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Article: Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh.
- Article from:
- E Magazine
- Article date:
- February 1, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 Earth Action Network, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In 1975, Helena Norberg-Hodge, a gifted Swedish linguist, visited the northern tip of India, an area on the Himalayan plateau called Ladakh, to learn the unwritten language and collect folk tales. But she soon found much more - a traditional village culture that wasn't explained by Adam Smith's economics or Sigmund Freud's psychology, theories that Norberg-Hodge, a member of "homo industrialis" had assumed applied to "all the Earth's people." Instead, she found a model of sustainability, the great buzzword of contemporary environmentalism, that she hopes will be a model for us all.
Ladakh lies in the Himalayan rainshadow, catching only four inches of rain a year ...