Humankind Advancing, Vol.4, No.4 October 1993

Theme: SIMPLICITY AND INNER GROWTH

CONTENTS

Editorial
Quote from Shi and from Thoreau
Quotes from Mumford and from Kendall
World Scientists' Warning to Humanity
Quote from Sperry

On Simplicity
David E. Shi (including Thoreau) [In Search of the Simple Life; discussion]
Quote from Mumford
Quotes from the Nearings, from Gregg, & Proverb
Sam Keen -- [Dying Gods and Borning Spirits; excerpts]

The Joy of Thinking
Jerome R. Malino --[A Faith Hypothesis]

The Responsibility of Thinking
Hanna Newcombe [Peace Process as a Life Process; condensed]
Gordon D. Kaufman [Nature, History, and God; discussion]

Thought in Action
Leon Vickman
The Miracle of Kerala
1993 International Prize for the Humanities

Reflections (including Pais)

Acknowledgments

References


Editorial:

After deciding that the theme for this issue was to be "Simplicity and Inner Growth," and collecting all relevant material, I received the "World Scientists Warning to Humanity." That warning is of such importance that it must appear in the present issue, and that it must precede everything else. Nor is it irrelevant to our theme. On the contrary; it provides to it a deeper meaning and greater urgency.

Simplicity, and that is the main message to be expressed in these pages, is not sacrifice. It is not depleting life of joy. Instead, simplicity avoids superfluous ballast that stands in the way of joy. It is a concentration on what is most essential, most beautiful, most valuable. It does not make life poorer, but richer.

For instance, among the flowers and exotic plants of the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena - San Marino, California, stands the reconstruction of a 16th Century Japanese Patrician Home, which made a lasting impression on me through just this concentration. The walls made of reeds and bamboo were plain and empty, except for one corner near the door, where on a hanging silk sheet a deep thought or prayer was expressed in swinging Japanese letters. Underneath stood a vase with fresh quince blossoms, carefully arranged. Nothing else. -- But the impact was such that visitors from all countries in the world fell silent.

Even more beautiful is inner simplicity. The mind, rejecting the clutter of overstimulation, becomes aware of what is essential. Life is experienced as a new gift and inner growth leads to a serene elation that cannot be bought at any price. The ability to handle intractable problems, to reach new insights, to truly appreciate friendship and love, are just some of the consequences of that growth. Simplicity is no sacrifice; it is a magic wand that transforms the world.


How one spends one's time is a fundamental moral decision.

David E. Shi
In Search of the Simple Life (P.221)

* * * * *

There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers.... To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

- - -

Our life is frittered away by details..... Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!..... We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander....If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavers to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. -- If you have built castles into the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Henry David Thoreau
Walden

* * * * *

The cure for over-concentration on the outer world is not to recoil into an equally sterile and shut-off inner world; the alternative to blindly conquering nature is not to neglect nature entirely and focus wholly on man. If our new philosophy is to be well grounded, we shall not merely react against the "air-conditioned nightmare" of our present culture; we shall also carry into the future many of the elements of positive good that the culture actually embraces -- its sense of impersonal truths that lie beyond mere wishful thinking, its technique for collective verification, its capacity for directed thought; indeed, we shall transfer its sense of order from a too-limited realm of science to life at large.

Lewis Mumford

* * * * *

If we do not voluntarily bring population growth under control in

the next one or two decades, then nature will do it for us in the most

brutal way, whether we like it or not.

Henry Kendall
Nobel Laureate, Physics


Emerging Concensus Among the World's Scientist's
Regarding Our Global Future
1600 scientists from leading academies in 70 countries, including 104 Nobel Laureates and the majority of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (advisors of the Pope) signed the following document, circulated by the Union of Concerned Scientists (26 Church Street, Cambridge, MA 02238, U.S.A.):

WORLD SCIENTISTS'

WARNING TO HUMANITY

Introduction -- Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.

The Environment

The environment is suffering critical stress.

