Centralising power is greatest threat

True pearls: From anti-globalisation scholar and activist Vandana Shiva (b. 1952)

- RICHARD HOUSE

WE have to escape from the illusions that enslave our minds.

A single, one-dimensional way of thinking has created a monoculture of the mind, generating models of production which destroy diversity and legitimise that destruction as progress, growth and improvement.

Diversity creates harmony, and harmony creates beauty, balance, bounty and peace in nature and society, in agriculture and culture, in science and in politics.

Living democracy grows like a tree, from the bottom up. People will have to build their own economies and rebuild democracy as a living democracy.

Simplicity and non-violence are the basis of an economy of wellbeing, and such an economy must be localised. Centralised economic systems erode the democratic base of politics.