Page 4 Continued from page 3 or joyfulness, and arises from an awareness that things or tools can destroy rather than enhance grace and joyfulness in personal relations. Affluence, in contrast, does not discriminate between what is wise and useful and what is merely possible. Affluence demands impossible endless growth, both because those things necessary for good relations are foregone for unnecessary things, and because many of those unnecessary things act to damage or destroy the good relations that we desire. PERMANENCE, not profit. Profit, as a criterion of performance, must be replaced by permanence in a world where irreplaceable resources are in scarce supply, for profit always indicates their immediate use, destroy~ ing any ability of a society to sustain itself. The only way to place lighter demands on material resources is to place heavier demands on moral resources. Permanence, as a judge of the desirability of actions, requires first that those actions contribute to rather than lessen the continuing quality of the society. Permanence in no way excludes fair. reward for one's work-but distinguishes the profit a person gains based on loss to others from profit derived from a person's work or contribution to others. RESPONSIBILITIES, not rights. A society- or any relationship-based on rights rather than responsibilities is possible only when the actions involved are insignificant enough to not affect others. Our present society is based upon rights rather than respon- ., · sibilities, and upon competitive distrust and ·~'.' contractual relationships rather than upon the more complex and cooperative kinds of relationships common in other cultures. These relationships have given us the freedom to very quickly extract and use our material wealth, settle a continent, and develop the structure of cities and civilization. Any enduring relationship, however, must balance rights with responsibilities to prevent destruction of weaker or less aggressive, yet essential, parts of relationships-whether other people, the biosphere that supports our lives, or the various parts of our own personalities. Distrust or contractual relationships are the easiest to escape and the most expensive •· to maintain - requiring the development of. .., elaborate and expensive legal and financial systems-and cannot be the dominant form of relationship in societies that do not have the surplus wealth to afford them. Moral or ethically-based relationships; relationships based on cooperation, trust, and love; and the relationships encompassing more than just work, family, educational, recreational, or spiritual parts of our lives are more re- · · warding and satisfying to the people involved. They arc also more stable in their contribution to society, vastly easier to maintain, and harder to disrupt. They have always been the most common kinds of relationships between people except under the extreme duress of war or growth. BETTERMENT, not biggerment. Quantitative things, because of the ease of their measurement by external means, have been sought and relied upon as measures of success by our institutionally-centered society. We are learning the hard lesson that quantity is no substitute for quality in our lives, that qualitative benefits cannot he externalized, and that a society that wishes betterness rather than moreness, and betterment rather than biggerment, must be organized to allow individuals the scope for determining and obtaining what they themselves consider better. ENOUGHNESS, not moreness. We are learning that too much of a good thing is not a good thing, and that we would often be wiser to determine what is enough rather than how much is possible. When we can learn to be satisfied with the least necessary for happiness, we can lighten our demands on ourselves, on others, and on our surroundings, and make new things possible with what we have released from our covetousness. Our consumption ethic has prevented our thinking about enoughness, in part out of fear of unemployment problems arising from reducing our demands. Employment problems are only a result of choices of energy vs. employmentintensive production processes and arbitrary choices we have made in the patterns of distributing the wealth of our society-both of which can be modified with little fundamental 'difficulty. Our major goal is to be happy with: ~he least effort-with the least production of goods and services necessary and with the greatest opportunity to employ our time an·d skills for good rather than for survival. The fewer our wants, the greater our freedom from having to serve them. LOCALIZATION, not centralization. Centralization, .in all kinds of organization, is important during periods of growth when ability to quickly marshall resources and change and direct an organization is important. It is, however, an expensive and ineffective means for dealing with ongoing operations when an excess of energy to operate the system is unavailable. As effectiveness in r,esolving problems on the scale and loca- . tion where they occur becomes more import- "· ant, organization must move to more localized and less institutionalized ways of operation. Even with sufficient resources, the power concentration of centralized systems overpowers the rights of individuals, and has proved to lead to inevitable deterioration of .; our quality of life. The size and centralization of many of our organizations has nothing to do with even alleged economics or benefits of scale, and actually often is associated with diseconomies of scale and deterioration of quality of services. Size breeds size, even where it is counterproductive. It is easiest for any organization to deal with others of the same scale and kind of organization, and to create pressures for other organizations to adapt their own mode of operation. EQUITIZA TION, not urbanization. Uncontrollable urbanization has accompanied industrialization in every country where it has oc'curred. The roots of that urbanization, which has occurre~ , in spite ofthe desires of both the.people and the g<wernments involved, has been twofold: the destruction of tradi- ' tiona) means of livelil1ood by energy slaves and the market control of large corporations, and the unequal availability of employment opportunities and educational, medical, and other services. Neither of these conditions is necessary. The inequity of services has resulted from conscious choices to centralize and professionalize services rather than to manage available resources in a way to ensure equal availability of services in rural as well as urban areas. The destruction of traditional patterns of livelihood has been equally based on conscious and unnecessary choices. Equity is not only possible, but is necessary to restore choices of where and how one lives. It is necessary to restore alternatives to our unaffordably costly urban systems. It can be achieved through introduction of appropriate technology; through control of organization size; by equalizing income and available wealth; by establishing equal access to learning opportunities, health care, justice, and other services; and by assuring everyone the opportunity for meaningful work. It can be achieved by returning to individuals the responsibility and control of their lives, surroundings, and social, economic, and political systems; by ensuring freedom to not consume or depend upon any systems other than one's own abilities; and by encouraging the ownership of the tools of production by the people who do the work, thus increasing the chances of developing a balanced, affluent, and stable society. WORK, not leisure. We have considered work to be a negative thing- that the sole function of work was to produce goods and services. To workers it has meant a loss of leisure, something to be minimized while still maintaining income. To the employer it is simply a cost of production, also to be minimized. Yet work is one of our greatest opportunities to contribute to the well-being of ourselves and our community- opportunity to utilize and develop our skills and abilities, opportunity to overcome our self-centeredness through joining with other people in common tasks, as well as opportunity to produce the goods and services needed for a dignified existence. Properly appreciated, work stands in the same relation to the higher faculties as food to the physical body. It nourishes and enlivens us and urges us to produce the best of which we are capable. It furnishes a medium through which to display our scale of values and develop our personality. To strive for leisure rather than work denies that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process, and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work ami the bliss of leisure. From this viewpoint work is something essential to our well being- something which can and ought to be meaningful, the organization of which in ways which are boring, stultifying or nerve-wracking is criminal. Opportunity for meaningful work rather than merely a share of the products of work, needs to be assured to every member of our society. TOOLS, not machines. We need to regain the ability to distinguish between technologies which aid and those which destroy our ability to seek the ends we wish. We need to discriminate between what are tools and what are machines. The choice of tools and what they do is at root both philosophical and spiritual. Every technology has its own nature and its own effect upon the world around it. Each
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz