The problems caused by rampant consumerism, the acceptance of short-term fixes, and self-serving behavior with little or no willingness to make sacrifices are still the primary challenges, in my view, that face society. We need a way of exploring environmental issues that is realistic and honest, yet hopeful and inspirational. This will require an increasing attempt to learn from nature: what will nature permit us to do before it is likely to destroy us?

“It’s become so trivialized, freedom. It’s wonderful to be able to go where I want and do what I want and buy what I want, buy and buy, and get and get, and talk and talk, and
I have no constraints. We certainly need external liberty. God knows that’s one of the most precious things this country has to offer the masses of humanity who have come here. I don’t mean to put that down in any way. Without that, without that, the rest is just academic. But without the inner meaning of freedom and liberty, we have to ask, “Well, what is this freedom for?” It’s not just a freedom to get a big house and a big car and a lot of goods.

So inner freedom is an idea that has gone out of our conversation. Inner freedom means inwardly to be free from these egoistic, selfish cravings, which make our life turn around into chaos. It’s an interior freedom which maybe you can say is mystical or certainly spiritual, but without that dimension to the idea of freedom, the idea of freedom becomes purely external and eventually selfish.