“Willie Smits: A 20 year tale of hope: How we re-grew a rainforest” will move many viewers to optimism about mankind’s ability to help revive nature — even from abuses made in the name of biofuel. Smits shows us how thousands of hectares once reduced to a wasteland — within a decade — can be restored, albeit not to their original state, but to a state more suitable to human life and good enough for orangutans.
Maybe I am an incurable pessimist, but I fear Willie Smits and the BOS project — while noble in their own right — are doomed to failure. While the project is incredibly wel-planned and most carefully executed, the project lacks the “total” or “global” perspective. Agriculture, housing, our relationship to animals and culture (religion, the arts, etc.) must be conceived together, as a unity. One cannot introduce a tribal culture to post-tribal and even post-industrial agricultural practices and expect long-term success unless the tribal culture also receives a make-over. I am simply saying what is already a commonplace principle: we must think of the whole.
What this implies is that, like most people, the tribes of Borneo cannot expect to manage their affairs better than any other people on earth simply because they now possess an ideal garden of plenty. Unless the promised land is accompanied with the promised culture, the land is doomed. This is, according to anthropologists, what happened to countless cultures, including those that once inhabited East Island, whose tribe is now extinct. The vast majority of the world’s people are uncultured and highly susceptible to the primitive forces exerted by charismatic men, greed, irrational fear and the longing for immortality. Eventually, people will not be content with mere peace and full stomachs, and all Hell breaks lose, and Eden lies destroyed again.
Ironically, Smits’ primary goal was to save “the thinkers of the jungle,” the orangutans. Before we can hope to succeed at that, we need a species that understands what thinking is and nourishes its thinking organ as carefully as it nourishes its stomachs.
For the video, visit – http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html
