Could slowing down save the planet? This Japanese philosopher thinks so
Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito has become a face of the global movement for "degrowth." From his collectively-owned patch of forest outside Tokyo, he argues that humans need to stop consuming to save the planet.
Category
đź—ž
NewsTranscript
00:00I think it is one of my tasks to explicitly argue for socialism or
00:06communism or some kind of post-capitalism.
00:30Basically, I advocate for the importance of the commons because in the capitalist society
00:39everything is commodified and everything is privatized, everything is monopolized by the
00:44owners.
00:45So we cannot radically change such a system because it is so penetrating to our everyday
00:52life.
00:53But we wanted to start something new and then we thought that, okay, because capitalism
00:57abandons the forest, so why don't we start from the forest to build something new.
01:27We always feel insecure about our future, our job, our career, and we are always compelled
01:34to work and we are very stressed, we almost burn out.
01:38And then we try to kind of overcome that kind of stress by shopping, by consuming more and
01:47consuming also intensely.
01:50And that also destroys the planet, but it's also not really satisfying us.
01:56I also want to emphasize that the degrowth is not simply about giving up everything and
02:01living in frugality and almost poverty, and some people say it's ecological austerity
02:08and even dictatorship and so on, no.