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September 15 - October 28, 2024
Man cannot live without science and technology any more than he can live against nature. What needs the most careful consideration, however, is the direction of scientific research.
As Einstein himself said,24 ‘almost all scientists are economically completely dependent’ and ‘the number of scientists who possess a sense of social responsibility is so small’ that they cannot determine the direction of research.
What matters, as I said, is the direction of research, that the direction should be towards non-violence rather than violence; towards an harmonious co-operation with nature rather than a warfare against nature; towards the noiseless, low-energy, elegant, and economical solutions normally applied in nature rather than the noisy, high-energy, brutal, wasteful, and clumsy solutions of our present-day sciences.
No degree of prosperity could justify the accumulation of large amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make ‘safe’ and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation for historical or even geological ages. To do such a thing is a transgression against life itself, a transgression infinitely more serious than any crime ever perpetrated by man.
THE MODERN WORLD has been shaped by its metaphysics, which has shaped its education, which in turn has brought forth its science and technology.
Strange to say, technology, although of course the product of man, tends to develop by its own laws and principles, and these are very different from those of human nature or of living nature in general.
Greater even than the mystery of natural growth is the mystery of the natural cessation of growth.
Technology recognises no self-limiting principle – in terms, for instance, of size, speed or violence.
What is quite clear is that a way of life that bases itself on materialism, i.e. on permanent, limitless expansionism in a finite environment, cannot last long, and that its life expectation is the shorter the more successfully it pursues its expansionist objectives.
The question of what technology actually does for us is therefore worthy of investigation. It obviously greatly reduces some kinds of work while it increases other kinds.
The use we have made of our knowledge is only one of its possible uses and, as is now becoming ever more apparent, often an unwise and destructive use.
As Gandhi said, the poor of the world cannot be helped by mass production, only by production by the masses.
The technology of mass production is inherently violent, ecologically damaging, self-defeating in terms of non-renewable resources and stultifying for the human person. The technology of production by the masses, making use of the best of modern knowledge and experience, is conducive to decentralisation, compatible with the laws of ecology, gentle in its use of scarce resources, and designed to serve the human person instead of making him the servant of machines.
Any third-rate engineer or researcher can increase complexity; but it takes a certain flair of real insight to make things simple again.
This is the authentic voice of the forward stampede, which talks in much the same tone as Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor: ‘Why have you come to hinder us?’ They point to the population explosion and to the possibilities of world hunger. Surely, we must take our flight forward and not be fainthearted. If people start protesting and revolting, we shall have to have more police and have them better equipped. If there is trouble with the environment, we shall need more stringent laws against pollution, and faster economic growth to pay for anti-pollution measures. If there are problems about
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– We are poor, not demigods. – We have plenty to be sorrowful about, and are not emerging into a golden age. – We need a gentle approach, a non-violent spirit, and small is beautiful. – We must concern ourselves with justice and see right prevail. – And all this, only this, can enable us to become peacemakers.
We are poor, not demigods. – We have plenty to be sorrowful about, and are not emerging into a golden age. – We need a gentle approach, a non-violent spirit, and small is beautiful. – We must concern ourselves with justice and see right prevail. – And all this, only this, can enable us to become peacemakers.
The whole point is to determine what constitutes progress. And the home-comers believe that the direction which modern technology has taken and is continuing to pursue – towards ever-greater size, ever-higher speeds, and ever-increased violence, in defiance of all laws of natural harmony – is the opposite of progress.
The case for hope rests on the fact that ordinary people are often able to take a wider view, and a more ‘humanistic’ view, than is normally being taken by experts.
The power of ordinary people, who today tend to feel utterly powerless, does not lie in starting new lines of action, but in placing their sympathy and support with minority groups which have already started.
I have no doubt that it is possible to give a new direction to technological development, a direction that shall lead it back to the real needs of man, and that also means: to the actual size of man.
Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful. To go for giantism is to go for self-destruction.
to redirect technology so that it serves man instead of destroying him requires primarily an effort of the imagination and an abandonment of fear.
