QUOTES
No
matter how hostile the environment in which we are working is, we must never cease
to insist that development is about people and not about objects. That the aim
of development must be neither producerism not consumerism, but the satisfaction
of fundamental human needs, which are not only needs of humanity, but needs of
being as well. We will never deny that subsistence is a fundamental human need
which must be satisfied through adequate income, nutrition, housing and work for
all. But we will also insist that protection, affection, understanding, participation,
leisure, creation, identity and freedom are extremely fundamental human needs
as well.
All
those of us - and let me repeat that we are many who work at the human scale for
human solutions where human beings really are, form a group that is powerful because
it lacks all greed for power. We are - like in ancient times of generalized crisis
- the new "monasteries where the wealth of our cultural variety and diversity
shall be preserved, until the hordes of uniformity, of power, of depletion and
of greed collapse under the unsustainable weight of their own gigantic stupidity.
