An Entirely New System Of Thought Is

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.

From The Point Of View Of The Employer, It Is In Any Case Simply An Item Of Cost, To Be Reduced To A Minimum If It Cannot Be Eliminated Altogether, Say, By Automation. From The Point Of View Of The Workman, It Is A "disutility"; To Work Is To Make A Sacrifice Of One's Leisure And Comfort, And Wages Are A Kind Of Compensation For The Sacrifice.

Even Bigger Machines, Entailing Even Bigger Concentrations Of Economic Power And Exerting Ever Greater Violence Against The Environment, Do Not Represent Progress: They Are A Denial Of Wisdom. Wisdom Demands A New Orientation Of Science And Technology Towards The Organic, The Gentle, The Nonviolent, The Elegant And Beautiful.

The Key Words Of Violent Economics Are Urbanization, Industrialization, Centralization, Efficiency, Quantity, Speed. . . . The Problem Of Evolving A Nonviolent Way Of Economic Life [in The West] And That Of Developing The Underdeveloped Countries May Well Turn Out To Be Largely Identical.

We Still Have To Learn How To Live Peacefully, Not Only With Our Fellow Men But Also With Nature And, Above All, With Those Higher Powers Which Have Made Nature And Have Made Us; For, Assuredly, We Have Not Come About By Accident And Certainly Have Not Made Ourselves