AUTHORS: Jorge MAJFUD
Tradutzioni dae Roger Fornoni
Darwin's theories of evolution after taking a divergent dynamics. Two species may be descended from a common time to time, the species themselves may disappear gradually or abruptly, but never end up with the two species merge into one. There is no mixing is not within the same species. In the long run, a hen and a man are distant relatives, descendants of some reptile, and each one represents a positive response of life in the struggle for survival.
words, diversity is the form in which life grows and adapts to different environments and different conditions. Diversity and life are synonymous to the biosphere. Vital processes tend toward diversity but at the same time are an expression of unity, the biosphere, Gaia, the exuberance of life in permanent struggle to survive in hostile surroundings of its own miracle.
For the same reason, cultural diversity is a requirement for the life of humanity. That is, however, and could be sufficient reason, diversity is not limited to avoiding the boredom of monotony, but is also vital part of our survival as humanity.
Nevertheless, it was us humans are the only species that has replaced the natural and prudent replacement of species with an artificial and threatening destruction, the looting and the contamination of industrial consumerism. Those of us who support a possible but not inevitable "progress of history" based on knowledge and the exercise of equal-liberty, can see that humanity, so often put in danger of extinction by itself, has achieved some successes have allowed to survive and live with their increasing muscle strength. And yet, we did not add anything good to the rest of nature. In many respects, this natural process of trial and error, we have regressed or maybe our mistakes have become exponentially more dangerous. 
Consumerism is one of these errors. That insatiable appetite has little or nothing to do with progress towards a possible but unlikely, was not hungry, post-scarcity, rather it has to do with a more primitive era of greed and gluttony. We are not saying that has to do with an animal instinct, because not even the lions monopolize the savanna or practice the extermination routine of their victims, and because even the pigs are sated from time to time.
The culture of consumerism has its limitations in several respects. First, it contradicted the aforementioned condition, overcoming cultural differences, replacing them with its trinkets or creating a universal pseudo diversity where a worker or a mechanic German Japanese can use to two days a Peruvian crafts made in China can enjoy five or days of the most beautiful Venetian blinds imported from Taiwan before they fail to overuse. Second, because it also threatened the ecological balance with its unlimited extractions and its returns in the form of immortal garbage.
Concrete examples we can observe around us. We could say that it is fortunate that a worker could enjoy the amenities that were once reserved only for the upper classes, the unproductive classes, the consumer classes. Nevertheless, this consumption-induced cultural and ideological pressure-converted many times in the final work and an instrument of the economy. This, logically, means that the individual-instrument was converted to half of the economy as an individual-consumer.
In almost all developed countries or in the process of this "model of development," the furniture that invades the markets are designed to last a few years. Or a few months. They are nice, they look good as almost everything in the culture of consumption, but if we look closely they are scratched, missing a screw or be square. Every day more exotic is the concern of my family of carpenters to improve the design of a chair so that it would last a hundred years. Use of new mobile-and-throw not worry us too much because we know that it costs little and that in two or three years going to buy some new ones, which means more interest and in the decoration of our homes and our offices and mainly stimulates the world economy. According to current theory, what we throw away here helps the development industry in some poor country. For this we are good, because we are consumers.
But this furniture, even the cheapest ones, have consumed trees, burned fuel in their long journey from China or Malaysia. The logic of "dispose of it after use," which is the most reasonable for a plastic syringe, a law becomes necessary to stimulate the economy and maintain the perpetual growth of GDP, with its crises and their causes phobias when the fall a recession of two percent. To overcome the crisis must increase the drug. The United States alone, for example, spend millions of dollars so that its residents to consume, to spend, spend millions of dollars to escape the madness of the recession in the world so that it can continue to spin, consuming and discarding.
But this waste as cheap as they are-consumerism is based on the economic goods, use throw-away, which makes it almost impossible for the recycling of durable goods-have pieces of wood, plastic, batteries, steel pipe , screws, glass and even plastic. In the United States all this and more goes into the trash-even in this time called for the wrong reasons "great crisis" - while in poor countries, poor people are looking for that garbage. In the long run, whoever ends up consuming all the garbage is the nature as humanity continues to suspend the changes in their lifestyle in order to emerge from recession and to support economic growth.
But what does "economic growth", what does this two or three per cent that haunt the world, from North to South from East to West?
The world is convinced that it is in a terrible crisis. But the world has always been in crisis. Now the crisis is defined as worldwide because (1) moves forward and hits the economy of the richest, (2) the paradigm of development has simplified its hysteria spread to the rest of the world, undermining its legitimacy. But in the U.S. people are still flooding the shops and restaurants and their cuts never involve hunger, even in a situation of gravity in which millions of workers without jobs. In our peripheral countries a crisis means children begging in the street. In the U.S., it means consumers who consume a little 'less while they await the next government.
really emerged from the crisis when the world returns to a five percent growth through the stimulation of consumption in rich countries? We will not be preparing the next crisis?, A real-human and ecological crisis-and not an artificial crisis like the one we have now? When we realize that this is not really a crisis but just a warning or an opportunity to change our habits?
Every day is a crisis because every day we choose a path. But there are crises that are a long way of the cross and others that are critical because, for the oppressed to the oppressors that means a double possibility: the confirmation of a system or its annihilation. So far the former has prevailed on the second due to a lack of alternatives. But one must never underestimate the story. Nobody would have ever thought of an alternative to medieval feudalism or slave system. Or almost nobody. The history of the last thousand years shows that the utopians had predicted an exaggerated precision. But, as today, the utopians have always had a bad reputation. Why are the denigration and discredit the dominant forms that each system has always had to keep the number of people with too much imagination.
Originally from: Crisis de los ricos, Via Crucis de los Pobres
Original article published in February 2009
The author
Jorge Majfud author is associate professor of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This article is reprinted as provided they respect the integrity and author are cited, translators, editors and source.
URL of this article on Tlaxcala: http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=7209&lg=it
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