Suchergebnisse

The universal dream of a coming Age of Affluence, modern style, has been shattered. Modern expansionism is coming to its predictable and inevitable end. The now apparent failure of its techno-economic system stems directly from a systematic neglect of the truism that Man's greatest resource is man, his initiative, intelligence and creativity. Modern economic thinking takes goods as its point of departure, instead of people. The results are the destruction of the wholesomeness of man's work, deleterious pollution of his natural environment and increasingly threatening resource depletion. Solutions to these problems cannot be found without a fundamental reorientation of technology, so as to make possible the development of a new life-style which means new Patterns of production, new patterns of consumption and new patterns of the geographical distribution of the population (e.g. urbanization). Systematic work in this direction has been carried on by the Intermediate Technology development Group in London since 1965. This work shows beyond reasonable doubt that technological alternatives are possible and can be thoroughly economic. The criteria or guidelines of the Group's work are: smallness, simplicity, capital-cheapness and nonviolence, to afford alternatives to current technological trends which favour giantism, complexity, high capital intensity and violence. As the 'culture of affluence' is proving a ruinous aberration, we might do worse than study the possibilities of a 'culture of poverty' which would make health, beauty and permanence its central aspirations.