Ancient Futures

Description

While providing an intimate look at Ladakh?s traditional culture, Ancient Futures raises important questions about the psychological, social, and environmental costs of modernization. Ladakh, or ?Little Tibet,? is a region with few resources and an extreme climate. Yet, for more than a thousand years, it has been home to a thriving culture. Traditions of frugality and cooperation, combined with an intimate, location-specific knowledge of the environment, enabled the Ladakhis not only to survive but to prosper. Then came modernization?presented as a path to progress and real prosperity. However, in the modern sector, one now finds pollution, divisiveness, intolerance, and greed. Centuries of ecological balance and social harmony are under threat from the pressures of Western consumerism. Part anthropology and part uncompromising critique, Ancient Futures has also been adapted into an award-winning film of the same title and translated into more than 30 languages.

About the Author

Helena Norberg-Hodge was one of the first outsiders to visit Ladakh when it was opened to tourists in the mid-1970s and the first Westerner in modern times to master the Ladakhi language. In 1986, for her work as director of the Ladakh Project, she was awarded the Right to Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize. She is the founder-director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture.