'In', 'for', or 'with'? (was Re: [ILAT] LSA 2006)

[jess tauber]

Jeff Goldblum's chaotician character in the Jurassic Park movie equates discovery with "the rape of the natural world". A bit oversimplified, but pretty much on the mark. We have a governmental system that allows one to patent genes which have existed (in varying forms) for billions of years. If you can scratch, claw, gouge, or otherwise cadge something from somewhere or someone else, then bully for you. It is the first law of creating Empire, Profit, Capitalism.

As we become more refined in our methods we often develop the notion of "giving something back", which helps us soothe our growing consciousness that our behaviors may not be so different from that of common thugs after all. So we took your house- at least we're giving you bus fare. If this were a fair world, and surviving wronged peoples were able successfully to bring suit against their aggressors for these wrongs in a truly impartial court, I shudder to think what the penalties and recompenses would be. Luckily for us fat and happy beneficiaries of that sad history this is unlikely to happen barring space alien invasion or ambitious viruses unleashed by disgruntled indigenes. See! Now you've made me get the NSA interested in ILAT.

If just a tiny fraction of the resources spent on theme parks, multicolored toilet paper, and cheap hamburgers in our great  self-delusional me-me-me circus of a "civilization" that we're so proud of were actually aimed back towards those who've had the most extracted from them perhaps the final annihilation of some or even many of the threatened and dying languages, cultures, and natural environments of the world could be staved off. More preaching to the choir. But as charity the recipients should be grateful for, all decided from the outside by history's "winners" as more well-meaning meddling? Even in love and sharing, the question may still pop up "who's on top?" But more basically, sometimes the other just isn't interested, and you have to separate what they want from what you want for them. Otherwise action verges on an intervention, or worse.

Jess Tauber