The Atmosphere: Stratospheric ozone depletion threatens us with enhanced ultra-violet radiation at the earth's surface, which can be damaging or lethal to many life forms. Air pollution near ground level, and acid precipitation, are already causing widespread injury to humans, forests and crops.

Water Resources: Heedless exploitation of depletable ground water supplies endangers food production and other essential human systems. Heavy demands on the world's surface waters have resulted in serious shortages in some 80 countries, containing 40% of the world's population. Pollution of rivers, lakes, and groundwater further limits the supply.

Oceans: Destructive pressure on the oceans is severe, particularly in the coastal regions which produce most of the world's food fish. The total marine catch is now at or above the estimated maximum sustainable yield. Some fisheries have already shown signs of collapse. Rivers carrying heavy burdens of eroded soil into the seas also car-ry industrial, municipal, agricultural, and life-stock waste -- some of it toxic.

Soil: Loss of soil productivity, which is causing extensive land abandonment, is a widespread byproduct of current practices in agriculture and animal husbandry. Since 1945, 11% of the earth's vegetated surface has been degraded -- an area larger than India and China combined -- and per capita food production in many parts of the world is decreasing.

Forests: Tropical rain forests, as well as tropical and temperate dry forests, are being destroyed rapidly. At present rates, some critical forest types will be gone in a few years, and most of the tropical rain forest will be gone before the end of the next century. With them will go large numbers of plant and animal species.

Living Species: The irreversible loss of species, which by 2100 may reach one third of all species now living, is especially serious. We are losing the potential they hold for providing medicinal and other benefits, and the contribution that genetic diversity of life forms gives to the robustness of the world's biological systems and to the astonishing beauty of the earth itself.

Much of this damage is irreversible on a scale of centuries or permanent. Other processes appear to pose additional threats. Increasing levels of gases in the atmosphere from human activities, including carbon dioxide released from fossil fuel burning and from deforestation, may alter climate on a global scale. Predictions of global warming are still un-certain -- with projected effects ranging from tolerable to very severe -- but the potential risks are very great.

Our massive tampering with the world's interdependent web of life -- coupled with the environmental damage inflicted by deforestation, species loss, and climate change -- could trigger widespread adverse effects, including unpredictable collapses of critical biological systems whose interactions and dynamics we only imperfectly understand.

Uncertainty over the extent of these effects cannot excuse complacency or delay in facing the threats.

Population

The earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we are fast approaching many of the earth's limits. Current economic practices which damage the environment, in both developed and underdeveloped nations, cannot be continued without the risk that vital global systems will be damaged without repair.

Pressures resulting from unrestrained population growth put demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future. If we are to halt the destruction of our environment, we must accept limits to that growth. A World Bank estimate indicates that world population will not stabilize at less than 12.4 billion, while the United Nations concludes that the eventual total could reach 14 billion, a near tripling of today's 5.4 billion. But, even at this moment, one person in five lives in absolute poverty without enough to eat, and one in ten suffers serious malnutrition.

No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished.

WARNING

We the undersigned, senior members of the world's scientific community, hierby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it, is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.

What We Must Do:

Five inextricably linked areas must be addressed simultaneously:

1. We must bring environmentally damaging activities under control to restore and protect the integrity of the earth's systems we depend on.

We must, for example, move away from fossil fuels to more benign, inexhaustible energy sources to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the pollution of our air and water. Priority must be given to the devel-opment of energy sources matched to third world needs -- small scale and relatively easy to implement.

We must halt deforestation, injury to and loss of agricultural land, and the loss of terrestrial and marine plant and animal species.

2. We must manage resources crucial to human welfare more effectively.

We must give high priority to efficient use of energy, water, and other materials, including expansion of conservation and recycling.

3. We must stabilize population. This will be pos-sible only if all nations recognize that it requires improved social and economic conditions, and the adoption of effective, voluntary family planning.

