“Monocultures of the Mind” — Hitting The Nail On The Head
In the playground which is the relationship between modern day world countries, America is the leader, the “popular kid”, and above all, the bully. Much of this is due to Western systems of thinking, and the power Westernized countries hold. Western knowledge remains dominant, and this in turn affects structures of power in other countries. Vandana Shiva explores this in her article Monocultures of the Mind. Shiva delves deeper into the way these structures of power work, as well as their economic and environmental effects.
In the title of her article, Shiva perfectly summarizes the topic at hand. She discusses of Western dominance, “The knowledge and power nexus is inherent in the dominant system because, as a conceptual framework, it is associated with a set of values based on power which emerged with the rise of commercial capitalism.” The US runs off of capitalism, and uses this financial power to build up their knowledge rhetoric with information which is inherently based in economic profitability and “science.” Doing so brainwashes populations with what the “right” way of thinking is, or disguises its information as common sense, as opposed to what is true, or reality. In doing so, they create a “Monoculture of the Mind” — an agricultural practice meaning to plant a multitude of one plant, making many copies of the same thing. Shiva argues that this makes “local knowledge” dissappear, by “negating its very existence.” Shiva argues that this is because Western systems of knowledge have become global systems of knowledge, even if that knowledge doesn’t truly represent or apply to differing locales and countries. In making this way of thinking universal, it creates a monoculture, shutting out all other species of plant, or ways of thinking, which dissent. Shiva argues that Western knowledge, “generates inequalities and domination by the way such knowledge is generated and structured, the way it is legitimized and alternatives are delegitimized, and by the way such knowledge transforms nature and society.”
Shiva notes examples of how this way of thinking effects the global environment as well. She discusses the way forestry and agriculture no longer have a relationship, due to Westernized thinking. The two used to benefit each other and work interchangeably in a natural ecosystem, and for local communities. For local individuals, food could be found in both the forests as well as the fields, but both depended on each each other for fertility and life. For example, individuals could live within the shelter of the forest, but gather plants from the fields. Or from an ecosystem view, birds and squirrels can live in trees of the forest, but also seek for food sources out in the field, and in doing so spread the seeds of the forest, working communally. Humans could work with the land interchangeably, planting things like coffee shrubs in the shade trees of the forest provide, or planting multiple things in one area. The capitalism which rules Westernized countries deems this inefficient. Trees of the forest are cut down en masse to create more agricultural monocultures and provide timber, and thriving ecosystems with a multitude of plant species raped, to again replant more economically profitable monocultures.
In doing this, we create, “chemically intensive agriculture,” says Shiva. Instead of using natural and local knowledges such as crop rotation, or additionally planting other plants to repel pests, we rely on using pesticides and herbicides to protect a mass source of goods.
The opressing of local knowledges by dominant Western systems of knowlege and power is present in many situations all over the world, outside of just agriculture. For example, in Western cultures, there is a huge societal expectation and seeming necessity that babies be delivered in hospitals, by attending doctors, as well as an ever-growing number of C-sections. The documentary “The Business of Being Born” explores the way babies in the U.S. are born, and ties it back to the way Western beliefs are inherently rooted in capitalism. The New York Times comments on one of the movie’s main arguments, “Because hospitals are businesses that thrive on a high turnover, drugs to induce and speed labor (and that often make it more intense and painful) serve the system by filling and emptying beds at a faster rate.” For thousands of years, women have given birth without the need for multiple types of drugs, and all of the details that go into giving birth in the U.S.. In other countries all over the world, women give birth this way. However, dominant knowledge in the U.S. condemns this as unsafe, barbaric. Society and legal systems fall into this knowledge, with birth certificates issued at hospitals where babies are born.
We all need to take a page from Shiva’s book. Feeding into common Westernized knowledge only promotes the “Monocultures of the Mind” concept she uncovers. Individuals need to truly think for themselves, promote individual thinking, to fight back against the Western agenda.
