LIVING FOR CHANGE

Joining the very new & the very old

By Grace Lee Boggs

Michigan Citizen, Mar. 9-15, 2008

In the 21st century sustainable economies will combine very old modes of production (hunting, gathering, farming) with very new communications technologies.

That is what I look forward to after reading an article about Inuit activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Sheila Watt-Cloutier by Canadian broadcaster Suzanne Elston. (“Canada’s Inuit Are the Canaries in the Coal Mine,” Common Dreams, February 27).

At a Sustainable Communities Conference in Ottawa attended by Elston, Watt-Cloutier explained how her people, only 150,000 souls, have survived and thrived in the Artic North over many thousands of years because they developed an economy that cares both for the planet and for the people.

Now, as the polar ice caps are melting, they are losing their traditional way of life So some observers suggest that it would be better for indigenous people to simply abandon their lifestyle and adopt a 21st-century one.

But the Inuit people do not want to assimilate. And for Watt-Cloutier, this is not only a human rights issue but a clue to the balance that all of us have to strive for in this period as we grapple with the planetary emergency that has been produced by the uncontrolled economic development of the industrial epoch -- now, fortunately, coming to an end.

“The solution for our communities is finding a balance,” she says. Rather than abandoning the life of the hunter-gatherer for more conventional employment, she proposes training Inuit young people to be both hunter- gatherers and engineers. (Her son is the youngest captain-pilot ever in Air Inuit. Her daughter is an acclaimed Inuit folk singer, throat-singer and drum dancer). Taking the best of their traditions and blending it with the best of the new technologies is the key to their survival.

It may also be the key to our survival here in the United States. That is what I am gleaning from my interactions with the young people who have been drawn to Detroit in recent years.

These young people are members of the Millennial Generation. Born in the 1980s (or late 70s) they live and breathe the new communications technology which enables them to connect and reconnect 24/7 with individuals near and far and empowers them to be remarkably self-inventive and multi-tasking. In Detroit, for example, they started the Live Arts Media Project (LAMP) for teenagers and organize the annual Allied Media Conferences.

At the same time they treasure their connections with the Earth provided by the community gardens of Detroit Summer. These were started in the early 90s by the “Gardening Angels,” African American elders from the South who taught Detroit teenagers how to plant and maintain them.

They are also helping to transform Detroit from a national and international symbol of deindustrialization and devastation into a self-reliant, sustainable city of hope where we nurture our own health and that of our planet by producing most of our own needs instead of importing them from huge distances in gas-guzzling trailers.

Understanding, let alone embracing, this new way of life is not easy for the generations for whom 20th century industrialization provided manufacturing jobs and material abundance and conveniences on such an unprecedented scale that they/we could ignore the destruction of community, loss of connection to the natural world and exploitation of the Third World which made this industrialization possible.

As we enter the 21st century, however, I welcome the new forms of connectedness and community and the new possibilities for deepening and broadening human relationships and for expanding our human capacities that are implicit in the normal and natural activities of the Millennial Generation. It is already clear that these new relationships will be more horizontal, more participatory and at a new non-material (spiritual) level. And it also appears that the human brain is actually changing under the influence of the new technology.

In the 60s and 70s, as Jimmy and I carried on our Conversations in Maine with our old friends, Lyman and Freddy Paine, we sensed that we were on the threshold of a new stage in human evolution. We were leaving behind the Dialectical Materialism of Karl Marx, we said, and approaching the stage of Dialectical Humanism.

I feel blessed that I am still around as this evolution continues and even accelerates.

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