The most difficult issues have been addressed and I will now follow with a more poetic, relaxed chapter on nature. Nature is in fact the most ignored domestic resource as we try to respond to domestic needs.

NATURE'S AMBIVALENCE

Once in a group we were asked to tell what association we had with the Bible verse:

"They are like trees that grow beside a stream." (Ref 1) Conditioned by my dry highland experience, I responded: "a place of shadow, rest, and refreshment." Somebody else with tropical lowland experience responded: "That tree will wash away when the rains come; it is a dangerous place to be!" This example shows a lot about interpretation of language, and also about the ambivalent appreciation for natural processes.

Today's AT originated in part from the late 1960's "flower power" movement and evolved into sympathy for natural things. As a result, some people still overemphasize AT as "back to nature," which is certainly a good idea for our affluent, plastic society, but not very practical for the vast numbers of poor who see natural resources disappear, causing deforestation, soil erosion, etc., and who must leave their natural environment because it does not provide them with the basics of life anymore.

Why did we move so far away from nature, destroying it in the process?

• Nature requires care more than money. For example, nature can provide local herbs which can cure the ill, as an alternative to going immediately to the pharmacy. Nature requires attention. It matters whether herbs are cut in the early morning, late evening or even at full moon. Nature's quality is diversity in micro and macro, so it requires dedication, discernment, time and care. Henry Ford eliminated that problem by standardizing details and making spare parts interchangeable. Machines, and especially mass production, cannot deal with continuous change of quality and appearance. Now we have made standardization into an idol, and have in the process forgotten the positive virtues of nature's diversity.

• Nature is not always safe. Natural processes are not always kind to people, and people are not always kind to nature. A violent war is going on between people and the environment. There is evidence that we'll soon see more ecological than political refugees. Whether we like it or not, we have to come to terms with our natural environment. Reconciliation needs to be worked on, not only between people but also between people and the environment. Part of the process is to discover that people are part of their environment. We relate to it like a fish to the water; we cannot separate ourselves from it. The Western approach has to shift from dominating to relating.

ECOLOGY

Earlier I wrote pessimistically, "Poverty is the biggest hindrance of AT." Here I add, "Poor understanding of life and nature is as big a hindrance for development as poverty." Our scientific approach has overemphasized the kind of analysis which is based on "cutting into smaller pieces," at the expense of seeing how things relate as a whole. This problem is also reflected in the way we organize our society; responsibilities are cut up into small pieces that are not functional anymore, or satisfying for those who have to perform them. Automation is one way to deal with it. AT, however, emphasizes integration of responsibilities. Keith Helmuth says; "Consequently, when I become acquainted with a discipline new to me, I endeavor to understand it from an ecological point of view, a relational perspective." (Ref 2)

It is ironic that our Maya friends understand the concept of ecology very well, but they get confused if we use the word. However, though the word has become common in the West, people in the West get confused about its impact. Maya friends know that corn and pine don't grow well together, and that horse dung is excellent for a compost pile. The friends of our children here in the United States think that compost stinks and that milk, meat and corn are produced in a factory.

In health care we tend to teach that bacteria are a health risk, that we should avoid any contact and should disinfect. But probably less than 10 percent might be harmful (sometimes just because of their concentration) but the other 90 percent is designed to well take care of that risk. We live by the grace of bacteria; they are not dirty! I maintain the same for humans and their whole environment. There is a lot of potential harm in nature, but nature at the same time sustains our life. I do not see proof that technology will become so perfect that it will allow us to make nature perfect for all. Without human intervention nature would again take care of its own, but I can not see how humanity could do without nature.

In closing this paragraph I note that the words ECOLOGY and ECONOMY are closely related. Economy refers to the internal household; ecology refers to the external household. Economy thus should not be measured only in dollars, but also in its effects upon integral environment. (Ref 3)

CHE COTZ'IJ

Having worked in different languages, I think that some of the first words to learn are "flower" ("cotz'ij" in Qakchikel) or "tree" ("che" in Qakchikel). Plants, like animals and humans, exist in the interaction between the four basic elements as distinguished below; they are our environment and we are environment with them!

