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by Fernando Solanas | 0 votes | 
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Fred Matser: Honestly, I don’t know. I can only say I have been several times in Africa. I have seen people struggle with life, much more than I have seen ever in the West. In the meantime, I have seen people being happy. I have seen people being able to carry a lot of pain. I have seen people being able to suffer and not complain about it. So, in a way, if the question is why is Africa less developed, I really wouldn't know. What I see on the other hand is, yes, there is a climatological circumstance and that is not as we have it for example in the West, where perhaps through the climate, it was more easy to come to be together and create systems of government, create laws, and create organizations of inventions through, which we really could develop ourselves. In Africa, perhaps, through climatological circumstance, but also the trade lines in Africa are different. There are less coastal lines, there are less waterways and the infrastructure is completely different from the infrastructure we, for example, have created in the West. But, anyway, that's what I can say about it and I don’t know -- I wouldn't know more to answer. by Fred Matser |
Galsan Tschinag: Possibly the primeval men stayed children, eternal children and so they can't stop their game up to today. I speak of the playful spirituality which seems to run in the veins of Africans. I think this way because I feel a childlike admiration when I look at African people who move whether they play, pray or fight. I realize that African people have an agitation inside which was already there in primeval men and every being has this agitation inside. |
Giora Feidman: The beginning of the question is if the Darwin Theory is right or not right; I’m not sure it’s right because there was civilization. This is one of the civilizations that exist today in the planet. And, the fact, the proof is that exists in the volcanos, fabulous, fabulous building, fabulous cities that in pre-history or pre-time somebody build it. If I remember, one in Peru also in the National Museum they found rocks of thousand, thousand of thousand years. There is there a immature person which dress almost like us with a pipe, with a telescope. We say the telescopy was invented only 300 years ago by an European, as I learn, but here we have another fact, like I say in Peru. I don’t know how much we can take in consideration today that this story of Darwin, and this is the reason why we cannot relate to place to Africa whatever. The economic and the social systems of, we call countries, depend of the mutual responsibility of the human kind. No question they weren’t, until today exist systems that will not allow society to receive information, to receive knowledge for the purpose to exploit the situation as a result of approach of life. In this case, we cannot avoid the richness on the planet there was, but still we didn’t discover. |
Gladman Chibememe: If life began in Africa, then it means all humanity, all people are Africans. Then in this case, I would argue that if we are talking about the underdevelopment in Africa, we are not talking about the underdevelopment of the Africans but we are talking about the underdevelopment of humanity, because the source of life, the creed of human kind is Africa. The problem why Africa seems to be lagging behind is that, there is no - the continent has always been disadvantage. In the sense that, its main power is being taken away from the continent to save other continents. This has started even from as way back as the slavery when laborers taken from Africa to Europe, to America. And in that case, Africa lost its brains, it lost also its power in terms of workforce and still now such processes are also happening. It is happening now. We still have a lot of brain drain. We still have the great minds of Africa coming to Europe and America. In that case, how do you expect the African continent to progress in that case? So, in this case we are saying, we need a process, a system in which African skills, the technology that is in Africa should benefit the people there. And the people, the brains there should not be transported or be taken into other continents so that we will have Africa develop by its own. And we also don’t need foreign type of development paradigms. We need development that is for Africa, not external development. That is not good for the Africans. And that will result in -- that do not edge to end development in the African contest. In that way, Africa is developed, but the developmental paradigm which you are asking for is a European development paradigm which for me, I do not agree. Africa is developed but it differs on how you specify development. |
