THE INTEGRITY CLIMATE CHOIRS
I never thought that a lot of money or fine clothes
–the finer things of life–would make you happy.
My concept of happiness is to be filled in a spiritual sense.
Coretta Scott King
Reflecting on the above quote from Coretta Scott King, you may come to the conclusion that we should develop a more sophisticated concept of happiness.
The cultural change that is increasingly important today and in the future primarily concerns a phenomenon that we describe as climate change. This is about much more than just the warming of our planet. With regard to the ecological challenges we are facing, how can we develop a form of agency that counteracts the complex crises of our time with something useful?
A society that is geared towards growth on all possible levels is increasingly coming to an end. However, hardly anyone can imagine what the path to a world without the pressure to grow, innovate, optimize, and accelerate might actually look like. Above all, we can make an impact by first empowering ourselves to change the world around us. Big changes can start small if we are willing to unite as a civil society.
Today, renunciation of the trends of progress and the concept of freedom are widely misunderstood and related exclusively to material things. However, if we do not succeed in changing ourselves fundamentally, we will in the future sacrifice many things that are truly related to our basic needs and to our integrity, dignity and freedom. By denying the need to change, we would not only forego clean air and clear water, but also an intact and polyphonic world that can also provide a basis for a thriving life in peace for future generations. Woreover we would also be denying ourselfes the good and hopeful feeling of doing the right thing, of consistently standing up for our convictions and being spiritually fulfilled. We would be hindred from imagining creative visions of a more beautiful world and calling them into reality — images of a more beautiful world our hearts knows, and one that is quite possible.
