Life-Styles: A Political Analysis

Abstract

This paper addresses itself to the political dimension of the question of life-style (and of a particular model of development to achieve that life-style), which has lately acquired exceptional salience and is widely as well as hotly debated because, rooted as it is in the intolerably asymmetrical and inequitous structuring of the relationship between resources and groups of human beings, it has generated all-round conflict, both domestically (in the societies of the South) and internationally (between North and South and South and South), and is inexorably leading to a disastrous confrontation. It questions the prevailing belief, fostered no less by pressure than by blandishment and example, that development strategy is meant only for the underdeveloped unindustrialized South. It holds that it is even more pertinent for the overindustrialized maldeveloped North, which, having overfed on colonial exploitation, has become prisoner of a self-created cultural paradigm, and therefore needs to liberate itself by relearning that there can be neither freedom, self-fulfilment, nor peace without a measure of self-control. Because this process of relearning is not easy, it will require the help of pressure from the South in co-operation with sensitive and concerned individuals and groups in the North.