On a long canoe trip on a jungle river I saw how trees actually look and perform: like a huge inverted lung. Once I counted and measured the needles of a small pine tree and found that the surface of its needle leaves easily covers 80 times the area covered by the tree itself. A tree acts like a tremendous respirator and climatic compensator. (see Appendix 3) A flower is a symbol of life and fertility; it often grows in spite of wars which destroy and scorch the fields and the towns. Nobody can keep a flower or a tree from growing except by killing it, nor can anybody claim to have created that flower or tree. Its seeds are ready to start new life again, long after the destroyer is gone. Common people have courage, dedication and beauty; they often remind me of a flower. Trees, flowers and all other kinds of flora and fauna tend to be inexhaustible, not only reproducing themselves, but expanding in volume, variety and number. In that sense they can be considered a resource just like information.

BASIC ELEMENTS OF MAYA THOUGHT

A Maya friend visited a missionary family, and found them putting together a jigsaw puzzle. "What are you doing? Why did you first cut this beautiful picture into little pieces and now try to put it together again?" This little incident made me see a basic problem of Western analysis. Though one partially valid approach is, as I mentioned, to split our environment into smaller parts, another valid way of understanding our environment is to see the whole and even beyond that, a dream or vision.

My Maya friends taught me implicitly that nature has four elements: fire, earth, air and water. I added time and care as a fifth element, because without time and care nothing can exist. Water is in the air and on the earth. The big water on the earth makes our sea just as the big air makes the sky. Actually no clear-cut separation can be made between the elements. Soil blows in the air and no plant would grow without air in the soil reaching its roots. Plants and animals are made up of the interaction of these, as they are activated by the flowing energy.

After my experiences in Guatemala I searched for academic justification of this concept, among others with the old Greek philosophers. (Ref 4) Then I visited a Native American (Indian) friend in the United States and to my amazement within the first five minutes of our meeting he mentioned, although I had not asked, the same four elements as very essential to their Indian way of life. A while later he added how much they as Indians value their community (the element of time and care?) as an essential part of their own identity. (Ref 4)

TIME AND CARE (Ref 5)

I quote a poet: "For sheer survival, early societies oriented their archi- tecture around the sun and the cycles of nature. Neolithic people built houses and community structures from locally available materials--wood, earth, stone. They learned to adapt housing to the needs of local climates. Various architectural forms arose in different regions--as houses built on stilts near lakes or below ground in the desert. In some humid areas huts were woven of branches and bamboo. Hewn wood served in many climates. One often finds rustic elegance. The great architect Le Corbusier wrote: "Look at a drawing of such a hut in a book on archaeology: here is the plan of a house, the plan of a temple. It is exactly the same attitude as you find in a Pompeian house or in a temple at Luxor .... There is no such thing as a primitive man; there are only primitive means." (Ref 6)

My Maya friends, just like the Greek Pythagoras, in contemplating their environment did not mention themselves as a resource equal to the four elements. I am puzzled about what to do with Le Corbusier's "primitive means," but I'm quite encouraged by his allusion to "no primitive man." Like other natural beings (as we saw before), we are ourselves a most versatile tool. We are who we are by virtue of our capacity to accumulate experience (or information, in more current terms).

Modern thinkers (like Harlan Cleveland) state that fire, earth, air and water can be depleted but that information is of a different quality. (Ref 7) However, knowledge and human experience need fertile ground and adequate care, as do our flora and fauna. What do we mean if we say earthly resources can be depleted, or if we talk about "by-products" of industrial processes? In fact, though we burn coal, we actually only diffuse its elements. Though we wear out steel shafts, we only diffuse their particles; we do not destroy them. The smoke, or the steel particles, are called "by-products," but what we really mean is that they are products which we do not desire, and which we do not know how to deal with. The language suggests inversion of priorities by considering by-products of secondary importance, though just those by-products are of high and lasting urgency to be dealt with! Inequality and poverty (as defined in this paper) are a "by-product" of our current society; humans are treated like waste, or not used to their capacity.

