The World Has Not Improved 1981

The occasion to honor me is probably that my endeavors have proven to be right, be they of artistic, socially critical or ecological nature. These three things are closely interwoven and cannot be separated.

An ecologist without a conscience is doomed to failure, and the same is true of an artist who does not bow to the laws of nature. Who doesn't take nature as a benchmark.

The world has not improved.

The dangers felt have turned into reality.

Nevertheless, today, although nothing has been done, my longstanding warnings are at last being taken seriously.

Yet there are still no grass roofs, no tree-tenants, no plant water purification plants, no humus toilets, no tree duty, no window right.

The essential reafforestation of the cities has not come about.

In 1952 I spoke of the civilization of make-believe, the one we must shake off, myself, the first of all!

I spoke of masses of grey men on the march toward sterility and self-destruction.

In 1953 I realized that the straight line leads to the downfall of humanity.

The straight line is Triumph.

Even if there are certain places where it is recognized that this line is rapidly leading to perdition, its course continues to be plotted.

One doesn‘t have the courage to simply not accomplish buildings that have been recognized as wrong, and thereby give new nourishment to calamity.

You have only to set a crown on your head, and recognise the wealth around you.

But you are too weak and too cowardly to do this.

I would rather live in a valley with rich kings than in a valley of tears.

Then I would not need to be a king myself.

When everyone is quite naturally and simply creative, a paradise, a kingdom is right there where he is.

There one has no need to go far to reach the next paradise, the next kingdom, because paradise starts round the corner at the neighbour’s place.

There is no energy crisis.

There is only an insane waste of energy.

Does nature know such a thing as an energy crisis?

Do the birds, the trees, the beetles have an energy crisis?

Only man imagines he has an energy crisis, because he has gone mad.

Perfect ecology must be that man places himself back into his environmental barriers so that the earth can regenerate.

We seemingly live in material happiness, but actually in spiritual unhappiness.

To be happy, man does not need to be rich on the outside.

To be happy, man needs an inside wealth of the soul.

To be happy, man needs no external mechanic energy but a sincere creative energy deep inside.

The insane unjustified consumption of energy should correspond with the equal amount of responsible intelligence.

But this is not so.

Man remained a stupid animal that all of a sudden has crazy amounts of energy, of poison and deadly weapons at his disposal. And he wastes this all blindly destroying his environment and killing his own brothers.

And greedily this man, this stupid animal is asking for more energy, more poison and more deadly weapons.

The consumer society does not bring us salvation.

We produce without sense.

We consume like mad.

We waste blindly.

Man degraded himself to a manipulated consumer item.