To make the story short he was finally able to bring electricity into the village, and to each house one light bulb was installed. The people were so fascinated by the light from the bulb that does not burn and so they began to extol its wonders. They were not aware that they began to neglect their nightly gathering at the village center because everyone was busy admiring the light in each house.
Of course you already know the rest of the story, that with the coming of electricity into the village, household appliances came next, especially the television set. The villagers became even more fascinated by the TV that they found it even more difficult to leave their houses in the evening for their usual gathering, because they now have their favorite programs to watch in the television. Then they began to clamor for the things they saw in the television. Those who could not afford began thinking of taking away what belonged to others. By this time I"m sure you already have your own versions of what happened next.
The Tension Between Culture and Development.
The story may appear to be very simplistic to portray the problematique between culture and development, but we would like to highlight an oftentimes taken-for-granted tension between the two, not in the sense that culture and development cannot go together but in the sense that historically through the Western colonization of our countries in Asia of diverse cultural traditions, development had been an imposed category in the pursuit of which culture had been neglected or relegated to the background.
Thus we find that as development permeates our societies, our long held traditions are violated, relationships break down as people tend to become individualistic as communities disintegrate with the rise of growth and urban centers, not to mention the degradation of the environment with the employment of science and technology in the name of growth and progress.
