The Technology Trap
(l'Engrenage technique) Pub: Gallimard, 266 p; by André Lebeau
Reviewed for Le Canard Enchaîné by Jean-Luc Porquet
When, in 1722, the Dutch navigator Jacob Roggaveen discovered Easter Island he observed only barren grassland. Not a tree on the horizon. Only 400 inhabitants eked out a miserable existence, sustaining themselves on vegetables and chickens. Without trees, therefore without wood or any sort of vessel, they were unable to go out fishing in the surrounding waters, rich in all species of fish. Divided into eleven strongly heirarchised tribes, each of which boasted a leader, they fought fiercely over a territory about fifteen kilometers by twenty.
...why should you care?
But only three centuries earlier, Easter Island had thirty times more inhabitants: their numbers are now estimated to have been about 15,000 individuals. Covered by a tall, lush tropical forest, it sheltered a rich fauna of land and sea birds. An indigenous palm tree provided the islanders with food in the form of sap and nuts, the trunk solid sea-going boats, the bark fibers were plaited into ropes. There was a constant demand for the latter. Because, above all....
Above all the islanders were divided into several rival groups. Commanded by their leaders and priests, these groups erected giant figureheads everywhere, symbols of their superiority. To move these statues from quarries to suitable sites, many tree-trunks and ropes were needed. The competition continued unabated until the island had no more palm trees. Soils were then vulnerable to erosion and harvests suffered. Land birds were the first to undergo total extinction, then came the human population's turn.... Andre Lebeau says that we are caught in "The Technology Trap", exactly like the Easter Island people. We cannot leave the Earth. Lost, as they were, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 1,300 miles from Pitcairn Island, Easter Islanders couldn't find refuge elsewhere, either. We are scarcely any smarter than they were: our brains and our genetic inheritance are identical with theirs. We are also busy wrecking our ecological niche: as a responsible, coherent scientist, Lebeau - a geophysicist formerly a top scientist with the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales
- underlines for us the well-publicised outcome of exhausted resources and the saturation of vital living space, and from these calmly draws his logical conclusion: it is probable that the survival of the human species will be determined during the present century. The species' fundamental tendency is "to constitute itself in groups arranged by hierarchy and which inevitably oppose each other for the control of resources and territory." Something Bush has said springs to mind: "Americans' lifestyle is not negotiable." Could this ancient urge "rooted in genetically-programmed collective behaviors" , and which inexorably leads to disaster, be counterbalanced by what Lebeau terms " "cultural superstructures" , experience acquired and transmitted by one generation to the next through education, and which can influence collective behaviour?
We grieve for Europe; over the lack of a common dream; over the purposeless of capitalism undertaken for its' own sake. Well, here's a purpose : avoid the fate which befell Easter Island. Happy New Year!!
We bequeath this as a gift to future generations.
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