Realism is Outdated
Satish Kumar is an inspiring thinker and if you happen to be in Lewes East Sussex this Sunday you can hear him talk at Zu Studios, at 6pm. Zu is at 7 Phoenix Place Lewes BN7 2QJ.
Satish will be introduced by Peter Owen-Jones and will talk about the economy, the environment and new spiritual directions. All are welcome there is no charge, just please make a donation on the door.
Satish has been a Jain monk, nuclear disarmament advocate, pacifist, and is the current editor of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. Now living in England, Kumar is founder and Director of Programmes of the Schumacher College international centre for ecological studies, and of The Small School. His most notable accomplishment is a “peace walk” with a companion to the capitals of four of the nuclear-armed countries – Washington, London, Paris and Moscow, a trip of over 8,000 miles. He insists that reverence for nature should be at the heart of every political and social debate. Defending criticism that his goals are unrealistic, he has said,
“Look at what realists have done for us. They have led us to war and climate change, poverty on an unimaginable scale, and wholesale ecological destruction. Half of humanity goes to bed hungry because of all the realistic leaders in the world. I tell people who call me “unrealistic” to show me what their realism has done. Realism is an outdated, overplayed and wholly exaggerated concept.”
8 Responses to “Realism is Outdated”
Yes! Imagination rules!
“Realism is an outdated, overplayed and wholly exaggerated concept.”
Then what he’s describing here can’t be realism at all! Exaggeration by definition is not realistic, for example.
I think there isn’t enough realism in the thinking of so-called realists, because it’s their fantasies and disconnection from nature that lead to “war and climate change, poverty on an unimaginable scale, and wholesale ecological destruction”.
IMO, realism has been hijacked and misused.
Realism, aka science, has brought us longer lives and less suffering – it still has a long way to go. Many of the remaining wars are religious, rather than realistic. Increased CO2 (aka plant food) is greening the planet, which is in a cooling part of it’s endless solar-induced cycles.
This guy is being totally unrealistic!
I would agree, only, that religions that stem from the imagination of Abraham are the result of most of the bloodshed known to man.
Well Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot’s bloodshed spring to mind, none of them related to religion!
There is a diference between realistic and logical, and science might be logical and organized, but not realisitic. Science is the ultimate unreality. Imagining thing that might exist…experimenting based in your imagination…science is like magic. It changes the world based in one thought.
And of course the USA wars in S- Korea and Vietnam were anti-communist , so political, Iraq was about oil, and Afghanistan about opium (Afghanistan is now producing 3 to 4 times the amount of legal opioids for the West of 12 years ago).
Science isn’t always realistic: they’re talking about putting people on Mars when there are plenty of problems to resolve on this planet. But that too is caused by imagination: the imagination of the scientists and visions of space travel given preference over current problems. Couldn’t they apply their imaginations to these problems instead of thinking about ones that haven’t even happened yet?
I blame Star Trek. 😉
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