4. We must reduce and eventually eliminate poverty.

5. We must ensure sexual equality, and guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions.

The developed nations are the largest polluters in the world today. They must greatly reduce their overconsumption, if we are to reduce pressures on resources and the global environment. The developed nations have the obligation to provide aid and support to developing nations, because only the developed nations have the financial resources and the technical skills for these tasks.

Acting on this recognition is not altruism, but enlightened self-interest: whether industrialized or not, we all have but one lifeboat. No nation can escape from injury when global biological systems are damaged. No nation can escape from conflicts over increasingly scarce resources. In addition, environmental and economic instabilities will cause mass migrations with incalculable consequences for developed and undeveloped nations alike.

Developing nations must realize that environmental damage is one of the gravest threats they face, and that attempts to blunt it will be overwhelmed if their populations go unchecked. The greatest peril is to become trapped in spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic and environmental collapse.

Success in this global endeavor will require a great reduction in violence and war. Resources now devoted to the preparation and conduct of war -- amounting to over $1 trillion annually -- will be badly needed in the new tasks and should be diverted to the new challenges.

A new ethic is required -- a new attitude towards discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the earth. We must recognize the earth's limited capacity to provide for us. We must recognize its fragility. We must no longer allow it to be ravaged. This ethic must motivate a great movement, convincing reluctant leaders and reluctant governments and reluctant people themselves to ef-fect the needed changes.

The scientists issuing this warning hope that our message will reach and affect people everywhere. We need the help of many.

We require the help of the world community of scientists -- natural, social, economic, political;

We require the help of the world's business and industrial leaders;

We require the help of the world's religious leaders; and

We require the help of the world's peoples.

We call on all to join us in this task.

- - -

Reprinted with permission granted by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

=====================================

Evolving nature (including human nature and sociocultural development) sets the framework by which ultimate meaning, moral right and wrong, and so on are determined. The highest good becomes the preservation and further enhancement of an ever-evolving quality of existence. An open continuing future becomes essential. Otherwise...the entire human venture with everything it means, developed over eons, is lost in oblivion and cosmic meaning-lessness.

Roger W. Sperry
Neuroscientist and Nobel Laureate


ON SIMPLICITY

Discussion of In Search of the Simple Life
by David E. Shi

As an associate professor of history, David E. Shi has set himself the task to prove that the search for simplicity in life is deeply ingrained in the American psyche. To pursue their ideal of plain living, hard work, and high thinking, the Pilgrim Fathers, the Puritans, and other religious refugees left their homes and crossed the ocean. Unfortunately, they succeeded so well, that material wealth could not help accumulating, and that they could not help succombing to the temptation to toss their simplicity out of the window.

Nevertheless, Shi believes that there must still be some solid remnants left, which it would not be impossible to reawaken, if the need arises. To this end, his book is dedicated.

Simplicity, Shi explains, means among other things that the primary reward of work is well-being rather than money, that ecological responsibility for the proper use of the world's resources is being furthered, and, mainly, "the conscious desire to purge life of some of its complexities and superfluities in order to pursue the `higher values.'"

So deeply are these ideals still ingrained in the American soul that, as a 1977 poll showed, a large part of the United States' citizens express "deep scepticism about the nation's capacity for unlimited growth and are wary of benefits growth is supposed to bring." Not less than 10 million Americans are for voluntary simplicity.

However, Shi warns of "naive sentimentality" about the quality of life in the past and speaks of the liberating and enlightening effects of prosperity and technology. Simplicity should reveal the beauty of life, not destroy it. "Any virtue pressed too far becomes counter- productive," he says. And, though he promotes the ideal of plain living and high thinking, he reports that even a practical idealist like Thoreau discovered that plain living does not necessarily lead to high thinking. "Simplicity is first a quality of mind and only secondarily a manifestation of one's standard of living." (Thoreau)

But once the mind has decided to discard unneeded clutter in order to discover genuine wealth, simplicity becomes a rewarding principle. Shi says at the end of his book: "The many voices, past and present, contained in this anthology demonstrate that the ideal of plain living and high thinking is part of our historical fabric, part of our common cultural soul, one of our most renewable and invig-orating natural resources. As Emerson once observed, `Life is selection, no more.' The enduring legacy of the simple life in American history is that we can all afford to select more wisely."

- - -

David E. Shi is associate professor of history at Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina, U.S.A.

===================================

Many effective kinds of simplification will perhaps be resisted at first on the ground that this means a "lowering of standards." But this overlooks the fact that many of our standards are themselves extranneous and purposeless. What is lowered from the standpoint of mechanical complexity or social prestige may be raised from the standpoint of the vital function served. Consider the gain in physical freedom modern women made, when the corsets and pettycoats, the breast-deformers, pelvis constrictors, backbone-curvers of the Victorian period gave way to the garb of the early 1920's.

Lewis Mumford

* * * * *

A sentence has formed a character

and a character subdued a kingdom.

Old Proverb

* * * * *

We differ emphatically with many of our friends and acquaintances who say, in effect "Never mind how we live today; we are in this dog-eat-dog social system and may as well get what we can out of it. But tomorrow, in a wiser, more social and more humane world, we will live more rationally, more economically, more efficiently, more socially." Such talk is nonsense. As we live in the presence, so is our future shaped, chanelled, and largely determined.

Helen and Scott Nearing
Living the Good Life

* * * * *

If simplicity of living is a valid principle, there is an important precaution and condition of its application. I can explain it best by something Mahatma Gandhi said to me. We were talking about simple living and I said that it was easy for me to give up most things, but that I had a greedy mind and wanted to keep my many books. He said, "Then don't give them up. As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing if you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you, or when it seems to interfere with that which is more greatly desired."

Richard Gregg
The Value of Voluntary Simplicity

* * * * *

Sam Keen

An average indigo bunting is much more miraculous than walking on water.

- - -

The spiritual revolution lacks a bullshit detector. There is so much nonsense; we are often unwilling to think, to discriminate, and to judge. We have an immense desire to fool ourselves by believing what is convenient, easy and pleasing when the world is actually in turmoil. This means that those committed to the spiritual paradigm may not ever become a potent political force, because potent politics comes out of organization and hard thinking as well as a clear heart.

- - -

To have a calling is to discipline a gift that you have so that you use it well. To be effective, don't try to do everything. Listen to where your gifts are. You can be sure that, wherever you find your greatest delight, you will find your gift and it will coincide with that which is needed.

Practice solitude. All transcendence requires the practice of silence. The still small voice within is not going to be heard in a group.

- - -

The life of the spirit is cultivating the ability to go into the depth of ourselves and touch that part of ourselves that is undefinable -- which therefore we can only label as spirit -- and know that this immense yearning in us is part of some creative power far greater than ourselves. That which has been called by the ten thousand names of God is forever wrapped in marvellous silence, and that is ultimately who we are.

- - -


From "Dying Gods And Borning Spirits."

Sam Keen is philosopher, author, co-producer of TV documentaries, and consultant at more than 200 colleges, universities, clinics, institutes, and corporations worldwide.


THE JOY OF THINKING

Jerome R. Malino

After pointing out that science and logic alone cannot provide life with meaning, Malino says:

The most important things in life have nothing to do with reason and fall into a vast domain of the non-rational, areas of experience immune to the cannons of logic, but nevertheless critical in shaping a meaning for human experience.

- - -

To adopt a hypothesis is an act of faith and must be understood as such. Fred Barry, in The Scientific Habit of Thought, said, "A hypothesis is an inference based on knowledge which is insufficient to prove its high probability." This act of faith is not an enemy of reason but its complement. Faith has gotten a bad name because there have always been those ready to accept, in its name, things refuted and rejected by science and by reason. The result has often been obscurantism and worse. But we are not talking about the credo quia absurdum kind of faith, but a faith that recognizes its limitations and stays within the realm of rational discourse.

- - -

Reason is quite simply not enough....Reason stimulates the mind, it does not stir the heart. -- In confronting the meaning of life, reason alone leaves us mute and powerless; it is our faith-hypothesis that sustains the day and welcomes the morrow.