Govindaswamy Hariramamurthi: Somewhere someone else wants to enjoy at the cost of Africa. Some in Africa too have benefited from this situation. It is just not the question of life beginning in Africa, life forms becoming part of the market process. So, it is not always that a theory is right about life beginning in Africa that works. What is practiced is not based on the theory of existence; it is more about the markets wanting to extract more from that life that began in Africa, to exploit the life that began in Africa. The African states have had a history of being exploited because of their natural resources for the benefit of the developed world. Today, the developed world doesn't want to help Africa, it’s not willing to see how much Africa has contributed to the development of rest of the world, nobody bothers about it. |
Hans-Peter Dürr: What is meant by less developed? The Western world is regarded as being higher developed, because they have developed a certain aspect of life, which is based on material growth, on a larger scale. These ideas of the Western world are not able to survive in the future, because they disregard the idea that human beings are integrated into a larger system in which they have to cooperate if they want to survive. Western civilization is in many aspects like cancer growth. You see with amazement how one cell starts to grow in an immense way but without allowing for the differentiations a living organism needs. The African world has much more of these old traditions and I am convinced that if we go on like now, Western civilization has no chance for surviving. And we have to start again at a point where the mental dimension plays a more important role, showing the connection of everything with everything else and having a background of knowledge, which is connected to wisdom and therefore establishing the importance of this connection. Experiences, which were made on earth over a period of three and a half billion years. Further development should start from there, not trusting this artificial world and the knowledge we collected with our intellect and our reflections. I am a scientist and I don't want to reduce the knowledge of science. But it is not sufficient for understanding the sense of life in general. This has to be accentuated again and this will be the start of a development. In this respect I believe that we in Western countries are farther away from it than other so called primitive cultures. |
Harry Wu: I think the question raiser have to study Darwin Theory. Darwin Theory has told very clearly that the development is come from the culture and history and all kinds of different things. I think this is the truth. It doesn’t mean that Africa is first -- come by the people and then the Africa should be in advanced. by Harry Wu |
Helena Norberg-Hodge: I would say that it is precisely because Africa is about life. African cultures were adapted to the living earth. The current development model is anti-life, is anti-diversity, is anti way of living that works with the natural world. It is therefore very logical and very obvious why Africa has not been progressing as rapidly as other cultures. We need to recognize that what we call development, what we call progress, and what we call growth are all part of the system that takes us further and further away from life, further away from understanding life, from valuing life, and from living in a way that allows evolution to continue, that allows life to continue. Today, we are in the modern so-called developed countries, we are so alienated from the natural world that most children now have lost touch with where our food comes from. Many children are not aware of the fact that meat comes from animals. They are not aware that eggs come from chicken. They don’t know how to boil an egg. They don’t know how to grow a potato. This alienation and distance from nature is precisely the reason why this modern developed society threatens life itself. We need to rapidly change direction towards localizing and rediscovering diverse ecological nature-based ways of living. And this is where Africa has a lot to teach us. |
Homero Aridjis: Unjust state systems, tribal traditions, imperial cicatrices and cultural problems make the developpement of the african states complex. Today, every african state is diferent and has a developpement in agreement with his own history and society. |
Irina Yasina: Well firstly nobody has proved that the theory of Darwin is true. But it is just an introduction. Even if it is true it’s simply enough to explain this fact. There are in Africa a lot of conditions for the human being to do nothing, so that it relaxes him. The situation when one never feels cold, has always something to eat and even never has to dress has always relaxed people. In those countries where people have to be the productive power to survive they were constrained to do it. Now we can see the example of Russia how these things happen. Huge oil supply contributes to the situation when the state does nothing else but selling oil and actually doesn't produce or develop anything innovatively. That’s all. It happens when our treasures, resources and our wonderful conditions prove to be unfavourable at some stage. From the beginning there were all conditions in Africa for people being lazy. Maybe my answer would seem to be insulting, but I really think like that. by Irina Yasina |
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Currently video only.
