Manufactured

Last night Keri and I watched a film called Manufactured Landscapes, about the work of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky. The film was quite good, and Burtynsky's work is brilliant to me. Both his work and the film do an amazing job of looking at the effects of our industrial, urban lifestyle. The ravages we have inflicted on both the earth and other humans. The word other comes to mind of course because I believe we can only treat factory workers in developing nations (just one example) so egregiously because we perceive them as somehow different from ourselves. This is of course, terribly problematic for a wide number of reasons. Though the film is replete with numerous examples of things that make me feel rather dismal and hopeless about the direction humanity is headed, one fact that remains in my mind is this:

As little as 30 years ago (at the end of Mao's reign) China was 90% agricultural and 10% Urban. China's goal for the coming decade is to reverse that so that they become 70% urban and 30% agricultural. Wow.

What does this do to a society of 1.2 billion people? What are the lasting effects on a global scale?

Rather than carry on, I recommend the film. Quite affecting. Frighteningly so.

Posted by jeff pitcher at July 16, 2008 10:38 AM

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