Last week I watched a story on the news about how the Yangtze River in China is the life’s blood of the country, and has been for as long as it has existed. The piece showed how industry and other development is impacting the river, and the people who live along its edge.
Many of these people literally live off the land. They grow their food, hauling water from the river, raise what animals they might use--for food, for labor, for clothing--and live, simply, but fully. They make very little in the way of money, but they don’t need much--they sustain their own needs.
But the skyscrapers in the background are creeping closer.
I would like to think that the developers, when they want the farmers’ land, will buy it from them for a fair price, a price that makes it worth their moving, that let’s them, essentially retire.
Unfortunately, I know better. I’ve witnessed similar scenarios in my own country, and I’ve learned that the languages of commerce and profiteering are universal. The developers will bide their time, build around the farms, isolating them, violating their borders, maybe blocking access to the water the farmers so desperately need. The government may even step in,condemning the farms as "blight." The farmers. with no financial wealth, will have no power to fight and will be forced out. Some folks call this “good business.” I call it rape and pillage. It has been going on since the beginning of time--but that doesn’t make it right.
As humankind of the 21st Century, we consider ourselves at the height of civilization. We boast of the progress we’ve made. Indeed, many will respond to the plight of the Chinese farmers by shrugging and saying, “You can’t stand in the way of progress.” But having the bigger bulldozer does not equal progress--it is merely technological advance. Progress, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “development towards a better, more complete, or more modern condition.” I suppose one could argue that erecting skyscrapers on the displaced farmers’ land is a “more modern condition,” but it is not a better one--not for the farmers anyway.
I believe true progress eludes us. True progress involves equity and fairness--even kindness. True progress is the achievement of Peace on Earth.
Many of the stories in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales deal with power abuse--by the government, by church officials, by ordinary individuals--the stronger picking on the weaker, taking advantage for their own personal gain or pleasure. We are still wrestling with these same issues. In the roughly 600 years since Chaucer penned his stories, humanity has made little progress in creating a “kinder, gentler” society.
Collectively, we’ve tried to bring about a more level playing field. We threw out the monarchy, a locked-in dictatorial system of government, in favor of parliamentarian rule--law and committee. We broke the monopoly of the Catholic church, creating many different denominations. Finally, the founders of the United States of America created what they called a democratic system based on liberty and equality.
Unfortunately, fairness always gets in the way of our having what we want, and so we look for “loopholes” that let us rationalize our bad behavior.
The Ten Commandments, the first Law of the Judaic peoples, a foundation of Christianity, and of all western thinking, clearly instruct people to treat each other with respect--to the point where they are not to even covet what the other has (like a poor farmer’s plot of land). It is up to each of us as individuals to embrace the objectives of these tenets, and supposedly of all systems of law, and do them.
If I had one wish for the season, it would be that we would put our credit cards aside and embrace the true meaning of good will, that we would not covet the bauble in the next person’s stocking, that we would be happy they have received such a fine gift--and that we would carry the sentiment forward into the New Year, leaving the farmers to cultivate their land, and letting the developers build their skyscrapers in places they acquire fairly and squarely.
You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will be as one. Imagine . . . .
