Linked with the International forum on globalization, and with the Foundation for deep ecology. And with Jerry Mander of November 30, 2007.
He is an American activist best known for his book ‘Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television’ (1977), and for his contribution to a book on an unrelated topic, ‘The Great International Paper Airplane Book’ (1971). Mander worked in advertising for 15 years, including five as partner and president of Freeman, Mander & Gossage in San Francisco. In 1971 he founded the first non-profit advertising agency in the United States, Public Interest Communications, which worked on campaigns to prevent dams in the Grand Canyon, found Redwood National Park, and stop the American project to build a supersonic transport. He is currently the director of the International Forum on Globalization and the program director for Megatechnology and Globalization at the Foundation for Deep Ecology. (full text).
He says: ”The point is the way new technologies are introduced to us without a full discussion of how they are going to affect the planet, social relationships, political relationships, human health, nature, our conceptions of nature, and our conceptions of ourselves. Every technology that comes along affects these things. Cars, for example, have changed society completely. Had there been a debate about the existence of cars, we would have asked, do we want the entire landscape to be paved over? Do we want society to move into concrete urban centers? Do we want one resource – oil – to dominate human and political relationships in the world? The Gulf War resulted from our choice of the car a hundred years ago ». (full text).
Read: How I moved from advertising glamour to anti-globalisation fervour, 2006. (full text).
Jerry Mander – USA
Some of Jerry Mander’s many videos on YouTube:
- Interview, 6.23 minutes, March 18, 2007;
- Globalisation and Indigenous Culture, 3.40 minutes, January 8, 2007;
- Globalisation and Indigenous Culture, 4 minutes, November 28, 2006.
He says also: « Our culture lacks a philosophical basis, an understanding of the appropriate human role on earth, that would inform these developments before they happen.
Such an understanding would enable us to say, no, we cannot go in that direction because, as in the case of genetics, it is a direct desacralization of life. The title of my book, In the Absence of the Sacred, refers to the failure of any sense of groundedness in the natural world and a lack of any sense of limits. You see, once you’re living in an industrial, technological society, choices become much more difficult. Even if you believe that cars are inappropriate, you almost cannot function unless you have a car. You can’t function if you don’t have a telephone – unless you retire from participation ». (full text).
Read: the perils of globalization, an interview with Jerry Mander.
Further he says: « Look, the roots of globalization are in the concepts that are underneath it. The concepts of economic globalization are the absolute need for economic growth and the viability of the free market. Economic globalization is an acceleration of both of those conceptual frameworks. Those frameworks are not questioned in this society. In every newspaper report about the economy, in every presidential campaign, and in a high percentage of congressional speeches, people insist on the need for more economic growth. This idea is at the root of our classical economics. The fact that so-called experts, like five former presidents and five former secretaries of state, all got together in a press conference and said that free trade is a good thing was al ready known. They were the ones who helped create it. What was the big news about that? The fact that big economists and big corporations all think the global economy is a good thing is not news. Of course they think so, they are the ones who have been ru nning it all along ». (full text).
Read: ELEVEN INHERENT RULES OF CORPORATE BEHAVIOR. (full text).
And he says: « Americans are the most resistant to admitting their flaws. Lately, many nations have apologized for various acts. The Germans have apologized to the Israelis. The Russians have apologized to the Poles. The Poles have apologized to their people. These have been formal apologies; they’ve been negotiated and resolved. The Indians are asking that we apologize for the past as well as for the present, and that we return a lot of the lands we stole from the Indians, because the land is crucial for traditional cultures to survive. It’s time we did that, and if we did, it would surely benefit us at least as much as the Indians. I’m not speaking only of the psychic relief – letting go of that guilt – but, more important, the benefits of sustaining cultures and communities that still have access to an ancient earth-based knowledge that we have lost, a knowledge of the appropriate way for human beings to live on the planet ». (full text).Read: