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by Andy on Friday, April 11th, 2008These are some quotes from E.F. Schumacher’s series of books, Small is Beautiful:
“The most striking about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that surpasses one’s ordinary powers of imagination. Its inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed.”
“Ever bigger machines, entailing ever bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting ever greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom. Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful.”
“The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of ideas that fill our minds. If they are mainly small, weak, superficial, and incoherent, life will appear insipid, uninteresting, petty, and chaotic. It is difficult to bear the resultant feeling of emptiness, and the vacuum of our minds may only too easily be filled by some big, fantastic notion – political or otherwise – which suddenly seems to illumine everything and to give meaning and purpose to our existence. It needs no emphasis that herein lies one of the great dangers of our time.”
April 17th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Great quotes Andy, the second in particular sums up exactly how I feel about the situation we are in. There seems to be a MASSIVE lack of wisdom in the way we as individuals and as a global community continue to live. Instead, greed is the overriding trait that motivates us. This completely relates to Tom’s blog entry (Armenia and Current Affairs). Its interesting that while you are both apart you’re still thinking similar things…