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Saturday, 13 October 2007

SOCIETY - fresh ideas...

Spirituality and sustainability - a blend for modern times

Humanity’s utilitarian attitude to the earth lies behind the dilemma we now find ourselves in. Instrumentalism and the commoditisation of both nature and humanity have led to the global problems we face. The solution lies in a lifestyle of voluntary simplicity, of reclaiming our time from excessive work and by moving beyond democracy to ‘biocracy’. Democracy is about rule by and for people. Biocracy introduces the centrality of nature into that political equation. The man speaking of these ideas, his light grey hair framing his bare scalp and creating a contrast to his brown skin - does not criticise democracy. As you would expect from someone inspired by Mahatma Ghandi. Rather, he wants to extend it.

Now in his seventies and a resident of the UK for some decades, Satish Kumar is not a big man but his presence is dominating and his voice strong and unwavering. The author of a number of books, perhaps the best known of which is his biography, No Destination: an autobiography. Satish Kumar started and continues as editor of the magazine, Resurgence. The publication blends sustainabiity, environment, localism and spirituality into what might be thought of as 'Ghandiisn for the 21^st century'. He is also associated with starting and the continuing work of the Schumacher College, named after the author of Small is Beautiful, whose ideas inspired a generation of innovators and actors-in-the-world.

On the road… the early years

I somehow stumbled across an early edition of Satish’s biography not long after it was first published in 1992. Like many who read that book, I was inspired by his journey by foot through countries and across borders to promote peace, a walk undertaken - on the advice of his spiritual guide, Venobe Bhave - without money. It was the generosity of the people he met that kept him going, people of different cultures and faiths.

Satish refers frequently to that mammoth trek and to the generosity of  the people he met on the road. He talks of the basic generosity of the human spirit - a spirit, he points out, that transcends ideology, religion and sectional interest.

Jack Kerouac might have written the quintessential road story (On the Road) in which the writer describes how the journey was really the destination, but Satish Kumar’s road trip is a story of equal status but of different motivation and is all the more remarkable for having been done by foot.

Ideas of a philosopher

Satish refers to the idea that has been current for some years now, about thinking seven generations ahead before making decisions important enough to influence the future. But this, Satish suggests, is not enough when it comes to considering sustainability, which is about humanity’s being here for millions of years.

Thinking in terms of deep time like this demands a changed behaviour towards the world. “We, too, are nature”, he asserts. “We are all part of the biosphere… humanity is a species within nature”. It’s a message of commonality with the biosphere, a message of non-separation, and it’s a notion that might well have come from Satish’s Jain origins. Biocracy, Satish beleives, is the next stage of evolution.

He is critical of capitalism though his criticism comes not from a classic Marxist perspective but from the ecological. He says the market system is the cause of poverty and of all species only humans let their kind go hungry and in need of shelter. All others, he says, “are fed and sheltered without any help from Monstanto”. It is time to move beyond the market system as it is currently expressed to “a way of life in harmony with the biosphere”. The idea is attractive although far from novel, having been expressed by writers and activists ranging from Thoreau through the Dark Greens of the Deep Ecology movement to the Light Greens of the reformist Green parties.

In his public appearances, Kumar suggests that people consider moving to part time work to free up time for creative activity. Working only three days a week would make time for self-development and community involvement. A woman who works in the corporate world told him that she could not, and was not really interested in, doing this. What she wanted was an approach that fits her present circumstances.

I empathised with Satish's statement - who would not like more time free of work to follow their creative pursuits? But his statement seemed somehow out of kilter with the lives of people in this mortgage-stressed city, people who had to work sometimes long hours to pay for their over-valued homes or to scrape together a deposit so that some day they might own one. Perhaps the creativity Satish speaks of comes for many, like that corporate woman, from their work.

On global warming, Satish asserts that the move to biofuels is a “panic reaction”, as are proposals for greater use of nuclear energy. Biofuels have the potential to displace food production on agricultural land, he says, and the pro-nuclear views of his friend and developer of the Gaia hypothesis, James Lovelock, are a panic reaction on his part. Satish's view of the future is one of renewable energy sources fuelling low impact lifestyles of voluntary simplicity.

