Small Is Beautiful Main Text.pdf

Small Is Beautiful Main Text

Hi, this is AJ again. Welcome to the next lesson. This lesson is called “Small is

Beautiful.” Small is Beautiful is the name of a book by E.F. Schumacher. It’s a very

interesting book. It’s a little bit difficult to read. The level of English is actually fairly

difficult, but I do recommend it. If you have an advanced level of English, go ahead, try

to read Small is Beautiful. It’s an excellent book. E.F. Schumacher was an economist,

still is an economist. And he wrote Small is Beautiful to talk about the economic

problems we have in the world. Now this book was published back in the late ‘70s, I

believe, and it has been updated more recently. But the basic idea of Small is Beautiful

is that our economies in the world are big, big businesses, have become too big. And

they are not sustainable anymore.

Too big, in other words, we’re destroying the planet Earth because we are consuming

too much. Our economies are too big; our population, too big; our companies, too big.

Everything has grown too large and his solution, as you might guess, is that we need

smaller economies, more local economies, more green economies. So he was writing

about this long before Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth and a lot of other things which

are quite common right now. But he was writing about these things way back in the

‘70s.

He realized that we’re going to have to make some changes. Our planet is being

destroyed, we have to do something. And we need to start at the economic level. We

have to change our economic system so that it is more human, so that it serves human

beings not just super large companies. And, of course, he talks about these economies

and his solutions in a lot of detail. Like I said, he was an economist, he is an economist.

So he has a lot of very detailed economic arguments and he analyzes things from an

economic viewpoint. It’s very interesting.

Today I want to read to you just a short passage from his book and this book and this

passage really talk about the key, central core problem in his opinion. What is the most

basic problem? What is causing all these economic problems we see in the world, all

the environmental destruction, the wars we see constantly, what’s the root cause? And

let me read from the book right now.

“Economically our wrong living consists primarily in systematically

cultivating greed and envy and thus building up a vast array of

totally unnecessary wants. It is the sin of greed that has delivered

us over into the power of the machine. If greed were not the

master of modern man how could it be that the frenzy of

consumerism does not abate at higher standards of living and that

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it is precisely the richest societies which pursue their economic

advantage with the greatest ruthlessness? How could we explain

the almost universal refusal on the part of the rulers of the rich

societies to work towards the humanization of work, soul

destroying, meaningless, mechanical, monotonous, moronic work

that is an insult to human nature. These are the facts which are

neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable

silence. Because to deny them would be too obviously absurd and

to acknowledge them would condemn the central preoccupation of

modern society as a crime against humanity.“

Okay, I told you it would be difficult and it is a little difficult so let me explain a little of

what this section means. What is he talking about? So he’s saying that our problem,

our modern problem, economically in life, comes from greed and envy. Greed and envy

are the problems. That our societies now cultivate greed and envy, of course, cultivate

means grow. So our societies, our cultures, are now growing greed and envy. They

encourage greed and envy in people. People getting more greedy, greedy, greedy…

more envious, more envious, more envious.

And as people become more greedy and envious, they develop a lot of unnecessary

wants. They start wanting more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more…always

wanting more, more, more. So he said it’s this sin, it’s greed, this problem of greed that

has made us slaves to machines. That’s what he’s saying, delivered us into the power

of the machine. He’s talking about it’s made us slaves to our big companies, it’s made

us slaves to computers, to machines, to this modern life, that we’re not free anymore

because of this greed and envy.

And then he talks about, he says that you see that it’s true because the richest

countries, the places where people have the most, such as the United States, they are

the most ruthless about wanting more and more and more. So, in other words, there is

never enough. The richest countries are the most brutal, the most tough, the most

ruthless, trying to get even more and more and more. So he’s saying it never ends,

right? If someone’s very rich then they want even more money. It never stops. And he

says the other problem is that people who aren’t rich, they are stuck in soul ‑ destroying

jobs, that work is mostly meaningless, mechanical, monotonous and moronic. Moronic

means stupid.

In most of the world, most jobs, most work is just horrible. Now you may like your job

but, of course, he’s thinking about all the thousands of people, for example, in China

working in terrible factories…well millions, not thousands, millions and millions. All over

the world poor people working horrible jobs, terrible jobs, soul ‑ destroying jobs, jobs that

destroy their health and their life and their happiness. So he’s saying these are facts.

Everybody knows they’re true. But there’s an unbreakable silence about then. So he’s

saying people don’t talk about it. You don’t hear about this on the news. People don’t

talk about all the horrible job and work conditions for most people in most countries.

There is silence about it. Nobody talks about it. They don’t condemn it because that’s

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absurd, that’s crazy. They can’t condemn it. They can’t say it’s not true because

everybody knows it is true. But they can’t talk about it because then they would

condemn the central preoccupation of our society.

Preoccupation means what we think about, our goal. So he’s saying that everybody just

ignores it. We pretend it’s not happening. So he’s saying this is the problem. The

central problem, that we are creating so much greed and envy everywhere that our

whole economic system is driven by greed and envy, that our whole culture, global

culture, is based upon greed and envy. And that’s what most advertising is about.

That’s what most of our whole economic systems and even our governments encourage

it: greed and envy, greed and envy, greed and envy, in all our societies. And that is

destroying the planet. It’s destroying our culture. It’s destroying the people and their

jobs. It’s destroying everything.

So that’s not a very happy thought but I think he’s probably right. I think we can all see

that he’s right. Now luckily the book is actually very positive. So he’s talking about the

problem here and we all can see the problem and it is a very terrible problem. And we

all know that people are suffering everywhere in the world, working these horrible jobs.

And we all know that greed and envy are controlling most of our governments, most of

our countries, most of our societies. But the good news is that in this book, Small is

Beautiful, he has a lot of great solutions about creating local economies that are not

based upon greed and envy. And creating sustainable economies, meaning that they

can keep going year after year, decade after decade, century after century; without

destroying the earth, without destroying people. So this book is a very practical book.

And he has a lot of very, very practical suggestions on how we can change.

So I do highly recommend reading Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher. And if you

don’t read that then I hope you will at least start learning more about ecology and the

green movement and sustainable economics because these are very, very important

issues to our planet, to everybody living on it. So I hope you enjoyed this, Small is

Beautiful. Next is, of course, the vocabulary lesson so I’ll see you next time.

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