February/March 1983 RAIN Page 5 plant is a living problem to those in the watershed area it effects, and they should be able to judge its suitability. RAIN: At least in Oregon there has been a lot of recent publicity about the importance of international trade; for building up our failing economic base. What is Planet Drum's outlook on stressing international trade development? DRUM: It's a quesHon of real costs. Bio-regional costs are not considered in the current economic circus. For example, especially in California, the costs of soil erosion are passed onto taxpayers with a disproportionate amount of the cost carried by city people, instead of to large Just because we all watch the same television performer doesn't mean we all have the same culture. agricultural businesses who are primarily responsible for the loss of valuable soil. Bioregional real costs should be measured by what it costs to maintain and to restore, the accumulation of soil, the availability of water, and the natural succession of plants. This is the living base for people wherever they are or whatever they think they need at any moment. Enhancing intemahonal trade might do something to solve some immediate problems but it won't do much for sustainability. Sustainability just can't be measured in the same way as the Gross National Product. RAIN: With the growth of electronic technology, mass media, and the means to spread ideas and entertainment worldwide, how can local cultures survive? What is Planet Drum's attitude toward mass media and electronic technology? DRUM: In terms of human civilization all real culture has been developed in small areas. It may not seem so when we are used to measuring cultural successes in terms of a half-billion dollars gross profit from a movie. Mass electronic culture is an ersatz or pseudo culture that tends to meet the needs of alienation and loneliness that people have suffered during the industrial era. Just because we all watch the same television performer doesn't mean we have the same culture. People have expressed themselves through small groups and communities, through what Gregory Bateson calls resonant or redundant culture. Instead what we have is an appearance of universalism. It's unreal, as thin as linoleum or better yet as thin as plastic. The true culture doesn't come out of a wizz bang think tank. Technology can only provide tools. People who have "thick" relationships create culture. RAIN: Many local economies are dependent on peaceful invaders — that is, tourism. What is the bioregional perspective about the tourist industry which seems to be growing? DRUM: Bioregions don't change. One can jump into a car and go from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Northwest. The place left, and the place visited are unchanged in bio-regional terms. The question is how much drain is Re-inhabitation Re-inhabitory refers to the tiny number of persons who come out of the industrial societies (having collected or squandered the fruits of 8000 years of civilization) and then start to turn back to the land, to place. This comes for some with the raHonal and scientific realization of inter-connectedness, and planetary limits. But the actual demands of a life committed to a place, and living somewhat by the sunshine green plant energy that is concentrating in that spot, are so physically and intellectually intense, that it is a moral and spiritual choice as well. There are many people on the planet, now, who are not "inhabitants." Far from their home villages; removed from ancestral territories; moved into town from the farm; went to pan gold in California — work on the Pipeline — work for Bechtel in Iran. Actual inhabitants — peasants, paisanos, paysan, peoples of the land, have been sniffed at, laughed at, and overtaxed for centuries by the urban-based ruling elites. The intellectuals haven't the least notion of what kind of sophisticated, attentive, creative intelligence it takes to "grow food." Virtually all the plants in the gardens, the sheep, cows and goats in the pastures were domesticated in the Neolithic; before "civilization." The differing regions of the world have long had — each — their own precise subsistence pattern developed over millenia by people who had settled in there and learned what particular kinds of plants the ground would "say" at that spot. Gary Snyder — Resurgence
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