Ancient Futures, 3rd Edition

Praise for Ancient Futures

"For decades Helena Norberg-Hodge has been a thinker ahead of her time. Ancient Futures is a profoundly important book that can help us to redefine the whole notion of ‘progress’."

— Doug Tompkins, founder of Esprit and

the Foundation for Deep Ecology

A sensitive, thought-provoking account.

— NewYork Review of Books

A classic when it appeared 25 years ago and even more so today... a story that offers authentic hope that we can create a humane, joyful, and life-centered future.

— David W. Orr, author of Ecological Literacy:

Educating our Children for a Sustainable World

This passionate book is a gift to us all… an experience-based manifesto for change.

— Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse

"Ancient Futures has proven to be a wonderful guide and companion providing a positive vision of an economy that respects traditional values and brings well-being to people. I recommend the book wholeheartedly to business leaders, policy makers, academics and those who are concerned with the future of our planet."

— Satish Kumar, founder of Schumacher College

"When I first read Ancient Futures in 1992, it changed my life, and it has colored my thinking in all the years since."

— Richard Heinberg, author of The End of Growth

"Ancient Futures is one of the most important books of our time. Indeed in these pages one encounters a living example of a future that could save us all."

— Susan Griffin, author of Woman and Nature

and A Chorus of Stones

"We can wish we had changed course since Ancient Futures was first published, but now is the time to turn regret into strong determination to be change-makers, each one of us, in our spheres of influence."

— Vicki Robin, co-author of Your Money or Your Life

"Ancient Futures seems all the more relevant today because of the widespread contemporary efforts to build up local economies, to reweave the social fabric of relationships (so necessary to health and well-being), and to cultivate ecological wisdom in living on this Earth. This book is a gem."

— Charlene Spretnak, author of The Resurgence of the Real

"Ancient Futures is a classic. An inspiring story of a grounded way of living. Today, this message is more important than ever."

— Mary Evelyn Tucker, Forum on Religion and Ecology,

Yale University

"What the noble and intrepid Helena Norberg-Hodge beheld in Ladakh becomes a lesson for all the world. Lucid and poignant, Ancient Futures ranks with Mutual Aid as a classic of human ecology and unyielding hope."

— Stephanie Mills, author of In Service of the Wild

Helena Norberg-Hodge’s telling of the story of Ladakh carries insights that will be increasingly vital for us all.

— Wes Jackson, founder of the Land Institute

"This new edition [of Ancient Futures] reminds us of the fragility with which we all coexist on this planet, and helps us to see that industrialization exacts a price."

— Lester R. Brown, author of The Great Transition

"Ancient Futures is much more than a travelogue; it is… an ecologue… A book that must be heeded."

— Kirkpatrick Sale, The Nation

To my lifelong partner John,

and to my soulmates Teddy, Doug, and Sigmund.

Local Futures works to renew ecological, social and spiritual wellbeing by helping to show the way towards a genuinely sustainable future—one of interconnected, localized economies. Our flagship Economics of Happiness program provides a range of educational and practical tools for communities and concerned citizens, and links a broad array of initiatives, alternative institutes and networks worldwide.

Copyright © 2016, 2009, 1991 by Helena Norberg-Hodge

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by Local Futures

USA, UK, Australia, Mexico

www.localfutures.org

Cover design by Kristen Steele, based on Blue Design

Cover photo by Helena Norberg-Hodge

Author photo by John Page

Interior photos by Helena Norberg-Hodge and John Page

Drawings by Thubstan Paldan

Library of Congress Control Number: CIP data available from the publisher upon request

ISBN 978-0-692-53062-7 | ISBN 978-0-692-86424-1 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Foreword by H.H.The Dalai Lama

Preface

Prologue: Learning From Ladakh

PART ONE: TRADITION

1. Little Tibet

2. Living with the Land

3. Doctors and Shamans

4. We Have to Live Together

5. An Unchoreographed Dance

6. Buddhism: A Way of Life

7. Joie de Vivre

PART TWO: CHANGE

8. The Coming of the West

9. People from Mars

10. Money Makes the World Go Round

11. From Lama to Engineer

12. Learning the Western Way

13. A Pull to the Center

14. A People Divided

PART THREE: LEARNING FROM LADAKH

15. Nothing Is Black, Nothing Is White

16. The Development Hoax

17. Counter-Development

18. The Ladakh Project

Epilogue: Ancient Futures

Afterword by Peter Matthiessen

About the Author

About Local Futures

Local Futures Materials

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book could not possibly have been written without the help of all my Ladakhi friends. There are far too many for me to mention them all individually. However, I owe a special thanks to Tashi Rabgyas and Gyelong Thubstan Paldan, who have guided me over the years; to Dolma Tsering and Tsewang Lden; and to Tsewang Rigzin Lagrook for his quiet wisdom and compassion, which embodied for me everything that traditional Ladakh represented.

