French Edition of Weizsäcker-Ikeda Dialogue Published
Dr. Weizsäcker and Mr. Ikeda meet for the first time at Soka University (March 2010, Tokyo)
PARIS, France: Publishing company Éditions L’Harmattan has
released a French edition of Knowing Our
Worth: Conversations on Energy and Sustainability (French title: Connaître notre valeur: Conversations sur
l’énergie et le développement durable), a dialogue between Ernst Ulrich von
Weizsäcker, one of the foremost authorities on global environmental policy and
co-president of the Club of Rome, and Daisaku Ikeda. This marks the fifth
foreign language edition of the book following English, German, Italian and
traditional Chinese translations.
Dr. Weizsäcker and Mr. Ikeda first met in 2010 at Soka University
in Tokyo, and their dialogue continued through a series of written
correspondences. Throughout the eight conversations covered in the book
including, “A World Without War,” “Green Growth,” “Environmental Awareness,”
and “Social and Ecological Justice,” the authors consider strategies that will
enable humanity to achieve a sustainable future while probing the impact of
politics, economics, history and ideology on the environmental agenda.
French edition of Knowing Our Worth: Conversations on Energy and Sustainability by Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker and Daisaku Ikeda
In the conversation on “Sufficiency and Human Fulfillment,” Mr. Ikeda poses the question of what makes a society affluent in the truest sense and what constitutes a truly happy way of life. He writes, “In order to find fundamental solutions to the environmental challenges we face, we need to reexamine both the presuppositions upon which our societies operate and our own lifestyles.”
He adds: “It is clear that the underlying cause of the
environmental destruction that is proliferating on a global scale is an
unchecked increase in human desires—in other words, greed. It seems to me that
this is the fundamental cause that has given birth to the mass consumer society
that the economically advanced nations have enjoyed up to now. But is a
society, a civilization, that seems to be engaged in a competition of
ever-expanding greed for limited resources and energy truly an affluent
society?”
Dr. Weizsäcker responds: “It will be necessary to persuade masses
of people that happiness can be attained without wasteful ways of life,” and
that being permanently in competition for ever more consumption makes it
impossible for us to enjoy happy and rewarding experiences such as social
solidarity, playing music in groups, enjoying one’s children, participating in
theater, and so forth. “’Sufficiency communities’—communities that value
satisfaction rather than unlimited consumption—do exist, and they see
themselves as rather more advanced, not backward.”
Knowing Our
Worth is a dialogue in which the authors have set out to address the
question of what is to be done in order to protect the future of Earth and the
happiness of humanity.
[Adapted from an article in September
24, 2020, issue of the Seikyo Shimbun, Soka Gakkai, Japan]