"On the matter of 'by-products' there should be no compromise. The concept is nonsense. Every product must be accounted for and properly dealt with. If that drives the cost of some consumer goods and services to unreasonable and unaffordable levels, then we will know that is the true cost of those goods and services." (Ref 8)

Experience cannot be taken away, but instead it tends to multiply. Knowledge cannot be exchanged, but only shared. As I write these notes I keep the knowledge even though I pass it on to the reader. Sharing it even acts as a multiplier because it provides new insights. Donella Meadows (Ref 9) talks about the "limits of growth in reference to material resources;" Harlan Cleveland talks about knowledge in terms of "growth of limits." Our information-based society provides us with very new horizons, of which we cannot foresee the possible blessings and curses.

Information or experience, however (as other earthly elements) will not be of value without "care" and "time." This fifth, added element is probably the glue which we call life, which binds all the others together. Though time physically is one more dimension in which we live, it is an essential element to every process, and along with it goes care. Even dead matter such as sand (rock), cement and water do not make concrete, if the raw materials are not selected carefully, mixed and handled carefully, and the actual mix is not given proper time and care for its hardening. So an appropriate recipe for concrete is sand, cement, water, time and care.

One more story might illustrate the importance of time and care:

In the Bolivian highlands lightning often strikes and, with few trees around, many people get struck. Only somebody who once survived such a lightning strike is believed to be capable of caring for somebody who has just been struck. A friend told me how he, as a Western physician, was not allowed to care for a lightning victim. A lightning survivor took the patient into his hut and remained inside with him for three days, without letting anybody else in. Then some close relatives and my friend were allowed to come and see. The severe burns and pain were under control and healing. What had happened? The medicine man had sprayed sterilized clay powder on the wounds, apparently drying the wounds and protecting against new infection. It was probably even antiseptic and served as anesthesia. These two men had been close together three nights and days, something which is almost unthinkable in a modern Western hospital.

FIRE

We cannot imagine living without fire. The same fire of lightning made life out of dead matter. The physical appearance of energy is obvious in the form of gasoline, oil-based fertilizer, increasingly pre-processed and pre-packaged food, etc. Human labor (energy) slowly gets replaced by commercial energy and the decreasing over-all efficiency is frightening. In fact, the world is not concerned about food but about energy. Where it took one Burmese farmer to produce with one body calorie up to forty food calories, now it takes 15 fossil fuel calories to produce one calorie of feedlot beef. (Ref 10) The sun is the most obvious fire, and has been recognized as such by many cultures throughout the ages. Sun, heat and light are a holy trinity which make or break our everyday life.

The following quote illustrates how even modern scientific men go beyond themselves, seeing the first sun after the long polar night. "The men came tumbling out into the Antarctic snow, chattering with anticipation and bundling their heavy winter clothing around them. ... The clock said it was almost midday, but most of the scientific and naval personnel who were 'wintering over' ... had given up wristwatches months before. The sun had disappeared last April and now it was September. Night and day had been indistinguishable for nearly five months.

"But ... in a few minutes, the sun was scheduled to return. The men kept their eyes trained on the jagged ice peaks on the far horizon. They fell silent as a faint, yellow-white tinged the sky; then they began to buzz excitedly as it widened and brightened. Years later, one of them was to remember the next minutes in vivid detail. 'There was a kind of green flash. Then inch by inch this thin yellow arc, like the rim of a fingernail really, pushed itself just above the horizon.' A great shout went up from the group. The men began to pound each other on the back. They cheered and applauded. ... 'It was like a football game,' the witness laughs ruefully now. 'Grown men, dignified, serious scientists were yelling and congratulating each other as if their team had just scored a touchdown. Some of them hadn't been able to sleep for two or three days because they were so excited about the sun coming back. Of course, the sun set again in a few minutes. We drank a toast to the sun and went back indoors. The darkness settled in again, but now it didn't matter. The sun had come back and everybody felt better.'" (Ref 11)

Since ages past, civilizations have scheduled their market days and religious festivities by the course of the sun and the moon, and they have become skilled in their astronomical understanding. Stonehenge, Palenque, and even Christian churches are directed East. Hopis have their house doors open towards the East so the first thing they can do in the morning is greet the sun. Qakchikeles don't say "good morning" or "good afternoon," but "the sun is becoming clear" and "the sun is already setting!"