In the dual economy of a typical developing country, we may find fifteen per cent of the population in the modern sector, mainly confined to one or two big cities. The other eighty-five per cent exists in the rural areas and small towns. For reasons which will be discussed, most of the development effort goes into the big cities, which means that eighty-five per cent of the population are largely by-passed.
the modern tendency is to see and become conscious of only the visible and to forget the invisible things that are making the visible possible and keep it going.
we tend to think of development, not in terms of evolution, but in terms of creation.
Among the causes of poverty, I am sure, the material factors are entirely secondary – such things as a lack of natural wealth, or a lack of capital, or an insufficiency of infrastructure. The primary causes of extreme poverty are immaterial, they lie in certain deficiencies in education, organisation, and discipline.
The primary causes of extreme poverty are immaterial, they lie in certain deficiencies in education, organisation, and discipline.
Development does not start with goods; it starts with people and their education, organisation, and discipline. Without these three, all resou...
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IN MANY PLACES in the world today the poor are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer, and the established processes of foreign aid and development planning appear to be unable to overcome this tendency.
The lack of capital can explain a low level of productivity, but it cannot explain a lack of work opportunities.
The problem may therefore be stated quite simply thus: what can be done to bring health to economic life outside the big cities, in the small towns and villages which still contain – in most cases – eighty to ninety per cent of the total population?
it is necessary to emphasise that the primary need is workplaces, literally millions of workplaces. No-one, of course, would suggest that output-per-man is unimportant; but the primary consideration cannot be to maximise output per man; it must be to maximise work opportunities for the unemployed and underemployed.
the economic calculus which measures success in terms of output or income, without consideration of the number of jobs, is quite inappropriate in the conditions here under consideration, for it implies a static approach to the problem of development.
An unemployed man is a desperate man and he is practically forced into migration. This is another justification for the assertion that the provision of work opportunities is the primary need and should be the primary objective of economic planning.
workplaces have to be created in the areas where the people are living now, and not primarily in metropolitan areas into which they tend to migrate.
these workplaces must be, on average, cheap enough so that they can be created in large numbers without this calling for an unattainable level of capital formation and imports.
the production methods employed must be relatively simple, so that the demands for high skills are minimised, not only in the production process itself but also in matters of organisation, raw ...
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production should be mainly from local materials and mai...
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The result of ‘development’ is that a fortunate minority have their fortunes greatly increased, while those who really need help are left more helpless than ever before.
The bigger the country, the greater is the need for internal ‘structure’ and for a decentralised approach to development.
In fact, the current attempt of the developing countries to infiltrate the £1,000-technology into their economies inevitably kills of the £1-technology at an alarming rate,
The central concern of development policy, as I have argued already, must be the creation of work opportunities for those who, being unemployed, are consumers – on however miserable a level – without contributing anything to the fund of either ‘wages goods’ or ‘capital’. Employment is the very precondition of everything else.
The output of an idle man is nil, whereas the output of even a poorly equipped man can be a positive contribution, and this contribution can be to ‘capital’ as well as to ‘wages goods’.
In fact, it seems to me, that the apparent shortage of entrepreneurs in many developing countries today is precisely the result of the ‘negative demonstration effect’ of a sophisticated technology infiltrated into an unsophisticated environment.
The poor can be helped to help themselves, but only by making available to them a technology that recognises the economic boundaries and limitations of poverty – an intermediate technology.
we talk of promoting development, what have we in mind – goods or people? If it is people – which particular people? Who are they? Where are they? Why do they need help? If they cannot get on without help, what, precisely, is the help they need? How do we communicate with them? Concern with people raises countless questions like these. Goods, on the other hand, do not raise so many questions.
It is much easier to deal with goods than with people – if only because goods have no minds of their own and raise no problems of communication. When the emphasis is on people, communications problems become paramount.
A man is destroyed by the inner conviction of uselessness.
The heart of the matter, as I see it, is the stark fact that world poverty is primarily a problem of two million villages, and thus a problem of two thousand million villagers. The solution cannot be found in the cities of the poor countries.
