Ancient Futures Learning from Ladakh

While providing an intimate look at Ladakhs traditional culture, Ancient Futures raises important questions about the psychological, social, and environmental costs of modernization.
Ladakh or Little Tibet is a place of 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, coupled with an intimate and locationspecific knowledge of the environment, enabled the Ladakhis not only to survive, but to prosper. Then modernization arrived, ostensibly as a means to progress and real prosperity. Now in the modern sector one finds pollution and divisiveness, intolerance and greed. Centuries of ecological balance and social harmony are under threat from the pressures of Western consumerism.
Part anthropology, part uncompromising critique, Ancient Futures has been made into an awardwinning film of the same title and translated into more than 30 languages.