HOW WE ALL BECAME WESTERN & are LOSING OUR ROOTS

THE TROJAN HORSES
“Our sanctimonious missions of civilization, development, conscientization, modernization, social change, democratization, liberation, social justice, and even of co-operation and international solidarity, are often TROJAN HORSES vis-a-vis the traditions of Africa, Asia and the Americas.

It is in this sense that,

> in the name of literacy, the oral traditions of the local people are destroyed;

> in the name of agricultural reform, of the best distribution of the land, wages and full employment, we destroy their original, non-monetary economic culture which is bound in a co-operative partnership with Mother Earth;

> in the name of our democracies we destroy their dharma-cracies;

> in the name of the acquisition of national sovereignty and the Nation State, we destroy their anti-state organizations;

> in the name of a democratic taking of power, we destroy their original consensual political culture of leaders without power; that finally,

> in the name of human rights. we destroy their traditional judicial world which sees man not as a subject of rights but primarily as a subject of acts of grace, of gratitude and cosmic responsibility.

Certainly, we must make people aware of the structures of dependence and of the external domination exercised by multinationals and governments. But the heart of the problem will remain untouched unless we are aware of the network of internal dependence and domination exercised by modern Western culture itself.

Indeed, the dominating factor is not primarily the multinationals, national and international governments or even capitalist, marxist or socialist ideologies, but our modern Western culture itself. And our international solidarity and co-operation movements are often, unconsciously, its first more or less voluntary slaves and its first more or less conscious ambassadors abroad.”

By Robert Vachon