> ravi wrote:
>
>>given the pro-industrial pro-modern-world position of most of the posts
>>on this thread (a kind of russellian pooh-pooh'ing of primitivism?) i am
>>curious about what folks think about bodley's work on tribal people (for
>>eg his interesting book: victims of progress) who, if he is to be
>>believed, lived a life without these factories and fancy medical
>>devices, that seem to be inalienable, in a sustainable manner.
>>
>
> Let me add that one of the most important medical advances in the 20th
> century was simply better sanitation.
>
thats an interesting point too, isnt it? i think the biologist lewontin has a piece where he traces lots of advances in public health to such thing as sanitation and sewage systems rather than advances in western medicine. but do you not consider better sanitation a sort of technological advance and that leads us, from what i read in doug's pragmatic reasoning, to accept those technologies that, at least at first look, are beneficial?
--ravi