John Alexander Page, my husband and partner in all things for 38 years, has provided loving support and critical advice from beginning to end, while Hildur Jackson gave me the confidence to believe in the book, and helped put the first draft on paper.

I am particularly grateful to Steven Gorelick for his patience and guidance as editor, and I want to thank Susan Moon and Kristen Steele, who put much care and energy into helping to make my ideas come alive.

The projects in Ladakh owe a great deal to the leadership of my husband, John; the administration and multiple skills of Steven Gorelick; and the exceptional talent of Ian Worrall, who ran our appropriate technology projects for more than a decade. Marjana Kos, Victoria Clarke, Anja Lyngbaek, Becky Tarbotton, Richard Hendin, Brian Emerson and Alex Jensen also deserve acknowledgment for all they contributed to making this work possible.

Finally, I want to give special thanks to the people whose generous help and advice over the years have been invaluable. Marion Weber, Ann Roberts, Virginia Mudd, Bonnie Mitsui, Carol Black and Neal Marlens, Yvon and Malinda Chouinard, Mimi and Peter Buckley, Doug Tompkins, Teddy and Zac Goldsmith, Paula Pace, and Barbara Kent have done much toward allowing the work of Local Futures and the Ladakh Project to take hold and flourish.

NOTE: I have changed most of the personal names in the book, in order to protect privacy.

FOREWORD

by H. H. The Dalai Lama

Helena Norberg-Hodge has long been a friend of Ladakh and its people. In this book she expresses her deep appreciation for the traditional Ladakhi way of life, as well as some concern for its future.

Like Tibet and the rest of the Himalayan region, Ladakh lived a self-contained existence, largely undisturbed for centuries. Despite the rigorous climate and the harsh environment, the people are by and large happy and contented. This is no doubt due partly to the frugality that comes of self-reliance and partly to the predominantly Buddhist culture. The author is right to highlight the humane values of Ladakhi society, a deep-rooted respect for each other’s fundamental human needs and an acceptance of the natural limitations of the environment. This kind of responsible attitude is something we can all admire and learn from.

The abrupt changes that have taken place in Ladakh in recent decades are a reflection of a global trend. As our world grows smaller, previously isolated peoples are inevitably being brought into the greater human family. Naturally, adjustment takes time, in the course of which there is bound to be change.

I share the author’s concern for the threatened ecology of our planet and admire the work she has done in promoting alternative solutions to many of the problems of modern development. If the Ladakhis’ enduring treasure, their natural sense of responsibility for each other and their environment, can be maintained and reapplied to new situations, then I think we can be optimistic about Ladakh’s future. There are young Ladakhis who have completed a modern education and are prepared to help their own people. At the same time traditional education has been strengthened in the monastic system through the restoration of links with Tibetan monasteries reestablished in exile. Finally, Ladakh has an abundance of sympathetic friends from abroad, who, like the author, are ready to offer support and encouragement.

No matter how attractive a traditional rural society may seem, its people cannot be denied the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of modern development. However, as this book suggests, development and learning should not take place in one direction only. Amongst the people of traditional societies such as Ladakh’s there is often an inner development, a sense of warm-heartedness and contentment, that we would all do well to emulate.

February 26, 1991

PREFACE

In 1975 I was living in Paris and working as a linguist, when I was asked to go to Ladakh as part of a film team. I had never heard of the place and at first declined as I was happily settled in France. But when I was told that Ladakh had been sealed off from the Western world for centuries, I became fascinated and decided to go for the six-week shoot. Little did I know that Ladakh would completely change my worldview, my values, and the direction of my life.

In Ladakh, I encountered a landscape that was more beautiful than anything I’d ever seen and a people who were happier and more peaceful than any I had ever met. Ladakh captured my heart and I have remained involved with the region until this day. The ancient Tibetan culture demonstrated the multifold richness of intergenerational communities where infants and great grandparents were the best of friends and where gender roles were not polarized. Just as importantly, I experienced a way of life that was embedded in the constantly shifting ways of the natural world.

I also witnessed first-hand the dramatic changes brought about in the name of progress and economic development. Having become fluent in the Ladakhi language, I gained insights into the psychological pressures of a consumer culture that ruptures the deep relationships between people, and between human cultures and nature. The contrast between the old and the new—and importantly the contrast between the global and local economies—provided clear guidelines for those seeking more sustainable ways of living. It also revealed to me that we need both outer and inner work to get there: structural, economic change, as well as personal, spiritual growth.

Ever since Ancient Futures was first published, community leaders and intellectuals from all over the world have told us that the story of Ladakh is our story too. In 1993 we adapted Ancient Futures into a film with the same title. Between them, the book and film have now been translated into more than forty languages. From Alaska to Peru to Thailand, indigenous groups are using them to strengthen cultural self-esteem and to lessen the impacts of the Western consumer culture on their children; educators and economists from Romania to New Zealand are using them in their courses. The book has become a best seller in South Korea, and local activists have surreptitiously brought it into Myanmar (Burma).

It’s my hope that this new edition of Ancient Futures will not only support the Ladakhis and other threatened peoples in their struggle for cultural survival, but will also help to strengthen an emerging grassroots movement that is a source of tremendous hope and inspiration. Across the world, communities are beginning to demonstrate a path towards a genuinely sustainable future—one of interconnected, localized economies that can provide for the psychological and material needs of the global population, while protecting nature, both wild and cultivated.

Much of this work is proceeding quietly. We don’t hear about it on television, nor is it reported in our newspapers. As a consequence, it is easy to lose hope and feel overwhelmed by the media’s steady drumbeat of bad news—the problems that grow more serious day by day. Whether terrorism or climate change, youth suicide or growing financial insecurity, these seemingly separate issues are escalating at an alarming rate.

However, people are beginning to see that these multiple crises are connected, and that our social and ecological problems share a common root cause: a deregulated global economy that knows no limits. More and more people are linking hands across single-issue campaigns to work for systemic change—change that heals both people and planet.

Once we recognize that the global economy is at the root of so many of our problems, the way forward becomes clearer and, paradoxically, easier. Rather than confronting an overwhelming list of seemingly disconnected social and environmental crises, we need only focus on a few strategic economic shifts. The good news is that around the world, academics, economists, ecologists and social activists are beginning to push for fundamental economic change. At the grassroots, countless projects and alternative institutions are demonstrating the benefits of more human-scale, ecological economies. On every continent, new economy coalitions are emerging, and most encouragingly, people are beginning to collaborate internationally. At the center of all these is the worldwide movement for economic localization.

Rebuilding local economies is a powerful solution multiplier, creating benefits on many levels and throughout different sectors, simultaneously. Though unrecognized by the mainstream media and unsupported by government, people are taking effective steps to rebuild their communities and local economies. Such initiatives bring markets and businesses down to a scale that allows for accountability and transparency; they provide more meaningful livelihoods and greater financial security for both the individual and for society. They also demonstrate that, even on a crowded planet, human needs don’t have to be at odds with the needs of nature. In fact, the steps already taken show that localization can substantially shrink our ecological footprint.

The contrast between the culture I first came to know in Ladakh and the problems that arose after exposure to the global economy forced me to recognize the enormous damage caused by economic globalization. In the name of development, this system destroys land-based economies and pulls people into urban centers. It creates intense competition for scarce jobs and resources, and it breaks down community as well as our connection to nature. Over the last forty years, I have witnessed almost identical patterns of change in many cultures in different parts of the world.

My experiences and studies have convinced me that the central underlying problem facing humanity is that distorted economic priorities have come to overwhelm all other considerations. We have unwittingly supported a global economy that has grown so large and powerful that it threatens not only our own survival, but all life on Earth. It’s a techno-economic system that commercializes every aspect of the world around us—even life itself. It thrives on separation, on cutting us off from one another and from nature.