Millions of years ago, lush jungle converted into fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. The sun is the major energy resource behind growth. The sun is and was essential for growing firewood, food and even human bodies. Increasingly we plant vast areas of corn or sugar cane to produce gasohol. "The Volvo L.C.P. 2000 can run with gasoline or vegetable oil. Vegetable oil is one of the very basic foods needed for the real poor." (Ref 12)

The competition between food and energy becomes obvious. Some more examples (based on my own high school level calculations) may be helpful for understanding how inefficiently we manage our energy:

• If we use a car for errands which could be done by foot, bicycle or ride-sharing, we sometimes use up to 500 times more energy than necessary.

• Traveling two miles by car requires an amount of energy which almost equals the average daily energy intake of one human being. Food products are labeled with information about calories (energy) per serving. It is confusing, because nutritional calories, the same as those in gasoline or firewood, are named in calories, but are actually Kcal.

• We should be concerned not only about energy intake per serving of food, but also about the amount of energy which is necessary for production, pre-processing and distribution of that same serving.

In Guatemala the people use energy very efficiently and it was in a far-off remote hut that I understood their different appreciation for the holiness of fire. I worked on improving cookstoves. I came to see that fire is the center of the Maya family, as they gather around it, warm themselves, illuminate themselves and prepare their food. It humbled me to realize that we, along with improved cookstoves, also introduced the need for the simple match. Traditionally they lit their fires with the remaining coals of the previous fire. If no previous

fire was available (because they had been away for a few days), they went to the neighbors and got a coal. In an improved cookstove, the fires get too hot and coals burn out before the next fire is needed. I realized I was working with fires thousands of years old; they had probably never been out!

EARTH

"Earth" or "soil" is a miracle of life. We cannot live without it. We live on it. We live in it, by way of caves or adobe walls and fired earthen bricks and tiles. We get our health from it by eating the food which it produces, or by taking mud baths in Germany or Belgium. The earth is a wealth of minerals and organisms. The earth even trembles and shakes and hides incredible amounts of energy.

Once a North American visitor to our Guatemala workshop shared with me what a sacred moment it was for her when she saw us smelling and handling a handful of beautiful, dark, alive compost. I had only learned to appreciate soil this way from my Qakchikel friends.

The next quotes speak for themselves:

• "One of the first modern naturalists to be intrigued by soil life was Dr. William Beebe (about 1876). ... While he was on a bird-collecting expedition to ... Brazil ... it occurred to him that the soil he had tramped on every day ... might also hold something of interest. So ... he dumped handfuls of jungle earth, mold, and decaying leaves into an old bag. On the high seas en route back to New York, he began examining with a magnifying glass this thin veneer from the jungle floor. What he thought would be a shipboard diversion became a mighty labor. For the jungle soil was indeed alive, with ants, termites, beetles, scorpions and false scorpions, worms of every sort, springtails--all visible to the naked eye. Contracting the field of vision to this world where leaves were fields and fungi loomed as forests, competition, the tragedies, the mystery lessen not at all. Minute seeds mimicked small beetles in shape and in exquisite tracery of patterns; small beetles curled up and to the eye became minute se eds of beautiful design. Bits of bark simulated insects, a patch of fungus seemed a worm, and in their turn insects and worms became transmitted optically into immobile vegetation ... When we had worked with the lens for many minutes, all relative comparisons with the surrounding world were lost. Instead of looking down from on high, a being apart, with titanic brush of bristles ready to capture the fiercest of these jungle creatures, I, like Alice in Wonderland, felt myself growing smaller, becoming an onlooker, perhaps hiding behind a tiny leaf or twig. (Ref 13)

• "Brown and Wolf report that by taking air samples, scientists in Hawaii can tell when spring plowing has begun in northern China. Elsewhere, extremely heavy sediment loads reveal that the Yellow River of China and the sacred Ganges of India are carrying away the future of those who live in their drainage basins. So too, the Volga and the Mississippi." (Ref 14)

• "...A frequently quoted graphic description of soil loss tells us that an Iowa farmer, on the average, loses two bushels of topsoil for every bushel of corn grown. Some say the loss is really much higher. What has gone wrong? For one thing, our enormous blessing in land has led to complacency. For another, fluctuating political and economic conditions have made our farmers more attentive to preserving their way of life than to preserving their soil. Then, too, national policy makers have seen agricultural production and export as one of very few ways by which we might resist an unhealthy international balance of trade. Some say we export soil in exchange for oil, swap topsoil for Toyotas." (Ref 15)

Air, like soil, feeds the roots and gives the strength to the jungle; air embraces the individual plant and animal life.

