Part 5 - QUALITY OF LIFE

Tvergastein, Hardangervidda, Norway, June 1995
Interviewer: Jan van Boeckel, ReRun Producties
This interview was made for the documentary film The Call of the Mountain.

You say: next to biodiversity, also cultural diversity is important.

Yes, I take cultural diversity of humans on par with species diversity among non-humans. And that's then... every year, the number of cultures which are not industrialized - every year, they're going extinct or getting near to extinction. So there is, from a deep ecology point of view, great concern about the unification, the possibility of economic unification of the world, by a strong world market. If you have the same, in detail, the same kind of products you buy, the same kind of economic system all over, I am afraid that it is practically impossible to have deep cultural differences. You have then only subcultures, as you have within New York, for instance. You have marvellous subcultures, for instance of musicians, where they live in music, all of them. But it is not the same as a culture. Because their children are, pfff.

Why is it a loss?

I think, when we talk about the realization of the fulfilment of the potentialities of human beings, the potentialities of humanity, that the potentialities of humanity on this planet is much narrowed down if you have the same culture, all over. Whereas, you see from... you can read about old fantastic cultural achievement, which is impossible for us. But they were small cultures; they are influenced from other cultures, but not dominated by any definite kind of culture, like the old Indian Sanskrit culture. What they had in their mind was so fantastic, I mean, it is impossible for us.

Does the feeling of this process happening make you sad?

Yes, sometimes yes. It reduces my quality of life a little, to... when I think about that, when I think of my patient, psychiatric patient, when I was 22 years old, I mean this... sometimes I wake up thinking about this misery, this fantastic misery.
So, there are three great movements, today. There's a peace movement and then the social justice movement and then we have the deep ecology movement, but the misery is so terrible, and we have to do something to it.

But you are not pessimistic?

No, not considering the twenty-second century. Then I think... [laughs] We might have turned the tide. We may have chance. But I think the chances next century is small, it depends on what we do today and tomorrow. [clicks]

But the loss of cultures seems to be a one-way process.

Yeah, I don't know what would have to happen in order to have a great variety of deeply different cultures which are not of a fascist or a National Socialist kind; that is, cultures which tolerate other cultures. And that is, for me of course, a necessary condition. A culture, I wouldn't like cultures which do not tolerate other cultures.

Can you explain the difference between basic needs and vital needs?

With basic needs, generally, they're... you have food, you have shelter, and you have certain other things. Vital needs is relative to the kind of society you are in, and in Norway, for instance, at this time, through this generation, or next generation of Norwegians, the education of a formal kind will be a vital need. And in the arctic Norway at the moment, it tends to be a vital need that the family or the neighbours have a car. [grins] So, and the vital need of sheep owners is to not to have any wolves around. That's a vital need for them. They cannot stand having wolves around. Bears, yes, if they behave, but not wolves. So it is a vital need for them, so they would kill any wolves they happen to see. It's a vital need for them. But that is a very special situation. And within 30 years probably, it will probably not be economical interesting to have sheep in Norway, they would be get... there is more of them at other places, they could have farms or sheep.

But the wolf, also, has value in itself.

Oh yes, and there is no question that people in these valleys where there are, like to shoot wolves, that they would say: 'Oh yes, they have value in themselves, but: no thank you.' But it has not the status, culturally, as the bears. Bears have a very high cultural status among people who are sheep owners. And sometimes they eat some sheep, that's OK. But if they are badly educated, they would just harm them and, and then they have to be killed, they say. All right. Killing is absolutely compatible with having, with recognizing intrinsic value. Their is no logical relation there, so that if you think this animal has intrinsic value, you cannot under any circumstances kill it.

Can you explain that a bit more?

Well, you see, reindeer here, with practically no big carnivores, we have to kill a lot of reindeer every year. Many thousand reindeer are killed for ecological reasons. We have made the wolves extinct around here, all over. And eh... also there are a couple of other big carnivores that could do the job, we are going to do the job. Because they get hungry and starving and they get thin and tiny and having a bad time.

Is that not that mankind is then sitting at the seat of the Creator, doing that?

Yes, in this cases, but we cannot manage nature, that's a bad expression. Because the thing we can do is manage our own interference in nature and a little more, we can have a little more. But to take over God; a God, a God with brains would never tell humans: now you take over the management of nature. Hah hah. That requires... we couldn't... a single leaf you couldn't... you have so little knowledge of what is going on in nature and that would be permanently like that, probably. It's too complex. It's beyond any kind of machinery you could have, information machinery.

Can you explain the difference between 'quality of life' and 'standard of living'?

Well, that's an extremely important question, because the term 'quality of life' is getting more and more popular. And so it's misused, in my opinion, it's misused. Because quality of life has just to do how you feel life. How you feel life, about life. What are your concerns, your worries. Which are your... how, how strong are such-and-such worries, economic worries, what kind of economic worries, what other kind of worries; no friends, you are ill, your illnesses, or what it is. And you cannot just ask: 'How-do-you-feel?' You have to go round the question, of course. And you have to stay with each, each human you are interviewing. It would be together with the humans. And then you can say: 'There is a higher life-quality among women with full-day jobs, and half-day jobs in rural... or in district Norway, or something like... You can generalize about quality of life.
But it is important that in 1941, the quality of life of Jews in Norway was very high. [sigh] And some of us felt that any day Gestapo would come and drag them away. So, they shouldn't have had... they wouldn't have had the quality of life if they knew more about the possibilities of being harassed by the police and dragged away. But the quality of life, what's high, has nothing to do with whether you're stupid or not, or whether you don't understand how terrible your situation is. You have cancer, and of course your, your quality of life may be very high, because you don't know about it. But it may be also high, when you know about it. It depends on how you can manage. There is more to saying: 'Life-quality has not to with how you live but how you take how you live, how you react to the way of life, your cancer... The quality of life depends on how you manage the situation, having cancer.' So, quality of life, quality of life is a very important term.

Also to find meaning in life?

There was a joke in the late 1940's, when I was in California, university people, you know, they were leading in standard of life and leading in number of visits to psychiatrists. So, you would have a fantastic standard of life, but you looked to your psychiatrist as others would look to the dentist. So, you see. It is not so easy to have a very high standard of living.
As to richness of life here, and the abundance, if you would like that word, it was so nice to be sitting here and suddenly I saw a fox, exactly down here.. That fox was looking at me and I was looking at the fox. And of course, as usual with humans, I fumbled getting some food for it, or something like that, quite stupid, but when I was just trying to give some food, it didn't like that, he didn't like that. He went a little further down, and then standing and listening... because foxes are able to hear the lemmings and mice, what they're doing underneath the snow and underneath the soil. So, what I say is that it would be marvellous to have more, more animals around here, at Tvergastein. There are too few, I think. Which is difficult for humans to get, to behave in such a way that they are all over here. That's difficult.

Did you recognize something of yourself in the fox?

Natural, we were completely on par, I mean, completely: one looking at the other, and pffff. The difference was, that I was a visitor here, where the fox was living here all year. So the tremendous difference between the fox and the human, that doesn't disturb the feeling of unity, the feeling of what we call identification, and that it has meaning, this fox has meaning. Of course in itself, that's... pfff... trivial, quite trivial. Even if we... some people kill - I am sorry, some people like to kill foxes - but gradually they tolerate that they eat some things, some hen or something. Do some disturbance for humans, that they take that.

© Jan van Boeckel, ReRun Producties

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