Toblacher Thesen 1992. Gesundheit und ökologischer Wohlstand “Langsamer, weniger, besser, schöner”

Abstract

Health concerns everyone and today is in danger. The issue of health is presently under discussion in most industrialized countries, not least because of a sanitary policy which is more and more losing itself in a blind alley and of a sanitary system which is becoming financially unbearable. In Germany for instance costs for health (reparation) exceed by 30 percent expenditure for nutrition. When we talk about health, it is also necessary to reflect on our idea of welfare (well-being). In industrialized countries, we live in a false welfare, because we charge others for our costs: the Third World, future generations and, in the end, nature and therefore ourselves. As a consequence, talking about health it is necessary to talk about our progress. A “progress” which is every day destroying the very bases of our existence, is contrary to the reasons of health. The crisis of environment, the crisis of values and the crisis of health are strictly linked and depend one on the other. In industrialized countries we are drowned by the excessive consumption; meanwhile it is becoming more difficult to satisfy the most elementary needs, such as drinking clean water and breathing non-polluted air. “What do we want, what do we need really?” are becoming the central issues today. The question is not to what we must “renounce”, but rather which benefits we can get from a new quality of life, by looking at health in wider way. “Less quickness and quantity, more quality and beauty” can become the new passwords for ecological well-being and health. A revolution in ideas and values is the challenge for the future. The “Toblacher Gespräche 1992” faced the issue of health in a very broad approach, linking health to the ecological well-being. The conference analyzed the relations between health and progress, aggressions to nature and dangers for health. It was discussed how sanitary policy and medicine should be, when they are not only oriented toward the reparation of damage, but understand the whole ecological and social context. But the conference went a step further: starting from the risk for health, it tried to give form to the idea of a different ecological well-being, especially in the fields of work, production, food, inhabiting, mobility and traffic. The vision was to weave these leading ideas in a general proposal and to broaden the idea of health to what should be its real meaning: living well. The 12 “Toblacher Thesen” are a summary as well as action proposal for “health and ecological well-being” under the motto: “less quickness and quantity, more quality and beauty”.