ANTH 100A Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Nonperson, Greg Mortenson, Overgrazing
Document Summary
People often ask why it matters if these wondrous yet exotic cultures and their belief systems disappear. The query, as you might guess, confounds me. No more than the loss of quebec would matter to the tuareg. But i would argue that the loss of either way of life does matter to humanity as a whole. On the one hand it is a basic issue of human rights. Most canadians will never encounter a camel caravan of blue-robed tuareg moving slowly across an ocean of white sand. For that matter most of us will never see a painting by monet, or hear a mozart symphony. So i respond with a metaphor from biology. Well, imagine you are getting onto an airplane, and you notice that the mechanic is popping out the rivets in the wings. You ask the obvious question and the mechanic says, no problem. We save money with each rivet and so far we"ve had no problems.
