Scene: A development worker is lying on a hammock in an unspecified developing country. The hammock is swinging slowly, and the worker is staring intently at the leaves of a mango tree above.
What am I doing here? Is this just another form of tourism? Is it poverty voyeurism? What am I doing? Am I just here for bragging rights? To win some imaginary future argument, where I can reference being down in the trenches and seeing it first hand? For their reaction? The way their eyebrows jump up like a cat startled by its own reflection.
But no, I’m doing something. People express sincere gratitude at the services I offer. They bless the Lord. They appreciate what I do. I am doing something. But…what am I doing? Am I some tool of a foreign power? Am I a crusader? Am I imposing alien values? Am I a missionary? No. Not a missionary. Not some Jehovah’s Witness sent to enlighten the people with nonsense. I actually do something. Build latrines for communities who still shit in bushes; build bridges for villages that are stranded in the rainy season; teach people computer skills to compete in the labor market. Yeah, some missionaries might also do similar work, but their main goal is to convert. And a poor Catholic is no different than a poor Mormon.
But, and here is where you start to see the cracks snaking up the pillars, maybe I am a missionary. Maybe I am just a missionary of progress. Whose to say my idea of self-improvement (based as it is on the promotion of a skilled labor force, on the diffusion of modern technology, and on certain dietary and health practices) isn’t just as much nonsense as Joseph Smith’s golden tablets? Aren’t I proselytizing in the name of the modern socio-economic world order? A world order shaped by the industrial revolution and spread by its powerful disciples. I am spreading the gospel of the modern technological-industrial system.
Maybe so, and maybe that ain’t so bad. Isn’t it objectively better to plow your fields by tractor than by hand? Isn’t clean running water better than having to fetch it from a dirty well? Wouldn’t you rather be working in an air conditioned office than out picking coffee in the fields? Isn’t being healthy better than being sick?! The big bad industrial revolution has its undeniable benefits. Why should we not expose people to these benefits? Why shouldn’t we help them implement these new practices?
And even if the technological-industrial system isn’t ideal, it still is what it is. It’s still the only game in town, and has been the only real game in town since it came on the scene (both communism and capitalism accepted industrialization as the ideal, but disagreed over the ways to reach it and how to distribute its fruits). So, why sit around and bitch about the system while people get screwed over by it? People should accept its limitations and seek to get the most out of the situation. Life and lemons shit. Fuck the armchair idealist, sacrificing the suffering of others in the name of some theory that lacks all practicality and application.
Then again…do the advantages of the industrial system outweigh the disadvantages? Are those who are enjoying the full benefits of the system happier? Umm…well, depression rates and drug-dependence in the United States (the Mecca of the modern industrial age) might tell us the answer is “no.” So, the realist argument, the “it is what it is” argument, falls apart. Because maybe the people getting screwed by the system (by lying on the outer edges of its effects) are actually better off. Are we like the Mormon missionary that pities the blindness of the Catholics he is out to save? Are we so blinded by the values instilled in us by the industrial system, that we pity those who are happier than us? That we must correct them in their errant ways?
If you think about it, even behind the most seemingly innocent gesture of goodwill, such as the donation of eye-glasses to villagers, there is an implicit value judgment. A subconscious belief that the way people live in one country is superior to the way people live in another country. The promotion of health and sanitation standards is an example. Citizens in developed countries have far more fragile bodies than in developing countries, due to a life of extremely limited exposure to bacteria and viruses. Is it a better system? Are their bodies better? Is the US view that human beings should live well into their eighties, well beyond the age in which they can be productive or even active, well beyond the age in which their mental and physical faculties are sufficient for independent survival, dying excruciatingly slow, pathetic, and expensive deaths, is this a good system? Is it better than a system where life expectancy is lower, death is accepted as part of life, and people live full productive and meaningful lives?
People don’t see it, but that’s what we are doing. We are saying, this way is better. But…then again, when given the option, in many cases the villagers will choose the industrial system. They prefer the tractor. The clean water. The medication. The ultimate question is whether by merely given them the option we are influencing their decision-making. We are leading them down a path, and while it may seem better at the time, in the end its worse, but they’ll never realize it because every step along the path seems to make their life better until one day they are depressed, bored, and spending their days lying in hammocks pondering existential nonsense.
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