Can technology and the environment save us from ourselves?
Andrew Sheng says the idealism found in a 1970 book is still relevant in today's materialistic world
The advantage of clearing up your library is that you get to re-read your old books. One such classic was Yale professor Charles Reich's . Charles Reich was Hillary and Bill Clinton's teacher in law at Yale. His book struck a chord amongst the angry generation of 1968, who felt that they needed to change the world. They did.
Over four decades later, after domestic protests forced America to leave Vietnam, the US is again leaving, this time from Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite all the wealth that the baby-boomer generation has created, the world has become less equal, with the top 1 per cent owning more wealth than ever. And instead of greening America and the world, the world is distinctly browner as carbon emissions and pollution reach critical levels.
The power of Reich's anger tempered with intellectual analysis can be seen from a section of the book entitled "Disorder, corruption, hypocrisy, war": "The front pages of newspapers tell of the disintegration of the social fabric and the resulting atmosphere of anxiety and terror in which we all live. Lawlessness is often associated with crime and riots, but there is lawlessness and corruption in all the major institutions of our society - matched by an indifference to responsibility and its consequences, and a pervasive hypocrisy that refuses to acknowledge the facts that are everywhere visible."
Sounds familiar?
Reading through today's internet blogs, I sense that Reich has echoed the anger of our youth, their feeling of alienation from the parents' generation and frustration about inequality, unemployment and the destruction of our environment.
Re-reading Reich this week, I was struck by his prescience. In the 1960s, America was at the peak of global power, and that generation underwent a mental revolution that brought hope to sustainable prosperity. Reich touched the nerve of a generation when he asked: what's happening to the individual in America? Is the individual going the way of the environment, being destroyed? In other words, were we becoming the creatures of the machine?
By "machine", Reich meant the corporate state, the nexus between the government and large corporations that, he said, "has only one value: the value of technology-organisation-efficiency-growth-progress".
What Reich warned against was the danger of materialist things overcoming hearts and minds. The 1960s generation was experimenting with individualist values within the community, using organic principles - "nature is an organic community; they carry out very different functions and they rarely communicate, yet they all contribute to one another and depend upon each other." Nature is a biological whole.
As Reich himself admitted in an interview on the 40th anniversary of the publication of his book, is very straightforward about what the matter is with the environment: "we're using up material resources at an unacceptable rate. So it advocates a less materialistic way of life".
The tragedy about it all is that if America, the most technologically advanced nation, cannot become green, even as shale oil will further dig up tracts of untouched land, then what hope is there for the rest of the world?
Looking back, there was a moment in the less globalised world of the 1960s when there was greater empathy in the West with Eastern ideas than today. The West Coast hippy generation experimented with Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism, as well as the New Left ideas. They went on to found the internet revolution and Silicon Valley.
Today, there is greater polarisation of views on culture, values and religion, with fundamentalists and extremists on every side making everyone highly insecure.
Two areas where there is common cause for mutual cooperation are technology and the environment. Even though there may be disagreements on how to use the technology, there is no doubt that technology is creating new opportunities for change, particularly in dealing with the environment.
There is a serious risk that with the rest of the world adopting the West's penchant for higher consumption lifestyles, environmental destruction and pollution has become a key problem for all emerging markets.
I have always felt that in the rush to catch up with the West, we have forgotten our own values, ranging from Islamic finance's risk-sharing approach, to Buddhist, Taoist and Dharmic unity with nature and harmony with others.
It is a pity that the ideas of hope and idealism in did not come true. There are today pockets of centres in Asia that are now beginning to explore their own cultures and values, hoping to find common ground with the West.
Mother Nature embraces all of us. War and conflict only accelerates global warming. Either we all become green, or we will all burn before then.
