Progress ?

BrianK · 08-02-2004, 16:50

I'm posting this in Chit Chat as a reply to John's post in politics in the Obama thread. It seems to me the better format to explain.

My only real exposer to India is by watching a program called "Medicos sin Fronteras" somehow the travel channel never reaches into the interior of India. The medicos program explains in depth exactly what you have said about those leaving India & those that have returned to benefit their villages or the larger cities.

India has one billion plus citizens which progress will not be totally able to catch up with mainly because of the massive population. Setting aside health issues which can improve. This is where I have to question which is better off? Those that experience "progress" or those that live what could be called traditional life. I'll use what Ive seen to give some insight into why I don't view progress as the "way" to happiness.

Puerto Rico in the 60's. Where we lived people swept the sidewalks & streets in front of their homes it was a good chance to bull sh** with neighbors. We left our doors & windows open & unlocked. Kids played ball with sticks & stones or use an old bicycle rim as a toy, pushing it with a stick to see who could keep it balanced upright to push it the furtherest. Food was shared [ poverty was real ] any left overs were given to neighbors that raised pigs. Parties included all family members. Kids could sit & listen/participate in adult conversation or go play with other kids. The 5 years we spent there not one crime was committed where we lived. Then along came progress.

Progress is in this form.

Women work in a factory making more money in one day than their husbands did working all week in the fields. Family life began to deteriorate. No time to sweep the streets & sidewalks & B S. Food became fast food not the slow cooked mouth watering dishes that the aroma could be smelled for blocks. Kids watch TV or play violence based computer games replacing social interaction in street games. Parties still happen but the difference is children aren't sharing the same interaction with adults as they used to. For adults & kids drugs & obesity have replaced leisure & being exhausted from playing outdoors. Homes that had open doors & windows are decorated with "rejas" or decorative iron; sealing off the home as sort of a jail to keep intruders out not lock the residents in.

I used Puerto Rico not as a way to down the island or it's residents but as a way to show that progress has a way of destroying what I think was a better way of living.

Maybe anyone reading this can look at instances of how progress has begun it's negative effect on America.

Snowden · 08-02-2004, 18:04

Brian, your description of Puerto Rico the five years you were there brings back memories of my childhood. This was during the 1930s. I swept the front walk to the road - a long way for a child. I also had to water the flowers on the porch - a lot of flowers! My mother had the proverbial "green thumb," as her own mother did. Somehow I missed it.

The aunts and uncles gathered at our house in the evenings, so we grew up with our cousins and we had to learn to deal with the various adults. My father's mother and her sister lived with us, so every evening all her other five children and their children came to see her. The closeness of family was most beneficial, I think. And lock a door? My father locked the front door, but we never locked doors or windows. The windows on the front porch were nine feet high - and the screens were as closed as they ever got.

We have a similar lack of need for locks here at this point. But Cambridge is spreading out and we have started locking doors when we go out or to bed.

A lot of our freedoms have been affected by affluence - and not for the better. What is more delightful than planting and gathering the harvest? We grew up with almost an acre of garden. My father's brother had a huge garden, easily more than an acre. There were several farmers among us - and we all shared our bounty as well as canning it for the winter.

JohnRN · 08-03-2004, 02:52