect of one’s own culture includes disrespect of the land. In the Beding area and other Sherpa areas of Nepal, the forest was respected and no living trees were cut down for fuel. Each tree was looked upon as something that had its own life, its own interest, its own dignity. With the breakdown of customs, this deep ecology attitude vanished. The enormous mountaineering expeditions increased the mobility of the Sherpas, who were hired by the thousands to carry water - and often to heat it using wood - for daily hot showers for the sahibs. These practices generated completely different attitudes toward mountains and forests: disrespect of holiness, purely instrumental attitudes toward timber, wood, and fuel. Deforestation above 9,000 feet began in earnest. Without trees as cover, erosion started on a grand scale.

Today, practically nothing is left. Nepal became an “export country,” exporting hundreds of millions of tons of soil to India. The rivers brought much of the soil to the giant Indian dams, built largely through misguided efforts at “development,” and became filled with silt.

“Peace with Ourselves” – In Nonindustrialised Countries

A young, exceptionally gifted Sherpa who had been with many expeditions got the opportunity to start a sports shop in Canada, but he returned to his own country after a while. He expressed in a few words his reason for going back: “Here we enjoy peace with ourselves.” So many of the people he met on expeditions and in Canada, evidently, had no peace within themselves. They wished to be different from what they were; they worked hard to develop, achieve, succeed, and be better. They could not let time flow.

Unfortunately, very few young people have the necessary faculty of independent judgment, nor do they have the opportunity to compare the Western quality of life with their own in their “poor” countries.

Western Belief: Projecting Personal Traits onto Natural Objects

In traditional, nonindustrial societies, we find more and stronger “personification” of natural forces and nonhuman living beings. When we depart and decide to meet again on a mountain, the mountain must be defined in terms of our society and culture, defined as an object we have in common. This, however, does not identify the mountain as an object “in itself.”

The Curricula in Schools: A Cause of Concern

Let us look at some of the curricula children now have to learn, starting with mathematics. Mathematical instruction today is completely Westernized and utilitarian, reflecting the typical Western emphasis on proof. There is no trace of Chinese or Indian old mathematical culture.

It has now been more than half a century since the school textbooks of the Scandinavian countries were “adjusted” to be compatible with one another. Until then, a war between them was, as a matter of habit, described systematically, with each participant reporting and ethically judging what happened according to that participant’s own extremely one-sided propaganda. There is no hope of establishing peaceful, green societies as long as conflicts are described in a way that fosters prejudice and hatred.

World History: Atrociously Anthropocentric

Until recently, “world history” for children - at least in Europe - has been atrociously anthropocentric. The history of the planet and of life should be in focus as part of the global perspective. The history of bioregions takes care of the local perspective.

What can be done to change the picture those people have of our common future? What can be done to assist a transition from the preindustrial to the postindustrial?

The Farm Culture of Norway

Norway is the only Nordic country with family farms, and there is a definite agriculture, not just agribusiness. To protect this culture and to make it economically possible for its practitioners to survive, Norway “subsidizes” its agriculture. That is, there is a transfer of income so that the farmers can offer the public their products at low prices, prices that are not high enough to cover farm expenses. In an important sense, it is not the farmer, but the public, that is subsidized and protected against further increases. We are asked to destroy the farm culture in favor of city culture.

The Norwegian market today is not completely a part of the cheap world market. Nevertheless, what Norwegians pay for their food is absurdly little, usually about 15 percent of their average income. That is, expenses for transportation (private car, etc.) and other goods are much greater. We must expect that in future green societies, food calculated as a percentage of income will cost us substantially more than it does today.

Back to Sustainability, Not to Old Forms of Society

The following reflections, colored by personal experiences, result from an urge to examine industrial society in the light of values established in nonindustrial, “traditional” societies and in light of lifeways that are ecologically fully sustainable. Such has been the life of human beings for long periods. Alaska was inhabited for thousands of years by people with ecologically sustainable, diverse cultures. In Norway, people followed the retreat of the ice eight thousand years ago. As soon as reindeer could prosper, human beings prospered. there is no way back to societies that belong to the past, but there is a way back to ecological sustainability.

Importance of Global Reforestation

Today, several hundred million people lack fuel for cooking their food or cleaning their drinking water—the distance to the nearest wood is simply too far. Under such circumstances, planted trees are normally used for fuel as soon as they reach the size of bushes. Therefore, the people must be offered other kinds of fuel for at least twenty years. Even then, a great number of honest people must act as protectors of the growing plants. In short, reforestation is a socially complex, labor-intensive undertaking, and the economies of both the industrial and the nonindustrial countries would be greatly stimulated by reforestation. If Norway produces a thousand tiny hydroelectric plants for use in poor countries, it decreases its unemployment and reduces poverty among others. 

Global reforestation will not, of course, mean complete reforestation, but reforestation insofar as it both ensures ecological sustainability and meets the vital needs of the people. Large-scale rational and ethically responsible reforestation is a new sort of undertaking that requires highly educated, corruption-resistant people. It will take a long time. One generation? Three generations? Nobody knows. There is, however, no point of no return.

Conclusion

Arne Naess concludes by saying that, compared with the investment of life, work, and money in a great war, the investment needed to overcome the ecological crisis is very small. Moreover, the work of a determined minority could get the work started in earnest.

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