Today, man does not govern the forces he has unleashed, but rather, it is these forces that govern man—and life. Because we do not come into this planet simply to develop, just like that, indiscriminately. We come into this planet to be happy. Because life is short and it slips away from us. And no material belonging is worth as much as life—and this is fundamental. Life is going to slip through my fingers, working and over-working in order to be able to consume more. The consumer society is the engine of today. If consumption is paralyzed, the economy stops, and if you stop the economy, the ghost of stagnation appears for each one of us. Yet it is this hyper-consumption that is harming the planet. And this hyper-consumption needs to be generated, making things that have a short shelf life, in order to sell a lot. Thus, a light bulb cannot last longer than 1000 hours. But there are light bulbs that last 100,000 hours! But these cannot be manufactured, because the problem is the market, because we have to work and we have to sustain a civilization of “use and discard,” and so we are trapped in a vicious cycle. These are problems of a political nature, which are showing us that it’s time to start fighting for a different culture. I’m not talking about returning to the days of the caveman, or erecting a “monument to backwardness.” But we cannot continue like this, indefinitely, being ruled by the market. On the contrary, we have to rule over the market. This is why I say, in my humble way of thinking, that the problem we are facing is political. The old thinkers, Epicurus, Seneca and even the Aymara put it this way: “A poor person is not someone who has little but one who needs infinitely more, and more.” This is a cultural issue. So I salute the efforts and agreements being made. And I will adhere to them, as a ruler. I know some things I’m saying are not easy to digest. But we must realize that the water crisis and the aggression to the environment are not the cause. The cause is the model of civilization that we have created. And the thing we have to re-examine is our way of life. Read the rest of this inspiring speech given at the UN Earth Summit by José Mujica - former guerrila fighter, and President of Uruguay: https://adbusters.org/magazine/108/different-kind-reality.html
Posted on: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 20:15:20 +0000
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