Civilized or not?

Civilized or not?

This has been bouncing around in my head for years and years, getting a refresh when I was in Laos and Cambodia. We went into a couple of hill-villages, where all the huts were made out of wood, reeds and mud etc.

Some people in the “Western World” want to do everything to “civilize” these communities - giving them education, satellite TV, mobile phones, Mercedes Benz cars, heath-system, unemployment benefit and drug counselling. The Missionaries are even worse - indoctrinating them into Catholicism, or taking them away from their own religions; quite a few of the Laos communities are into Animism, where they worship animal/plant spirits. I find Animism far more appealing than living one’s life from a doctrinal book of part fact/fiction.

Once you see the kids playing happily in these hill-villages, you begin to wonder if they actually do need to be sent to school and go to university, when the whole community just works in the fields and fishes.