Over the years, I’ve shared a stage with a jar of human feces, smelled pit latrine odor, and drunk water made from poop (and convinced @jimmyfallon to drink it too). Was it worth it? You bet. Here’s why: https://t.co/8SJbCuNezD
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) July 27, 2021
In a world run by tech bros and billionaires, Satish Kumar's grounded ecological and spiritual wisdom reveals the madness of believing in technology as the solution to all our problems.
— Local Futures / Economics of Happiness (@localfutures_) July 22, 2021
To hear Satish in conversation - https://t.co/WjUycwCQOY
A generation in the West is growing up seeing no future for themselves or the planet. Meanwhile in India, entire villages are lifted out of poverty and eco destruction by the simplest technology imaginable. Why don't we teach this rather than gloom/doom? https://t.co/aGZNt2VBxk
— Wrath Of Gnon (@wrathofgnon) July 6, 2021
My thought goes to the situation of millions of children who, as the first victims of this tragedy, are condemned to an early death, or to delay in their physical and psychic development or who are obliged to forms of exploitation to be able to receive a minimum of food. Attention to young generations can be a way of resisting the abandonment of rural areas and agricultural work, to allow whole communities, whose survival is threatened by hunger, to see their future with greater confidence. We must say, in fact, that despite the commitments assumed and the consequent obligations, assistance and concrete aid is often limited to emergencies, forgetting that a coherent concept of development must be able to design a future for every person, family and community, favoring long-term objectives.
The campaign for development carried out by international agencies has revealed that success is not so much economic assistance but rather creativity and resourcefulness, commitment and countless sacrifices of "small actors." For example, there are local governments and municipal authorities, the myriad of subjects who make up civil society — large and small NGOs, international and national trade unions, cooperatives, consumer associations, advocacy groups— as well as a plethora of "Faith-based Organizations." Such local ownership constitutes a new phenomenon, which has succeeded, almost spontaneously, in combining the most modern technology with so-called "appropriate" and "intermediate technology" thus giving life to the expression "small is beautiful." Indeed, this reality was predicted many years ago by economists such as Ernest Friedrich Schumacher, and strongly inspired by the Encyclicals Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII and Mater et Magister of John XXIII (cf. also Pope Benedict XVI, Encyclical Caritas in Veritate, n. 72).
The struggle for development has therefore stressed the importance of actively mobilizing all subjects of civil society; and in this way, has proven to be, beyond a doubt, the centrality of the human person, as the subject primarily responsible for development (Caritas in Veritate, no. 47). Real men and women who have formed partnership and alliances to bring the north and the south together are showing that it is possible to unite the immense possibilities of intelligence and human will in the service of integral human development. There is a vast amount of experience, from Africa and from other poor regions, to demonstrate that positive change is possible. This involvement, at the ground level, where local communities become key actors in their own development, is something indispensable for the true effectiveness of international aid and for better international financial and commercial structures, which nevertheless continue to be necessary.
