No one wants growth, constant expansion, physical swelling. Growth is not a human value; it's a means to the ends of sufficiency and security. Once we have enough, no one wants more, unless it is sold to us as a cheap substitute for something else, something non-material.
Interpretation
True growth is about achieving sufficiency and security, not merely expanding endlessly.
In this quote, Donella Meadows emphasizes that growth in the traditional sense is often misaligned with human values. Instead of seeking incessant expansion for its own sake, individuals and societies should focus on achieving a state of 'enough' that brings sufficiency and security, highlighting that true fulfillment lies beyond material accumulation.
In practice
In a discussion about sustainable living, this quote can remind us of the importance of prioritizing sufficiency over endless consumption.
Both the United States and the world economy have already reached - and surpassed - their sustainable physical limits. Ground water is being drawn down, soils eroded, forests cut faster than they grow, fish caught faster than they reproduce, non-renewable fossil fuels burnt without developing substitutes.
There is hardly a place on Earth where people do not log, pave, spray, drain, flood, graze, fish, plow, burn, drill, spill or dump. There is no life zone, with the possible exception of the deep ocean, that we are not degrading.
Speak the truth._x000D_ Speak it loud and often, calmly but insistently,_x000D_ and speak it, as the Quakers say, to power._x000D_ Material accumulation is not the purpose of human existence._x000D_ All growth is not good._x000D_ The environment is a necessity, not a luxury._x000D_ There is such a thing as enough.
No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.
Like the other great revolutions, an environmental revolution will require sacrifices and lead to enormous gains. It, too, will change the face of the land and human institutions, hierarchies, self-definitions, cultures. It will take centuries. If it happens. There is no guarantee, of course.
There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion.
No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.
Bohemia is nothing more than the little country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives and treasure and move away beyond the hills.
Thus sharply did the terrified three learn the difference between an island of make-believe and the same island come true.
All roads lead to Trantor, says the old proverb, and that is where all stars end.
There are 3 questions that would destroy most of the arguments of the Left. The first is - compared to what? The second is - at what cost? And the third is - what hard evidence do you have?
Of all studies, the one he would rather have avoided was that of his own mind. He knew no tragedy so heartrending as introspection.
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