This column title is from E.F. Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful,” a book about economics that matter to people. Schumacher inspired millions around the world and his work became the framework for the growth in alternative small technologies and systems. 
He said: “Ever bigger machines, entailing ever 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 non-violent, the elegant and beautiful.”
We have always been taught bigger is better, big always wins, and big always brings faster and bigger fortune – the bigger and more advanced machines get, the faster we make the things we want and the more convenient life becomes.
The more we reinvent nature, the more we alter the power of nature to suit human desire, the more we clone human beings and animals, the more we explore the depths of the galaxy – the more we become better human beings; or so we are made to believe, as if humans were born with less of everything.
The desire for something bigger, quicker fortunes, an easier life, and a Godly life has practically altered one’s concept of life and habitat. Big capitalist countries have become fiercer and more violent in their battle for technological superiority, the result of thinking at the core of capitalist-driven industrialization and “robot-ization” of the northern countries, such as those in Europe, North America, north-central Asia, and Russia. It’s the same mentality that disbanded small farms in favor of big commercial plantations.
Look at what the world has become.
The past three quarters of a century had wreaked a havoc never witnessed in history. The continuous development of sophisticated technology aimed at faster and efficient extraction of natural resources, production processes, control of territory, and cloning and biogenetic engineering. This has brought on wars, genocide, environmental plunder and destruction, food crises, poverty, and climate change – even the last frontiers of human life, freedom and privacy, have become captive and hostage to the big industries, machines, and technology.
For all the technological and social advances, today’s leading world economies have demonstrated nothing but an accelerated destruction of our world and the brokenness of humanity. The thinking behind these advancements proves an increasing non-viability, non-sustainability, and destructiveness; as if our plant were limitless and regenerative.
While I am not against industrialization and advancement, I cannot go along with the view that the world is limitless.
I abhor and resist the control of the bureaucracy, filled with greedy crooks, working with those who have limitless capital, with an insatiable desire for more money and the development of technology in order to control humanity and destroy the world.
This clique controls advanced industrialized countries, inventing and investing more to drive the world to its limits.
What I hate more about this “northern capitalist” thinking is the desire for more. The “southern oriental” way of life is more humane.
Schumacher always referred to the oriental way of life as a life in harmony with nature, in unity with the bigger Being; and a life of simple things, of the small and elegant, slow-paced but flowing life, and a life that is not a hostage of anyone and anything. It is a life the opposite of northerners (or westerners).
My old colleagues in AIDFI, especially their guru Auke Idzenga, are staunch advocates of “small is beautiful.” In fact, AIDFI’s work in promoting small-scale technologies is a classic example of this dominantly oriental thinking.
If only provided a bigger push by those in command of resources, it is not impossible for our rich and beautiful region to achieve widespread, small-scale industrialization as the first step through the complex route towards our self-determination.
Truly, within the womb of a collapsing “globalized world” is a new era struggling to unfold – the era of small scale, appropriate, and renewable technologies; small systems, small organizations, and simple but pure happiness.
Time to teach ourselves, to learn once more, and accept a wisdom that “small is beautiful;” the big dream is realized through little ideas, one small step at a time./WDJ