Page 16 RAIN Sept/Oct 1975 CONSCIOUS CULl by E.F. Schumacher Schon in der Kindheit' hart' ich es mit Behen: Nur wer im Wohlstan,d lebt, lebt angenehm. * -Bert. Brecht ·/ ' Only the rich can have a good life. This is the daunting message that has been drummed into the ears of all humankind during the last half-century or so. It is the implicit doctrine of "development;" the growth of income serves as the very criterion of progress. Everyone, it is held, has not only the right but the duty to become rich, and this applies to societies even more stringently than to individuals. The most succinct and most.relevant indicator of a country's status in the world is thought to be qverage income per bead, while the prime object of admiration is not the level already attained, but the current rate ofgrowth. , It follows logically- or so it,seems-that the greatest obstacle to progress is a ,gr~wth of population: it frustrates, diminishes, offsets what the growth of Gross Natiohal Product (GNP) would ot_herwise achieve. What is the point of, let us say, doubling GNP over a period if population is also allowed to doubl~ du_ring the same time? It would mean running fast : merely to stand still: average income per head would remain stationary, and there would be no advance at all towards the cherished goal of univers.al affluence. In the light of this received doctrine,,the well-nigh unanimous prediction of the demographers-that world population, barring unforeseen catastrophes, will double during the next thirty years- is taken as an in.tolerable threat. What other prospect is this than one of limitless frustration? , *In unpoetical English: "Even as a chil_d I felt terror-struck when I heard it said that to live an.agreeable life you have got to be rich." Some mathematical enthusia•sts are still ~ontent to project the economic "growth curves" of the last thirty ye!lrs for another thirty or even fifty years, to "prove" that all humankind can become immensely rich within.a generation or two. Our only danger, they suggest, is to succumb, at this glorious hour in the history of progress, to a "failure of nerve." They presuppose the existence of limitless resources in a finite world; an equally ~imitless capacity of living nature to cope with pollution; and the omnipotence of science and social engineering. The sooner.we stop living in the cloud-cuckoo-land of such fanciful projections and presuppositions, the better it will be, and this applies to the people of the rich countries just as much as to those of the poor. It would apply even if all population growth stopped entirely forthwith. The modern assumption that "only the rich can have a good life" springs from a crudely materialistic philosophy which contradicts the universal tradition of humankind. The material needs of human bt;ings are limited and in fact quite modest, . e.ven though our material wants above our needs can give us the "good life." Poverty is no,t misery To make my meaning clear, let me state right away that there are degrees of poverty which may b_e totally inimical to any kind of culture in the ordinarily accepted sense. They are essentially different from "poverty" and deserve a separate name; the term that offers itself is misery. We may say that poverty prevails when people have enough to keep body and soul together but little to spare, whereas in misery they can~ot keep body a,nd soul together, and eve~ the soul suffers deprivation. Some thirteen years ago, when I began seriously to grope for answers to these perplexing questions, I wrote this in "Roots / of Economic Growth."** "All peoples- with 'exceptions that merely prove the rulehave always known how to help themselves, they have always , discovered a pattern ofliving which fitted their peculiar' natural $Urroundings. Societies and cultures have collapsed.when they deserted their own pattern and fell into decadence, but even then, unless devastated by war, the people normally continued to provide for themselves, 'Yith something to spare for higher things. Why not now, in so many parts of the world? I am not speaking of ordinary poverty, but of actual and acute misery; not of the poor, who, according to the universal tradition of mankind, are in a special way blessed, b.ut of the miserable and degraded ones who, by the same tradition, should not exist at all and should be helped by all. Poverty may have been the rule in the past, but misery was not. Poor **CF: E. F. Schumacher, "Roots of Economic·Growth," Gandhian Institute of Studies, Varanasi, India, 1962, pp. 37-38.
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