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by Jerry Mander | 0 votes |
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Jerry Mander: Answertext will be available soon. by Jerry Mander |
Jesper Green: Economically, the African countries are less developed than the western states, but I think that they are far more advanced or developed when we’re talking about family ties and family organizations than the western states are. So I think it’s a little bit of a trick question, and then there are the issues that we have exploited, the western world has exploited the African continent for centuries, so it’s no wonder they are less developed unfortunately. But I think they are far more advanced, I want to point that out. I think they are far more advanced in some areas, of course, regarding family ties and family organization and taking care of each other and so on than we are in the western world. We’re very disorganized when we look at us in the family kind of way. Now when we’re talking about exploiting the African continent, we’re still exploiting it. We have a, there’s a lot of diseases in Africa and we don’t actually help them, serve them. We’re trying to earn a lot of money from all those diseases. We don’t want to give away our, we don’t want to give away our medicine. We want to earn money on it, so we in some ways are still exploiting the African continent, and that’s why they’re less, less developed than the western states, but not in the family way, still. I want to point that out still. by Jesper Green |
Jodie Evans: The argument that Western states are more developed than African states is an interesting idea because it depends on what you consider development. We have many people from Africa who come to the United States to teach us the skills of relating to each other again, or our young people to go through the processes of development that aren't available in our culture. So maybe they have something very important to offer what is called development in the West. The wisdom of the ages that has come from Africa or where they say the birthplace of civilization was in Mesopotamia, which is between the Tigris and Euphrates, and I can tell you that I've been there, I've seen the place where much of what Western world stands on the shoulders of and the language, the writing and that, it's utterly being destroyed by what we're calling development. So what that word is and how we look at it and what we value as development is important. One thing is is that Africa is very warm and it's easy to feed yourself and if you look at where development comes from it comes from the colder countries where to survive meant having power over and not being in relationship with their environment but trying to control it, use it and the consolidation of power. So as we've seen that may not be development because it is more on a fast road to self-destruction. And so I think there's right now the, what has to happen is a, a melding of the two, a learning from each other, a finding out, what needs to be kept, how do we nurture what's valuable for our society, for people, for the extension of life and what has failed. And I think Africa has a lot to teach us there. by Jodie Evans |
John Gage: Humanity began in Africa, humanity began in northwestern Kenya, in the Rift Valley, and the first humans, who over thousands of years, migrated south into the continent of Africa and migrated north. Some turned to the right and went along the coast lines to India and to Southeast Asia. Some went to the left and went through the Middle East, moved northward, moved westward into Europe. The migratory patterns of humans are well known and well established. Everyday with the power of DNA sequencing and mapping the human genome in every human population, these stories become clearer and clearer, common sources of humanity. But, what does that do, how does that affect African states? There are 54 African states, very different, each from the other. What is the state of Africa today? A state of abandonment? No, a state of steady, but slow improvement. Today, the innovative trade pathways, the innovative exchange of ideas, the innovative use of new technologies, those pathways established early, hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago, in the Middle East, in Europe, in India, in Asia, in Africa. The interior states of Africa had no natural pathways for trade, the coastlines did, but the interior of Africa impenetrable, climatically difficult, with a small variety of foods to be raised, with a disease pattern that inhibited human activity, with a pattern of heat and climate, environmental circumstances that made it difficult, pastoral, nomadic and agricultural life was very stable but did not develop. And then with colonialism, the extraction of natural resources by European states kept these African states in stasis. That’s now changing. We passed through 40 years since independence from colonialism into new forms of government, new dedication, new governments, new methods of taking the ideas of technical change and bringing them down closest to those that live on the ground in Africa. And that’s the hope for the development of the African states. by John Gage |