- - -

We ask more of a faith-hypothesis; that it be not inconsistent with reason and the data of experience. We ask also that it have a functional utility, that it be able to serve a desirable purpose for those who accept the hypothesis. It gives a reality to many things which might otherwise appear to be little more than pious platitudes. In the wake of our faith-hypothesis, compassion has a place, understanding matters, fellowship and love are ingredients for human fulfillment. Justice is not merely an ideal, but is written large into the order of things as is the Law of Gravity or the Second Law of Thermo- dynamics. Peace is a condition for helping to realize the potential in human beings and truth is a guide that shows the way. The beauty in art and music and literature takes on a substantive reality, as real as earth and sea, as mountain and plain.

There are some for whom this faith-hypothesis is summed up in the use of the word "God." It is a way of saying that life does have meaning and purpose and that goodness is not a figment of human imagination, but a reality in and of itself. It is a way of suggesting the highest good as the goal of human behavior....If we use this word in moments of life-cycle experience, it is because we seek, thereby, to see our frail human experience as part of cosmic reality.

- - -

We use music and art and meditation to achieve a personal transcendance, to realize an element in the human potential that would otherwise be unused. Prayer becomes for those who use the faith hypo-thesis-God, the means of noting the reality about us, a way of affirming the meaningfulness of human experience in the face of all that seems to threaten that meaning and to affirm a personal and collective allegiance to all those things which enhance life's meaning and encourage in us the feeling that human growth and evolution are not finished, that what we know as humanity is but a prelude of what can be, and that we can have a share in fashioning the result. We have a role in creating the future.

- - -

From "A Faith-Hypothesis." Excerpted, with permission, from the IRAS Newsletter of Oct. 15, 1992.

Jerome R. Malino, D.D., Rabbi Emeritus, was twice president of the IRAS (Institute on Religion in an Age of Science), has traveled widely, studied in Israel and contributed greatly to Jewish affairs.


THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THINKING

Hanna Newcombe

Peace Process as a Life Process (Condensed)

Life is a non-equilibrium process, a balancing act, like a ping-pong ball dancing on top of a water jet. While equilibrium systems can be called "stable" (like a ball at the bottom of a valley -- there is no tendency for it to move out of it), living systems have been called "hyperstable"; though always tending to fall toward equilibrium (which is death), they are supported in a high of new energy and materials, as in the water jet.

Now I wish to transpose this metaphor to peace. Peace is sometimes seen by "realists" as the result of a balance of power, which is a kind of equilibrium. On the other hand, "idealists" tend to define peace as total social harmony, which is another kind of equilibrium. I want to argue that both are wrong.

Peace is a complex balancing act in a world full of conflicts. We cannot and should not expect the conflicts to end; they are a means which human society uses to remove injustices, adjust inequalities, solve problems, remove oppression -- in other words evolve toward more viable structures. But they must not be allowed to degenerate into violence. Violence destroys living systems.

Peace is a social order in which we deal with conflicts creatively and constructively. It is not the static equilibrium of a balance of terror in which conflicts are suppressed -- creating havoc in the "collective unconscious" -- nor a state of harmony and universal love, precisely because it is not in some final state of equilibrium but still evolving. Peace is a continuing process which is never finished....We slipped into violence again and again. But we have not yet killed human society, though we still might. It's like the dawning of life on Earth; it might have failed to achieve a take-off as on Mars or Venus. Our incipient peace take-off might fail, but it might succeed. There never was a guarantee for life and there is none for peace. Death and equilibrium are easy -- all you have to do is do nothing. But to keep that water jet going, you must apply effort and energy.

Life on Earth probably started many times only to flicker out again, until some primitive cells were persistent enough to stay with it and not give up. Everything depends on patience and persistence and continued effort, even if it seems hopeless. Let us keep peace growing, in order to keep life on Earth going.

- - -

Dr. Hanna Newcombe is Director of the Peace Research Institute-Dundas in Ontario, Canada, L9H 4E5, and publisher of Peace Research Abstracts and Peace Research Reviews -- among many other contributions to a peaceful world.

