This talk was delivered on October 28, 2000, as part of the 20th Annual E.F. Schumacher Lecture, at the Salisbury Congregational Church in Salisbury, CT, with an introduction by David Ehrenfeld, ecologist, author, and member of the Board of Directors of the Schumacher Center for a New Economics.
[Beginning of David’s talk:] Fritz Shumacher was truly a man who was ahead of his time. Long before the corporate globalists made “there is no alternative” their mantra, he was telling us that there are alternatives to the large, the tyrannical, and the materialistic. Long before most of us were aware that corporations and the whole process of economic globalization were taking control of our lives and moving us in a deeply destructive direction, he taught us about “small is beautiful” and Buddhist economics, which honors the small, the local, the democratic, the ethical, and the right livelihood. It is a message whose time has come, as we see in the extraordinary development occurring at this moment in history in America and beyond: a remarkable awakening of consciousness that is creating a foundation for political and economic change leading toward the kind of world that Fritz Schumacher envisioned.
Read the full transcript HERE, and find links to the podcast, e-book, and pamphlet versions of the talk.