Let’s Reboot the Future
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Let’s Reboot the Future
The Case for Idealism: Satish Kumar
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Photo by Carles Rodriguez Marin
Peace pilgrim, lifelong activist, former monk and founder of The Resurgence Trust, Satish Kumar has been inspiring global change for over 50 years, and at 90 he is still choosing to be, in his own words, a naïve idealist. At nine he renounced the world to become a Jain monk, against the wishes of his businessmen brothers, who thought him too idealistic. He decided then that being naïve was exactly what he wanted, and he has never let go of it. In his twenties he walked 8,000 miles across 15 countries without money, from India towards the world's nuclear capitals, in the name of disarmament, meeting Bertrand Russell, Martin Luther King and others along the way.
The pragmatic people, he argues, are the ones ruining the world with war, waste and warming. It is the idealists, the Buddha, Gandhi, King, who actually change it. Idealism, for Satish, is not a flaw to grow out of but the very thing the world most needs us to hold onto.
That conviction led him to found Schumacher College in Devon. He wanted an education of head, heart and hands, teaching young people courage, creativity and the confidence to make their own path rather than wait for one. It is idealism as a practical training, a way of seeing that dares young people to imagine differently and act on it.
Satish now wants every country to establish a Minister of Peace, noting that 194 nations fund armies and defence while not one invests in peace itself. War, he says, achieves nothing: not in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Ukraine or Gaza, only lives lost. The age of war has passed, he believes, and the age of peace is what we must now build, spending our energy on how to be good neighbours rather than good enemies. It is a bracing, hopeful call from someone who has lived every word of it.
More about Satish:
Peace-pilgrim, life-long activist, and former monk, Satish Kumar has been inspiring global change for over 50 years. He undertook a pilgrimage for peace, walking for two years without money from India to America for the cause of nuclear disarmament. Now in his 80s, Satish has devoted his life to campaigning for ecological regeneration and social justice. He is a world-renown author and international speaker, founder of The Resurgence Trust and Editor Emeritus of Resurgence & Ecologist – a change-making magazine he edited for over 40 years. To find more about Satish and join him in protecting people and planet click here.
Link here to the Resurgence Trust
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