An Example
A while back National Geographic had an article on Bhutan.... Bhutan's Enlightened Experiment
You can read the full text at that link. After reading it, I had some serious questions about how we as a modern world compare morally and ethically, to say 150 years ago. By looking at the transition Bhutan is going through, we might get an idea. Yes, we have gained so much in regards to medical advancement, and technology, but wow, are we are stressed out people now. The changes in society have many people counting the cost of the decay in morals that have come with it.
The tiny isolated country, once shut off from much of the rest of the world is gradually changing to a more modern country, but with a cost. I am going to quote a bit from the article...
"Bhutan’s traditionalists, however, see a darker force at play: the invasion by a materialistic global monoculture that is eroding their values. The government has banned channels deemed harmful, including MTV, Fashion TV, and a sports channel that featured violent wrestling spectacles. Sonam Tshewang, a junior-high teacher in Thimphu, believes something vital has already been lost. “Some kids have become so Westernized that they’ve forgotten their own cultural identity,” he says. One girl in his class even changed her name to Britney.
The identity crisis runs deeper than a name change. A cocktail of social pressures is fueling new problems. Youth unemployment is running at about 30 percent in Thimphu, as rural high-school graduates flock to town dreaming of civil-service jobs that fail to materialize. Gangs with names like Virus and Bacteria have formed. Violent crime is still rare, but theft—once absent in a country with few locked doors—is becoming more common, as people covet their neighbors’ mobile phones and CD players.
Drug addiction is also on the rise. Near the entrance to Destiny Club, one of Thimphu’s handful of new discos, three young revelers discuss the virtues of “pig’s food,” a potent variety of marijuana, abundant in the Bhutanese countryside, that is used traditionally as an appetite enhancer for livestock. “Do kids in America also get addicted?” asks the trio’s leader, a 23-year-old with reddened eyes. Thimphu’s drug scene might seem tame by international standards, but this can hardly be the kind of happiness the king envisioned. Ugyen Dorji, a former addict who founded Bhutan’s first drug-rehabilitation center three years ago with the help of the Youth Development Fund, says it reflects “the anxieties of a society in transition.”
What is it that we the western world has given to these people ? Greed, drugs and a bunch of new problems, that we deal with daily. Sure they have better schools and medical care, the life expectancy has gone up, but why is it that it had to come with such a price ?
You can read the full text at that link. After reading it, I had some serious questions about how we as a modern world compare morally and ethically, to say 150 years ago. By looking at the transition Bhutan is going through, we might get an idea. Yes, we have gained so much in regards to medical advancement, and technology, but wow, are we are stressed out people now. The changes in society have many people counting the cost of the decay in morals that have come with it.
The tiny isolated country, once shut off from much of the rest of the world is gradually changing to a more modern country, but with a cost. I am going to quote a bit from the article...
"Bhutan’s traditionalists, however, see a darker force at play: the invasion by a materialistic global monoculture that is eroding their values. The government has banned channels deemed harmful, including MTV, Fashion TV, and a sports channel that featured violent wrestling spectacles. Sonam Tshewang, a junior-high teacher in Thimphu, believes something vital has already been lost. “Some kids have become so Westernized that they’ve forgotten their own cultural identity,” he says. One girl in his class even changed her name to Britney.
The identity crisis runs deeper than a name change. A cocktail of social pressures is fueling new problems. Youth unemployment is running at about 30 percent in Thimphu, as rural high-school graduates flock to town dreaming of civil-service jobs that fail to materialize. Gangs with names like Virus and Bacteria have formed. Violent crime is still rare, but theft—once absent in a country with few locked doors—is becoming more common, as people covet their neighbors’ mobile phones and CD players.
Drug addiction is also on the rise. Near the entrance to Destiny Club, one of Thimphu’s handful of new discos, three young revelers discuss the virtues of “pig’s food,” a potent variety of marijuana, abundant in the Bhutanese countryside, that is used traditionally as an appetite enhancer for livestock. “Do kids in America also get addicted?” asks the trio’s leader, a 23-year-old with reddened eyes. Thimphu’s drug scene might seem tame by international standards, but this can hardly be the kind of happiness the king envisioned. Ugyen Dorji, a former addict who founded Bhutan’s first drug-rehabilitation center three years ago with the help of the Youth Development Fund, says it reflects “the anxieties of a society in transition.”
What is it that we the western world has given to these people ? Greed, drugs and a bunch of new problems, that we deal with daily. Sure they have better schools and medical care, the life expectancy has gone up, but why is it that it had to come with such a price ?
Comments
Fortunately, we have a lot more good young people than bad. We don't hear about them very often, in the media, though.