Russell Smithers

Last night I watched “South Pacific” (episode 1) on BB2 which is a “documentary series looking at the remote South Pacific islands” (www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jq11g). This  episode looks at the  Anuta (pronounces anootoo) and the story of Easter Island. It has been my opinion for some time that Easter island is a history lesson the world is ignoring at it’s peril. This program demonstrated to me opposite ends of a spectrum of how man can choose to live.

The Easter islanders chose a competitive way of life. Different tribes on the island trying to out do each other by creating larger and larger stone statues. This behaviour used up all their trees which were a vital natural resource for them. Once a enough trees had been cut down for moving huge stone carvings, life on the isolated island became impossible for human peoples to live. The upshot was that the peoples of Easter Island died off, all because they allowed the ego to rule their culture.

The other end of the spectrum shows the Anutans (pronounced anootans) living on an area 1/6 of a sqaure mile in size, and has one of the highest population densities found. The have the largest variety of ways to fish. They succeed because there is no competition, there can’t be, the island is too small and there are too many, they all co-operate and live as one harmonious group of peoples, living in harmony with their environment.

As a global culture which of these two do you think more closely resembles our current global culture? and, which one do you think we should attempt to be more like? I know which way I would choose to live. I think our current global culture is in danger of going the way of Easter Island.

We could call this potential disaster Easter Planet!!!

Copyright © 2009 by Russell Smithers