===================================

Discussion of

Nature, History, and God: Toward an Integrated Conceptualization

by Gordon D. Kaufman

In the last issue (July 1993, p.8) I drew attention to an interesting article that in part contradicts my position that evolution is not goaldi-rected. Gordon D. Kaufman argues for a middle-position between completely chance-directed evolution (as described by Monod) and evolution directed by a higher agency or internal guiding power. This view, based solidly in science and shared by many eminent scientists (e.g. R.W.Sperry), describes the emergence of constraining phenomena in nature (such as new entities, laws, and properties) which increasingly guide further evolution along what Kaufman calls "directional movements" or "trajectories" -- not toward a predetermined goal, but neither completely random or undetermined. Such directional movements are visible only in retrospect; they cannot be predicted.

Kaufman argues further that the trajectory that gave rise to the evolution of humans is being continued directly from nature -- through the human brain and its myths and thoughts -- to history. There is no break, and we are justified to feel the same pre-scientific awe toward the creative power that brought us and the universe into being as our ancestors felt, who called this power "God." Although we now know that the original idea of God was created by our imagination, Kaufman suggests that the word be retained to endow that part of creation that resulted in our experience of higher values with the power needed to further direct our lives.

The symbol of a personal God, Kaufman believes, is preferable to an abstract concept, because "this self-making through devotion to idealized images is central to our historicity and significantly distin-guishes us from other animals." It is humanizing. And yet, our awe and devotion must never paralize our own creativity or search for knowledge. "Concepts and images -- foci of attention and devotion -- which tend toward a freezing of further human development, which lead to the creation of rigid, unchangeable patterns of selfhood and social structure and thus stultify further humanization, are clearly undesirable."

Though our images are brain-bound, the striving toward a more humane world within most of us is vastly more than "only" brain activity. Evolution created our brains to think as we do, and the symbol of "God" gives reality and power to our aims.

- - -

Gordon D. Kaufman is professor at the Harvard University Divinity School, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.


THOUGHT IN ACTION

Leon Vickman, a Californian lawyer, prosecuted 28 nuclear nations during a 6-year lawsuit (filed after 1982) on behalf of "all the persons on Earth." A Provisional District World Court agreed that "the rules of war do indeed govern nuclear weapons, and that these rules prohibit their use or threat of use....All three [prominent American] judges granted the injunctions by plaintiffs," and declared nuclear weapons illegal. -- That judgment is relevant and important. Though the end of the cold war has increased our safety temporarily, nuclear weapons proliferation remains a constant danger.

* * * * *

The Miracle of Kerala

Condensed from a contribution by William M. Alexander, headed "Thinking of Kerala."

As shown by the statistic below, Kerala in Southern India has achieved sustainability and an adequate standard of living through population stabilization, democracy, self-reliance, ingenuity and common sense in the midst of an ocean of despair.

	U.S.A. & Canada	Kerala	India
Population in millions	283	29	883
Total Fertility Rate	2.0	2.0	3.9
Quality of Life Indicators
Infant Mortality Rate	9	17	91
Life Expectancy, Male	72	70	56
Life Expectancy, Female	79	74	56
Literacy, Male	99%	94%	64%
Literacy, Female	99%	86%	39%
Resource Consumption indicator
Gross Product per Capita	$21,500	$387	$350

Population Reference Bureau, 1992 World Population Data Sheet, and Government of Kerala Economic Review, 1992.

How can this exemplary performance of Kerala be replicated? Alexander informs us that studies conducted have sofar "not produced clear explanations ready for implementation elsewhere." They led to an important insight, however. A sustainable world needs a new interpretation of "efficiency," differing from the one in the West, where the word refers to time and money. In a world being rapidly depleted of essential resources, the "efficiency of Earth resource use" becomes a more meaningful definition.