Without air we would not hear, not smell, not burn a fire, not even survive. A friend from Kansas grew up without electricity and remembered, "If there came a wind we knew there would be water" (because the windmill would be running); however he knew also of the many tornadoes which plague his area. The invisible air can bring us a cool breeze in the afternoon, or can blow our houses and livelihoods away. Air is full of uncountable particles, from dust and diseases to water and pollen. Just like water, air is a transporter in constant motion.

In a sense, space can be considered an appearance of air. What would life be like if we would live packed together without lawns, streets or town squares, and with noise, smells and smoke surrounding us everywhere? We would live like so many slum dwellers live, fighting among ourselves about futile things, or we would become depressed and sit back apathetically.

Just as we smell the spring, we smell the contamination of living too close together, and we see also that space for living and air for breathing have become an object for sale, a commodity.

WATER

Water is, according to some philosophers, the first and only basic element. It keeps our bodies going, regulates our climate, transports large deposits of fertile clay into valleys, and so on. We take it so much for granted that we see it in volumes and flows, rather than as a real basic and vital element for life. (Ref 16) I summarize some interesting descriptions of this element:

Millenia ago, heat in the interior of the young earth drove oxygen and hydrogen atoms out of the chemical composition inside the rocks to the surface in streams of lava. They were then released as water vapor. So what are now oceans were once our rocks.

Water has an amazing capacity to absorb heat. According to its molecular size, water ought to boil at -93_C. This would rather limit its use for cooking and heating. Water's storage of heat has extraordinary ecological consequences, as it keeps the climate temperate, creating an environment in which life can flourish.

Around 70 percent of the human body is made up of water. Brain and muscle tissues are water-richest, bone and fat water-poorest. Water also performs the role of solvent and conductor essential to the metabolic performance of the human being. ... Without the body's natural cooling process--in which water is essential--(its internal) combustion would cause a rise in body temperature of 26_C.

There is plenty of fresh water to go around: 3,000 cubic meters per person per year at present. But pressures from expanding population, irrigated agriculture and thirsty industrial processes are growing.

Each year the sun's energy draws 500,00 cubic kilometers of seawater into the air. Around one-fifth of this falls back on land as rain, setting off down rivers and streams towards the sea to repeat the cycle.

This constant amount of water in the global bucket pours on some countries and continents much more than on others--it favors those who live in the green and pleasant lands of the temperate zones. Many parts of Asia and Africa face grave water shortages. Paradoxically it is also these regions which are most prone to flooding as run-off turns dry seasonal rivers into raging torrents, causing immense damage. Because of population growth, global supplies per head of this finite resource are dropping, and the sharpest drops are in already water-short countries.

We can live without oil if we have to; we cannot survive a day on earth without water. Its ready supply is too easily taken for granted ... As pressure increased on our supply--pressure from people, industrial processes, pollutants--water is in grave danger of becoming just another commodity in the market place, and supplies are dominated by the rich and powerful. In the traditional world, in religion and even in municipal engineering, water has always been seen as a common resource, indivisible as air. Equity demands that it remains so." (Ref 17)

Also here I add a story which made my perception change: In the early 1980s, four years of war and terror (mostly governmental) raged over Paley, a small and remote Maya mountain village. Many families were destroyed and "disappeared" by soldiers, or were forced to move into more urban areas. During those years it was not safe for farmers to work their fields, so that meant weeds could take over the ancestral lands. Most of the good farmland was almost irrecoverable. However, after the war, some community members gathered and decided to rebuild life by diverting a little stream. They guided its water into a small area for intensified gardening.

One day, just before the full moon signaled the new planting season, the community met under an improvised roof of pine branches, on a floor adorned with pine needles. Men played a handmade violin, xylophone and drum. The inauguration was about to happen. I expected speeches to be accompanied by the raising of the national flag, as is the standard ceremony. Instead, however, they raised a gourd of the type traditionally used to carry drinking water to the field. The gourd was adorned with white and blue ribbons, symbolizing the colors of the national flag. This community of humble and war-stricken people had replaced the flag's symbol of two crossed guns with the age-old symbol of life-giving water.