Dr. E. F. Schumacher: Author of the Book Small is Beautiful

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"What? The environment is being damaged? We will make laws against pollution and speed up our growth faster yet to pay for their enforcement. There are problems with natural resources? We'll turn to synthetics. The fossil fuels are being exhausted`? We'll move from slow reactors to fast breeders and from fission to fusion. People are beginning to protest and revolt? We'll hire more police and equip them better. There are no insoluble problems. A breakthrough a day keeps the crisis at bay!"

These are the people who will resort to any degree of violence in the name of "progress" . . . in the name of "need". In your own country, these are the people who recently launched Project Independence with a vast and horrifying nuclear program, no holds barred.

PLOWBOY: The forward stampeders are in power and they think that everything can be solved by purely material means.

SCHUMACHER: Yes, and look at the results. The evidence is all around us: We have become a society that is rich in means and poor in purpose. We now have the means to do almost anything. But we no longer do a thing because it has any higher purpose. We no longer do a thing because we should do it or because it makes sense to do it . . . but only because we can do it. Quite frequently because, "Well if we don't, someone else will. And we can't let them get ahead of us."

And so we heedlessly plunge on into a hell of our own creation. A hell of human debasement, environmental debasement, and the wanton depletion of our God-given natural resources.

PLOWBOY: "Never mind the consequences! Full speed ahead!"

SCHUMACHER: Yes. This is the philosophy of the people of the forward stampede. But on the other side there are now a growing number of people who realize the utter folly of this idea. These people remember what life is really about . . . that it should be something more than just mindless activity and running about and the creation of ever-increasing confusion and despair.

These other people—I call them "the home-comers" remember that life should have a purpose . . . and they see that our modern way of life has no purpose except "more", which is no real purpose. They know that a life which single-mindedly pursues only more and more and more material things is no life at all . . . especially when this pursuit destroys the very basis of our existence. They know that such a life is hollow and can never be satisfying because it never answers the question, "Why?" It never tells us the meaning of life. It doesn't even admit there could be a higher meaning to our lives.

PLOWBOY: Well the "people of the forward stampede", as you call them, know how to handle your "Home-comers". They dismiss them as "anti-growth" and "anti-progress".

SCHUMACHER: Ali, but the home-comers are not anti-growth and they are not anti-progress.

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