Gaining or loosing in the name of Development

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In the name of development and civilization, more harm has been committed by the humankind than good. We learned from the lesson of history that it took 100s of years for cavemen to become civilized society. The cavemen has to adapt to many new inventions like use of iron and silver, wheels for transportation, from cave to open jungle etc. Such development did not happen in the span of 10 to 20 years! It took them great deal of time.
Now, AETA who were once self sufficient community is now living in the mercy of lowlanders, who hardly know the reality and experiences of the AETA, who are normally live up in the mountain. The lowlanders and other outsider consider this community as “primitive”, “uncivilized”, “strange” and all sorts of names we can associate with such negative connotation, just because they live differently than us. What is development and civilization when billions of people are rendered homeless and stay hungry without even a single meal a day? Won’t it be nice to be “savage” with all sufficiency than civilized with nothing to eat, nowhere to sit down. I would rather go to the mountain and lived peacefully without worrying for ‘overloaded’ bills of all sorts. For some money mongers, when they look at the mountain where AETA community is living, they saw nothing but a pool of wealth. Often times, our greediness will not allow us to see what will happen by our present action. AETA, whose life is made even more difficult by the eruptions of Mt. Pinatubo, is facing seemingly insurmountable task of keeping their culture and history intake. Their homes are gone, rivers are slowly and steadily disappearing, mountains are not the same as before. Their livelihood is getting difficult each day. Despite all the challenges and threat they continue to strive on to live the way they lived for centuries past. Many aged AETA will remember their all sufficient life of the past. It reminds me of the Israelites who had seen the splendor of the first temple cried when the saw the second temple for they remembered glory and pomp of the first temple (Ezra 3:12).

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