A second insight derived from Alexander's work in Kerala is what he calls "the promise of democracy." He reports about a relative absence of beggers and homeless people there, about an "amazing degree of sophistication" among former lowest caste and outcastes, a high standard of equality and fairness, equal opportunity, land redistribution, free education and health services for all, open access to public employment, and evenhanded law enforcement.

In conclusion of his paper, Alexander writes: "Imagining sustainability for the entire human population, I have studied the sustainable behavior of the Malayalee people of the South Indian State of Kerala. My effort has produced two rather commonplace ideas: (1) Resource use efficiency must replace time and money efficiency. (2) Genuine democracy must replace the form of democracy. The study of a sustainable society has convinced me that these two are `right' for our time."

- - -

Condensed from "Thinking of Kerala" by William M. Alexander, 30 El Mirador Court, San Louis Obispo, CA 93401, U.S.A.

* * * * *

1993 International Albert Schweitzer Prize for the Humanities (awarded every four years). From the text of the communique:

"Prize winner for the humanities is Robert Muller, the "Philosopher of the United Nations," and first Chancellor of the University for Peace in Costa Rica, who has spent his life advocating a peaceful world without borders. Muller grew up in Alsace-Lorraine, a territory which was claimed off and on by both France and Germany. He was imprisoned during World War II by the Gestapo while crossing the border into France to avoid being drafted into the German army. He later escaped to France, where he joined the French Resistance.

After the war, he returned to Alsace-Lorraine and decided to devote his life to peace and joined the United Nations Secretariat in 1948. In 38 years of service at the UN, Muller rose to the rank of Assistant-Secretary General and worked directly with U Thant and other leaders of the UN helping to coordinate the work of thirty-two UN specialized agencies and world programs. Considered the father of global education, Muller produced the World Core Curriculum which is used in schools around the world and at the Robert Muller School in Arlington, Texas.

Now in active retirement, he divides his time among the UN in New York and the University of Peace in Costa Rica, and continues to advocate for peace and a better world."

Robert Muller is a writer and speaker of international reputation. He has authored books in French and English; many have been translated into other languages. His French novel "Sima Mon Amour" received the 1983 Erchman-Chatrian literary Prize. In 1989, Robert Muller received the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education for his work and writings on peace and global education. - - For a list of Muller's books, please contact his publisher: World Happiness and Cooperation, P.O.Box 1153, Anacortes, WA 98221, U.S.A.

(Please contact also the United Nation's Bookstore in New York.)


REFLECTIONS

Simplicity is not restricted only to a dream-life in the country of the kind Thoreau led. On the contrary, outstanding scientists have recognized it as the foundation of their success.

For instance, Professor Abraham Pais, a distinguished contributor to theoretical physics, and good personal acquaintance of Bohr and Einstein, wrote that "both had a deep need for simplicity in thought and behavior."

Simplicity, thus, is an intrinsic part of being a genius.


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Henry W. Kendall for sending me his quote, the Union of Concerned Scientist for permission to reprint the "World Scientist's Warning to Humanity," Sam Keen and the Institute of Noetic Sciences for permission to quote from Keen's work, Weiant Wathen-Dunn and Jerome R. Malino for permission to quote from the IRAS-Newsletter, and Dr. Hanna Newcombe and William M. Alexander for their original contributions.

REFERENCES

Alexander, W.M. Thinking Of Kerala. Original contribution (condensed).

Gregg, R. The Value of Voluntary Simplicity. Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill, 1936.

Kaufman, G. "Nature, History, and God: Toward an Integrated Conceptualization." Zygon, 27:379- 401,

(December 1992). Keen, S. "Dying Gods and Borning Spirits." Noetic Sciences Review. No. 24 (Winter 1992).

Malino, J.R. "A Faith-Hypothesis." IRAS-Newsletter, Oct. 15, 1992, pp.2-3.

Muller, R. (Prize for the Humanities). Press Release sent to me by Michael Parker, publisher, World Happiness and Cooperation, P.O.Box 1153, Anacortes, WA 98221, U.S.A.

Mumford, L. The Conduct of Life. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1951.

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