That idea - voluntary simplicity - is an important one for Satish. It is not new to the West, having first come to popularity here in the 1970s as a spinoff from ideas on alternative living that were popular then. It still has many adherents today and offers a default, fall back position for those disenchanted with consumer society. Originally stemming from Eastern reigious philosophies like Buddhism and Hinduism but with strong antecedents in some forms of Christianity, voluntary simplicity is one of those perennial ideas with ongoing appeal. It has been a faint undercurrent since the 1980s when it was submerged beneath a surge of affluence and consumerism.

The imortance of defeating pessimism

Satish describes as a “climate of fear” the focus on doom and gloom and helplessness, some of which comes from the environment movement to permeate much public thinking in the face of our present challenges. 

There is fear stemming from the notion of scarcity, Satish points out, and scarcity is a useful tool for making money. Perhaps, instead, we should see an abundance of resources around us, he says, referring to the abundant sunlight for energy production this country offers.

“Let’s make being optimistic a cool thing”, he suggests. Great idea. Briefly, I try to reconcile this with the pessissism and scarcity apparent in this city, like the crisis in affordable housing which is a scarcity spun by the market system rather than by malicious individuals of faceless members of some corporate board. Dealing with that requires strong policy, not just optimistic thinking.

Another barrier to popularising optimism is that positive thinking and the like have been promoted by fly-by-night motivational speakers and have left their audiences flying high on the idea only to come crashing down to earth because they have been left with no practical tools or techniques to sustain their positivism. Satish is not one of those, though. His exemplary life is one of practical solutions married to his philosophical and spiritual ideas.

Towards solutions… beyond the trinity

In regard to sustainable development, Satish talks of the need to go beyond the sustainability trinity of economy, ecology and society. He speaks of his four-part sustainability of “economy, soil, soul and society”, linking his philosophical and spiritual ideas to those of the prosaic world. Satish speaks of the need to replenish the soil. “People who don’t know how to make compost are impoverished”, he says. He talks briefly of the work of British economist EF Schmacher, author of the late-1960s economics classic, Small is Beautiful – Economics as if People Mattered, and of the lasting influence of his ideas on Intermediate Technology. Satish mentions the permaculture design system as being an expression of sustainability, referring to “the  work of two Australians, Bill Mollison and David… I can’t recall his name” (Bill Mollison and David Holmgren created the permaculture design system in Tasmania in the late 1970s).

The market economy offers many distractions, he asserts, such as iPods and similar devices. Curiously, he does not mention the potential utility of such devices in spreading the very message he promotes. Perhaps it is telling that the website of Resurgence, the magazine Satish publishes in the UK, does not offer podcasts for download. The question of the potential roles of these devices in encouraging behavioural change in favour of sustainability is one that needs discussion in sustainability circles if some of them are to avoid falling into an unthinking technophobia. These devices are everyday tools in our technological society that are now being used by sustainability advocates to propagate their messages. I can't help but feel that to rely only on the printed word to promote his ideas is to forego channels of communications that could attract younger people.

Solutions, says Satish, must come from ordinary people. “We are all leaders. Don’t expect someone to come from somewhere to lead you, to provide solutions. Leadership has to come from the grassroots. We have the creativity, the imagination to redesign the system”.

A complex simplicity

Wearing a simple vest over a collarless shirt and cotton trousers, Satish’s appearance suggests the voluntary simplicity he espouses and, for those with a little knowledge of the struggle for Indian independence, Mahatma Ghandi’s promotion of the home spinning of cotton cloth as a resistance activity. Desite this appearance, Satish’s apparent simplicity overlays an intellectual and philosophical complexity based on a broad experience of life.

Satish would surely go along with that 1970s slogan about the personal being political. A philosophical attitude informed by an ‘Earth spirituality’ wedded to social action and voluntary simplicity is his key to linking the personal with the social and, consequently, the political. It’s a Ghandian pespective on creating change from the bottom up. A simply lifestyle - what today would go under the label ‘low impact’ - and social action were central to the organisations that were set up to implement Ghandi’s philosophy.

Listening to Satish you get the idea that social action and voluntary simplicity are elements of social life that are inseparable. This, as I understand it, is a legacy of that great leader of India’s search for a soul of its own, Mahatma Ghandi. And unless I read it wrong, it is the message of Ghandi’s protégé, Satish Kumar.

Satish was brought to Australia by the the Ethos Foundation in 2007.

Satish is author of three books:

No Destination: an autobiography (Resurgence Books; ISBN 1 870098 46 3)

The Buddha and the Terrorist

You Are Therefore I Am