[AAACE-NLA] modernization thesis

[AWilder106@aol.com]

Thanks to those who contributed to a stimulating discussion last week, I 
really enjoyed it.

I lived in Pakistan for a brief time a while ago.   I lived in a a mixed 
society--tribal and subsistence and modernizing, with machines, at the same time.  
 Camels along with Jeeps.

My most often asked mental question:   "What is going on here?"

At one point I was asked to speak on Education--as an American I was expected 
to be an expert;   I was shocked, declined the invitation, and   when I   
went back to graduate school I continued to ask the question.

My question about adult literacy and modernization--What can we contribute 
given a hazardous energy future?--is a real one.

It seems   to   me we are in an era of terror related to modernization:   "At 
the least, modernization generates ambivalence, and at the worst, violence 
among those who lose through change.   There may also be a fundamental reaction 
expressing a longing for past "mores"."   (Naipaul, Kasson, Levy)

I am really not prescient, a lot of writers have addressed this theme, I 
think it was an economist named Lewis who suggested "autarky" for developing   
countries, lowering a curtain against the raids   of the developed/modern world 
for natural resources.

Andrea
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