The other day I was reading a book about the American Revolution and the influences of European political thought and it occurred to me that it would be great to update the ideas of liberty and meaning in the Declaration of Independence – but to speak of current day dilemmas such as wellbeing and the perfect storm of climate change etc. Well I don’t have to because Dr. Susan Krundieck of the New Zealand Transition Towns Network has now authored the wonderful Oamaru Declaration.
This 2008 update of Jefferson’s 1776 work speaks or all the current day challenges we face as we hope to Transition towards a non-growth-obsessed wellbeing way of life in which the wellbeing of people and planet and concepts such as flourishing and ‘good lives’ are again the prime focus of political philosophy and daily life. I say again because in the days of the first faltering attempts at democracy these were the concerns of people such as Aristotle, Plato and Socrates.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, Justice, the pursuit of Happiness, a Healthy Natural Environment and Sustainability for ourselves, the Third Generation and the Seventh Generation…
Please do read the Declaration – it has more meaning than much I have read for a long time. It talks of community and rights but also responsibilities, of the role of government, business and the citizens. But most of all it reminds us how mad is our current myopic fixation on quantitative economic growth rather than qualitative economic development.
It reminds me of David Suzuki’s Declaration of Interdependence written in 1992 for the Rio Earth Summit which is also worth revisiting or reading if you have not seen it.
I hope ‘our one and only hope – Obama’ gets to read this as it might inspire his thinking as he dares to dream of a new reality he just maybe has the vision and mandate to articulate. But for now its up to us the citizens to debate and spread this sort of vision in the hope that our inert and sclerotic democratic systems and ‘leaders’ once again feel the space to lead rather than follow the death-knell call of endless mindless growth.