Although this is a process that began long ago in the era of European conquest and colonialism, it has accelerated rapidly in the last few decades thanks to the widespread embrace of free trade dogma—the intellectual underpinning of globalization. Governments of every stripe, whether on the political left or right, have been ratifying treaties and agreements that deregulate global trade and finance, making it easier for multinational banks and corporations to operate anywhere in the world. The democratic rights of people to protect their natural resources, local businesses, workers’ rights, and cultural traditions are being swept away.

This deregulatory fervor is based on the mistaken belief that more global trade will lift people out of poverty by making the economy grow. But the evidence is clear that growth is actually widening the gap between rich and poor, creating a few billionaires while driving millions deeper into poverty. It is also believed that the removal of barriers to trade will create an interdependent global village. Rather than bringing us together, however, the global marketplace is leading to ever more intense competition for the favors of global banks and corporations. The end result is not only a highly volatile economic and financial system, but a worldwide monoculture—based not on community or connection to place, but on competition, hyper-individualism and rampant consumerism.

With trade deregulated and with trillions of dollars of investment and development aid pulling still more people into the consumer culture, economic power is concentrating in fewer and fewer corporate hands. Most governments are caving in to the pressures of global capital, and are promoting nuclear power, biofuels, genetic engineering, and increased military spending— often against the wishes of the majority of their citizens.

My experience working with government representatives, business leaders and academics in dozens of countries has convinced me that policymakers are not fully aware of the destruction they are inflicting on natural and human communities. What we face is not so much a conscious conspiracy as a de facto, structural conspiracy. In other words, interlocking structures conspire systemically to promote a development path that threatens life itself.

Economic growth at any cost

Supported by widespread acceptance of the myth that a rising Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the best indicator of societal health, our political elites believe they have the moral high ground. But their perspective is entirely dependent on reductionist abstractions that equate well-being with readily quantifiable indicators like monetary transactions and literacy rates, and that imply that the modern, urban consumer is the pinnacle of human development. Believing that an ever-increasing GDP is the most meaningful goal allows masses of raw information to be simplified and conflicting values to be eliminated. For business leaders, revenue growth and increased shareholder profits are not just the easiest goals to discern: the rules of the game make it all but impossible for them to consider anything else.

As the scale of the economy grows it requires an increasing degree of specialization. The vision of specialized experts becomes ever narrower, making them virtually incapable of understanding the broader consequences of their decisions and actions. At the same time, globalization has contributed to an insidious dumbing down of society as a whole. We are becoming increasingly removed from the sources of our sustenance and other needs, making it more difficult to see our impact on the rest of the world. How do we know, for example, that the food we buy hasn’t been produced with slave labor or with toxic pesticides and fungicides? Because of the huge scale of the economy, even those who want to do good can unknowingly participate in activities that have brutal and destructive effects. And as corporations become more effective at greenwashing, it becomes still harder to know whether we are really making ethical choices or not.

Perceiving the far-reaching impacts of their choices and actions is even difficult for those who are actively promoting globalization. Corporate and government leaders are—almost by definition—far removed from the natural world and the lives of the people touched by their decisions. In addition, they have been raised on an intellectual diet full of myths about progress, in which today’s consumer lifestyle is regularly contrasted with life 150 or 200 years ago. The artificial baseline is Dickensian London, at the early stages of the industrial revolution—a time when rural communities had been uprooted, their members pushed into urban squalor and deprivation. Crime, ill health, and pollution were rampant. From this vantage point our child labor laws, 40-hour work week and relative prosperity look like real progress. Similarly, the baseline applied to the global South is the immediate postcolonial period, with its decimated local economies, poverty, and political instability. In both North and South, the state of cultures and communities before they were torn apart has been largely ignored or forgotten.

Political leaders around the world do everything in their power to increase economic growth, without regard to the social and ecological cost: they subsidize and deregulate international trade, support the development and marketing of new technologies, encourage the creation of new needs that stimulate consumer spending, and promote development policies that pull still more people into the consumer culture. Once basic needs are met, artificial needs must be created through advertising and planned obsolescence. The result of these policies has been the exponential growth of global corporations and banks, along with the impoverishment of not only the general populace but also governments themselves. Yet, secure in their belief in economic growth, politicians are single-mindedly accelerating and expanding an irrational system that threatens