An Interview with Satish Kumar at the New Story Summit

This is a fabulous, rich, beautiful interview. Deeply spiritual, moving, enlightening. Another world is possible. Bless all beings ~ Molly

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Kosmos: Satish, what is your perspective on the New Story?

Satish Kumar: The New Story will be a story of reunion, reconnection. In the last couple of hundred years, we have come to believe that nature is separate from us and we are separate from nature. Nature is out there, and we can do what we like to it. We can cut down the rain forest. We can put animals in factory farms and slaughter them as we like. We can over-fish the oceans. We can pollute the rivers. We can pollute the water and change climate. We are somehow superior to nature. We are somehow rulers of nature. That’s the old story. The new story is that we are part of nature. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist master says, we are interbeings. Nothing is separate. The New Story is that we are all interrelated. We take care of each other. We are dependent on each other. Therefore, replenishing the soil, replenishing society and being part of one continuum—that’s the new story.

The scientific world, the materialistic world, the world of commerce, the world of business, the world of individualism, the world of capitalism, world of communism—all these worlds are the old story now. Where we think we exploit nature, we exploit people. Market rules, profit rules, money rules. We work for name, fame, power, money, profit. That’s the old story.

Kosmos: Where do you see The New Story being lived right now?

SK: The New story is emerging. It is emerging in communities, like Findhorn community, like Schumacher College, like ecovillages. The New Story is being played out through art, culture, music, and communities. And through the ecological movement and ecovillages movement. We are waking up. We are not slaves of the market. Our human life has a greater meaning than making money, making profit, and working for the market or for multinational corporations. Multinational corporations and a market economy have transformed human beings into instruments of making money. Human beings should be the end. And money should be the means to an end. Caring for nature should be the end and money should be a means to take care of nature. The New Story turns that around, and makes money into means. And nature, humanity, and human welfare, human well-being, human happiness—these are the ends. So, these are the kind of transformations that we are creating. And this is happening now.

Large numbers of young people are waking up. And they are saying, “We are not here just to work for multinational corporations and make money for them. We are here to live. We have to find the meaning of life.” The old story is a story of measurement. And the New Story is to bring measurement and meaning together. You cannot measure meaning.

Kosmos: So, an economy that serves meaning, and serves our inner being, and serves ecology, the rest of living creation. What does that really look like on the ground level?

SK: It’s an emerging story. And in this emerging story, people are are moving away from the fossil fuel-based economy, to a more renewable economy. That is what is called the ‘transition town’ movement. There are three hundred towns in Britain that are making this transition. Taking energy from solar power, from wind power, from water power—all this is part of the New Story.

Then there is the old story of food. It doesn’t matter where or how it is grown as long as it is packaged in plastic, put on the supermarket shelves, and bought as a commodity. In the New Story food is not commodity. Food is sacred. We need to be connected with soil, with animals that we take care of. So, the relationship between food and humans is the emerging story. We respect food, and we participate in growing it. Earth is a living entity. And if it’s a living organism, then we have to have a reverence for all life. Food should be local, organic rather than grown with chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides. And then, we should also have natural food, rather than consuming genetically engineered food. So, New Story is a story of wholeness, relatedness, connectedness.

To continue this interview, please go here: http://www.kosmosjournal.org/news/an-interview-with-satish-kumar-at-the-new-story-summit/

 This interview appears in the current Fall/Winter issue of Kosmos Journal.