Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik For the cultures of Asia, the forest has always been a teacher, and the message of the forest has been the message of interconnectedness and diversity, renewability and sustainability, integrity and pluralism. And that, The cultural lessons that Asian societies draw from the forest apply at two levels: the relationship between society and Nature on the one hand, and between people within society on the other. Societies modeled on the forest are based on the lessons of diversity and democratic pluralism ........ 4 Here then is the key phrase “diversity and pluralism” with a view to renewability and sustainability. This is what popularly called traditional wisdom and knowledge. Indeed, if there were to be any sense of positive “resources management” at all, it would rather incline towards human selfmanagement with a deep sense of spiritual and intellectual attachment to Nature and its integrity. “Scientific” or not, the end result is certainly creativity and sustainability, as we keep crying for nowadays. Question of Integrity and sustainability By contrast, the Western values and practice are being tied up with and determined by the historically Scientific Revolution and subsequent Industrial Revolution. All of which gives rise to the creed of economic liberalism and free market imperialism with the strength of capital and modern scientific technology. In actuality, it is all for the ultimate purpose of domination. More often than not, it extends itself to the extent of absolutism, or even totalitarianism in the current age of Neo-Liberalism. As a result, materialism and industrialism have gone to the extremes, such that human and nature mean nothing other than commodities: i.e. as labour and raw materials for the sole purpose of profit maximization.5 4 5 J. Bankyopadhyay and Vandana Shiva, “Asia’s Forests, Asia’s Cultures”, in Suzanne Head and Robert Heinzman, ed., op. cit. pp. 66-67. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: the political and economic origins of our time, Boston, Beacon Press, 1957, pp.33-42. OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND 55