Slowing Down and Thinking Small

We live in an age of fast foods and fast lanes. We also hear our technocrats talk about fast-tracking growth and development. Jet planes faster than sound and the information superhighway have made the world smaller, but not necessarily closer as we have yet to close various gaps that still separate members of the human family – poverty, unequal access to information and to basic services, etc. And there are the barriers that now separate us from our planet earth and its various ecosystems. Urban kids, for instance, think cabbages grow on supermarkets and water comes from the tap or from a dispenser.

As we ponder about New Year’s resolutions and instituting changes, we might as well heed the Buddhists’ advice of slowing down and thinking small. The good news is that a counter-current to the fast food and fast lane mentality is emerging. Some people are now advocating for slow food, for example.

While technocrats push for mega and super structures such as mega-dams, some people are quietly pushing for micro-hydro electric projects in which damming rivers becomes unnecessary. Initially aided by a church, a development NGO and a small grants program of the UNDP, a small community of Mabaka folk in Apayao, for example, now manages their own 7.5 kw microhydro-electric power independent of the Luzon grid. A Mabaka household pays an average of P35 monthly bill, part of which is allotted for maintenance while the rest is set aside to help procure basic medicines for the remote village in Conner town. This is obviously far cheaper than our Beneco bill where we pay a long list of added costs, which include service to multi-million dollar foreign loans.

The late British E. F. Schumacher has noted that super structures such as mega-dams and other mega-projects concentrate wealth in the hands of a few while smaller and decentralized structures distribute not only wealth but power as well. And this is what community-managed micro-hydro projects have proved. The Mabaka community does not have high-paying managers and board of directors because officers of the community association, which oversees the project, are volunteers. In return for their volunteerism, the whole community benefits.

As we move forward into the 21^st century, we are now reaping the karmic effect of our obsession for things fast and big. Global warming, for example, is the result of gas emissions now threatening the ozone layer. The biggest fuel consumer, of course, is the US, the world’s lone superpower that is ever-ready to wage war for oil.

With global warming, our seas and oceans are rising and one-meter high islands such as those in the Pacific are in danger of being wiped out from the map.

It’s time to rethink our madness and the way out is for us to slow down and think small, at least in the way we use our resources.