New lamps for old

"In reality, Karl Marx got it wrong. It is not religion but materialism that is the opiate of the people. In essence, you destroy people's religious life; you destroy their culture; you destroy their community; you deprive them of a goal structure; of a faith - which is essential; of an identity; of meaning in their lives; - you deprive people of everything that they really need, and then you compensate them by giving them toys to play with: motors cars, television sets, radios, refrigerators - these are toys; you bribe them with these toys to accept what would otherwise be an insupportable lot."

Satish Kumar: Teddy. You are almost like a father of the green and ecology movements in Britain. But you were born into a rather traditional family. What was your upbringing like?

Edward Goldsmith: I do not know if I would use the word ‘traditional', as I was raised in Paris and my father ran a chain of hotels in France, and my mother was French and she was about 28 years younger than my father; her name was Dora and I was brought up - I lived mainly in luxury hotels: Cannes, Monte Carlo, Paris ... the life of Riley!

And what about education?

Oh well, I was educated - I went to schools all over the place. I went to about 14 schools in about 5 or 6 different countries because my father was always travelling. I ended up in a crammer establishment called Millfield, which is now a public school, but was a sort of crammer, and then I went to Oxford. I went to Magdalen College - my father was there 50 years before; and I took a very conventional course - I did PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economic). It is a rather poor subject - they do not attempt to connect any of these subjects. In fact, the main thing I learnt, was that conventional knowledge was wrong on all the subjects that I looked at.

Perhaps there were some seeds of ecological thinking in your childhood - you realised that rootlessness is the cause of our many ecological problems?

Well of course that may well be right. I think it taught me that most people need an identity - they want to part of a real community and I have never been that you see, I belong nowhere. And maybe - I hadn't thought of it that way, but you are probably right - I must have realised at some time, that my upbringing was not right.

How about your brother, Sir James Goldsmith, now world famous financier - were you brought up together? Were you sent to school together?

We were brought up together as children. He is younger than I am and he went to an English public school. He went to Eton as a matter of fact, then he went to ... he did not go to University - he was not interested in education. He wanted to go straight into business, he has always ... he decided at the age of 7 that he wanted to be a millionaire.

Sir James followed the path of economy, and you followed the path of ecology ...

You could put it that way. As you know, he is now very much involved in environmental things.

What sort of things are you doing together?

Well, we do not see everything in exactly the same way still. You know, our views on these things do not coincide, but we have got a lot of common ground, so we work together on a certain number of issues on which we agree - that is what we are doing. My colleague Nick Hildyard is working much more closely with Jimmy - he is organising quite a lot of Jimmy's campaigns.

He (Jimmy) has funded an association of people who have a lot in common with each other, without necessarily realising it, and has got them together. I refer to the small farmers, who can only survive if you have a low input agriculture. If you need massive machinery and a lot of fertilizer and pesticides, then they go out of business. So small farmers have much more in common with organic farmers than they think they have. So he has put them together, or rather, he has funded their association, together with people of similar interests.

I refer in particular, to people concerned about seeing their children eat food laced with chemical pesticides of different sorts - Parents For Safe Food have joined this alliance that has been created, along with The National Food Association, The Pesticides Trust and a lot of other organizations - people interested in preserving wildlife. This is because it is a fact that the sort of agricultural policy you need, is one that preserves a small farm - which uses very low inputs. It is the only policy which satisfies all these requirements: it provides you with sound food which doesn't poison your children; it doesn't destroy your soil; it doesn't deplete your underground water reserves; it doesn't destroy your rural scenery.

This is all extremely important, because what we are witnessing today, throughout the world, is the annihilation of rural society, as people pour into the cities to create massive slums. So at the same time as achieving all these things that I have mentioned, this type of agricultural policy does not create massive slums. In fact, if you were to restore your small farms, and bring back people to the land, you would be solving all sorts of urban problems ... from crime and delinquency, of unemployment, to the massive problems of putting up safe housing everywhere.

All these problems would be solved, if you were to return more people to the land, and re-establish the small farm. So this is, in essence, what this association is trying to do, and Jimmy has funded this, and I think it is extremely useful. He is going to do it in other countries as well, particularly in France. Next Monday, I have a meeting in Paris, when the French Alliance of this Association is being set up, which he (Jimmy) is funding as well.