Jonathan Granoff: The life of states does not begin in Africa. Biological life might begin in Africa. I don't know. I'll accept that premise as true; that's what science has thus far discovered. We might discover later that life began in Latin America, you could say the same thing, that it's less developed than other states. Or we might find that life began some place where states are more developed. China might become a very developed state and we might find that life began there, or Sri Lanka. But let's presume that it is a fact that life began in Africa. States did not begin in Africa. States - or maybe states did. I mean I don't know what the first state was. Was Egypt the first state? Was the first state in Samaria? Was the first state in the Indus valley? Exactly what is meant by a state? Is it an organization with a King? We had kings a long – you know thousands and thousands of years ago. I presume that the question talks about the modern nation-state which emerged in the 17th century, largely in the treaties of Westphalia, here, very close to where we are here, as a response to the religious violence of the thirty years war, in which Catholics and Protestants were killing each other. And then the state became a - an institution largely at the service of the business interests, of the mercantile class of Europe. Which in turn attempted to dominate and colonize the world, and did in fact colonize and dominate Africa, and enslave the people in Africa, and sold them like chattel. I don't believe Africa has recovered from this terrible injustice. The state, the modern state system, was built to some extent on the backs of the people of Africa. An there is I believe a moral account that needs to be adjusted, and the rest of the world has a moral duty to right the wrong of what happened in Africa for several hundred years. We still see the residual cancer of racism. And ah - we had states that institutionalized racism. We had [inaudible] |
Jonathan Meese: Darwin's theory is his own. Whether his theory is right or wrong, is absolutely irrelevant. If the life began in Africa or in Atlantis or in Germany or on an other planet, is completely insignificant. Nobody is able to tell why or even whether Africa developed, less developed, not developed or more developed. Nobody knows it, we have to remove our pride and arrogance. Nothing is for sure. Everything is unsure. This is the most open game. We do not know anything. We have to recognise that not our measure is important, but an other. Darwin had his own measure, Africa has its own. The Theory itself has its own degree, the life hat its own, the terra has its own too. All these things cannot be connected to each other, they are nothing. We have to feel humbled by not recognizing anything, not knowing any connections, by accepting everything, allowing everyhing. Everything is free, everything is divine, everything is love, everything is hatred. Darwin was a god of himself, as Ezra Pound, as Oscar Wild. Africa will be that what itself wants to be, not that what the human being wants him to be. Africa is its own secret, his allness, its power, its energy. Wonderful - this energy may reign us, totally and absolutely, randomly, freely, numinously, systematically, radically, well and badly, as it wishes. That what Darwin stated is stated by himself - nothing else is to say. Zardoz said that Zardoz had said, e.g. Otto Wels, Rose Butt, Darwin, Karl Marx, Echnaton. Every social system in the future - wonderful, total. Everything is love. |
Jonathan Stack: I don't think Darwin has contemplated human beings in terms of this time. I think this time that you are talking about of human evolution, Darwinian time frame is of millions of millions of years. So, I would not see anything -- I think evolution, you need to kind of really look into the Darwinian Theory. The fact that Africa is where human life emerged is not -- and in fact, today, African states are not succeeding well is not something that you should -- it is like comparing apples and oranges. I think the question is, the way I look it of course is that Africa in part because it is the source of human life, now this could be conceptual or could be real, but it is also -- and it has not reached its potential in terms of its application of the energy that exists within that country, within that continent. It is like filled with promise. So, the fact that Africa hasn't developed like western states, that just means it's got more room to develop in the future. I see that the problems in Africa have nothing to do with the Darwinian's evolution there. They have much to do with the flaws of human kind and just the happenstance of history. But, I look -- looking backwards, things don't look good. Looking today, things are -- it's fucked. But, moving into the future, filled with possibility. Anyhow, going back, I have just been doing a lot of work Africa. Part of the reason I love working there is because I just think that it is filled with promise and I love to be in places where there is promise because it just means -- it is like everything you can imagine. You are not locked or weighted down by what was, it is just like what can they become. And so, that's why I keep going back and we will be back again this year and be back shortly. |
José Manuel Prieto: This is a very interesting question. One has to mention historic reasons. I do not think there is a single reason and to tell the truth, I do not think there is a connection between Darwin's theory and the underdevelopment of Africa. Rather one has to imagine not only political but maybe also cultural reasons that are not decisive but establish different paths of development for all the continents. Africa is a rich continent with a grand culture and its potential is huge just like that of the other continents. However one cannot turn a blind eye on the effects and the heritage of colonialism either, on the savage exploitation to gain power, like it was the case with Belgium in the Congo. This type of historic trauma leaves scars difficult to reverse and a heritage difficult to retract. Nevertheless, there are African countries showing that Africa is capable of a lasting development, it is capable to bring forth a democracy with its own roots. I think we are talking about a current situation here, about a situation that is soon to be changing and that will turn to good account in the near future. It is no permanent situation, it is not going to stay forever, and this is what I think about this question. |
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