Small is Beautiful notes - Part I, Chapter 2

I just read Small is Beautiful and believe many more people should read it.  It was first published 40 years ago, but still mostly reads as if it could have been written in the present.  Its content, ideas, and warnings are remarkably relevant today.  If you can't spend the time to read the whole book, hopefully this mini book report will give you enough insight to perhaps change your perspective a bit.

Here's the book on Amazon!  And Wikipedia!

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Part I : The Modern World

Chapter 2 : Peace and Permanence

This is a chapter partly about materialism through the eyes of the capitalist economist longing for never-ending economic growth.  It continues the theme of "what's wrong with the world today" started in chapter 1.  It's about the U.S.A. in the 19th century and China in the 21st century.  Schumacher's words could have been written yesterday.  It's fascinating to me that he wrote this in 1973.

Outline:

1. People claim that the road to peace is the same as the road to riches (economic growth).  That isn't true. [One reason for this is that riches require fuel, and fuel is finite.  Scarcity leads to war.]
2. Economic growth, which viewed from the point of view of economics, physics, chemistry and technology, has no discernible limit, must necessarily run into decisive bottlenecks when viewed from the point of view of the environmental sciences.
3. The road to peace is actually wisdom - wisdom to be good stewards of our resources, wisdom to realize our true needs and reduce our "needs" list, wisdom to use technology for good, wisdom to prevent greed and envy, etc.

In more detail:
He begins by refuting idealists who suggest world peace will finally come once everybody has everything they need.  But material wealth has never led to true happiness and peace.  In modern vernacular, watch 5 minutes of The Kardashians or The Real Housewives of wherever... I'm no expert on those shows but based on the previews I can promise you fights and lusting after somebody else's boyfriend, house, dress, or whatever else.

The theory rebuked in chapter 1 suggested we have solved the mystery of producing enough of everything for everyone in an ongoing manner.  Believers in that theory could ostensibly extrapolate that we should reach world peace once the productions methods of the developed world reach the developing nations, given the dominant modern belief that the soundest foundation of peace is universal prosperity.  Schumacher asks whether this is really true and predicts that there really isn't enough to go around for everyone to be rich with current production systems and the demands of mankind.  He suggests that in order for there to be enough for everyone, people of developed nations need to consider what they have as "enough" and be content, but that is extremely uncommon thinking for modern man.

What is "enough"?  Who can tell us?  Certainly not the economist who pursues "economic growth" as the highest of all values, and therefore has no concept of "enough."  There are poor societies which have too little; but where is the rich society that says: "Halt!  We have enough"?  There is none.

He then calls out the fact that "more prosperity means a greater use of fuel," which won't last forever, and that scarcity of fuel will definitely not end with peace.

It is clear that the "rich" are in the process of stripping the world of its once-for-all endowment of relatively cheap and simple fuels.  It is their continuing economic growth which produces ever more exorbitant demands, with the result that the world's cheap and simple fuels could easily become dear and scarce long before the poor countries had acquired the wealth, education, industrial sophistication, and power of capital accumulation needed for the application of alternative fuels on any significant scale. ... Here is a source of conflict if ever there was one.

From there he states we all must begin to reevaluate our wants and needs, and will really only have a chance at peace and true happiness (and permanence) when we dial back our pursuit of luxuries and instead pursue wisdom.

An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.
...
The idea of unlimited economic growth, more and more until everybody is saturated with wealth, needs to be seriously questioned on at least two counts: the availability of basic resources, and alternatively or additionally, the capacity of the environment to cope with the degree of interference implied.
...
If human vices such as greed and envy are systematically cultivated, the inevitable result is nothing less than a collapse of intelligence.
...
The foundations of peace cannot be laid by universal prosperity, in the modern sense, because such prosperity, if attainable at all, is attainable only by cultivating such drives of human nature as greed and envy, which destroy intelligence, happiness, serenity, and there the peacefulness of man.

I wasn't alive 40 years ago, but I have to believe the need for the restoration of wisdom has increased greatly from 1973 to 2013.  There are an incredible number of unwise people alive today.  I shouldn't rant further about that, though.

The chapter winds down with comments about wisdom and technology, and how we would all benefit from a shift towards technology and machines which are

• cheap enough so that they are accessible to virtually everyone;
• suitable for small-scale application; and
• compatible with man's need for creativity.

There are several poignant comments in the chapter's closing section... here are a few:

• Permanence is incompatible with a predatory attitude which rejoices in the fact that "what were luxuries for our fathers have become necessities for us."
• The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom.
• We must look for a revolution in technology to give us inventions and machines which reverse the destructive trends now threatening us all.
• Above anything else there is need for a proper philosophy of work which understands work not as that which it has become, an inhuman chore as soon as possible to be abolished by automation, but as something "decreed by Providence for the good of man's body and soul."
• How could we even begin to disarm greed and envy?  Perhaps by being much less greedy and envious ourselves; perhaps by resisting the temptation of letting our luxuries become needs; and perhaps by even scrutinizing our needs to see if they cannot be simplified and reduced.  If we do not have the strength to do any of this, could we perhaps stop applauding the type of economic "progress" which palpably lacks the basis of permanence and give what modest support to those who, unafraid of being denounced as cranks, work for non-violence: as conservationists, ecologists, protectors of wildlife, promoters of organic agriculture, distributists, cottage producers, and so forth?  An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.

This chapter is full of things wrong with the world.  Each of them get more attention later in the book... but if you never read the book at all, just reading this chapter alone would do you a lot of good.