But do you think these small farms can feed the large numbers of people which need feeding? The argument in favour of chemical farming is that through it, you can increase food production and feed the masses.

The argument is totally false of course, totally false. To begin with, the bigger farm does increase yield per unit of labour, but not yields per unit of land used. For instance, you can obtain much more land from an acre, if it is farmed by a lot of people, and farmed carefully. You can produce different crops by farming all different types of land: on the marsh land - you will have certain things; the north facing land - other things; - your production is incomparably greater.

Even M. S. Fuminuthan, the father of the Green Revolution in India, admits that the right size farm for India is 2.5 acres. It is small farms that maximise food production not big farms. Now of course, once you start introducing intensive cultivation, and modernising agriculture - which means making it capital intensive, and making it increasingly dependent on off-farm inputs like fertilizer, pesticides, irrigation water, tractors, etc - you are killing the small farm.

But you are doing more than that. You are forcing people to export their food, because you have to pay for this massive mechanisation. You have to pay for the dams that provide the irrigation water, and they can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, if not thousands of millions of dollars, each. So once you start doing that, you have to export the food, just to pay the interest on the loan that you have contracted to build the dams and otherwise modernise your agriculture.

Now if you export your food, how are you going to feed local people? One of the main causes of famine and malnutrition in the Third World today, is the fact that the agriculture of these countries is geared to exports, and in many countries, up to 70 - 80 percent of the land is used for exporting food. How in these conditions can you feed people? Either you export your food or you eat your food - you can't do both. Worse still, this intensive cultivation with massive inputs, is highly destructive in other parts of the world - such as in temperate areas, where the soil is very solid and very robust, with a high organic content.

By feeding people on small farms, you are keeping them 'backward', whereas if people come to the city, they can have a taste of high living standards ...

Well I do not think people would say that if they visited Third World cities today, and they would say that still less if they visited Third World cities in 30 years time, because what you are seeing today, is a massive development of huge, huge, slums of incredible squalor, incredible squalor. Already the Delhi Planning Authority will tell you that 35 percent of the people in Delhi live in slums and by the end of the century it will be 8 percent; the same in Bombay, and it is already much worse in South American cities.

This is because as you develop - as you destroy the small farm, and as you take away people's land in order to accommodate vast development schemes like huge dams - what happens is that all these people are forced to go to the cities. The people do not go there in order to take advantage of the amenities that cities provide. They go there because they are forced to go there. They are developmental refugees from development and environmental exploitation and they pour into the cities - and at the rate we're moving, half of humanity will be living in these squalid conditions.

No one in the world can say that they are better off living in these abominable conditions, than they were previously, when they owned their own land and produced their own food, even on a small scale.

So by keeping large numbers of people on small farms, there will not be many people in the cities and factories to produce cars, televisions, aeroplanes - meaning people's lifestyles will be much simpler ...

There are plenty of people, and certainly enough people, in these cities to produce whatever we want to produce, so there is no shortage of people. The people who go to the cities today are just accumulating as unemployed or semi-employed people. They are not needed for the industries. In any case, we will need far less motor cars. There is no way that we can continue increasing motor car production.

Just look at this country (UK). If we want to increase the number of motor cars in Britain by 80 - 120 percent, by the end of the century, how are you going to do that? Look at our roads. The traffic is already paralysed. We are spending £12 billion on new roads, but these roads that we are building, are just going to increase our network by 2 percent. Now how can you accommodate twice as many cars on a road network, which you could only increase by 2 percent, when our roads are already paralysed? It does not make any sense. It is perfectly obvious that we are going to have to manage with less cars, and use more trains.

Even the government realise that, and if our government realises it, then it must be perfectly apparent to everybody else. We have got to reduce the number of cars because cars use a lot of petrol and they produce greenhouse gases. Moreover, the International Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) set up by the United Nations, has told us in no uncertain terms, that we have to cut down the emission of greenhouse gases very drastically by 60 - 80 percent now, now, immediately, if we want to avoid a climate catastrophe.

It is very much more important to avoid a climate catastrophe than to have a whole lot of new cars. man can live very well without cars. he has lived on this planet for millions of years without cars, but he cannot live without a favourable and stable climate.

But do you think that the science and technology will not be able to find a solution to the greenhouse gases and the climatic problems?

Well, I cannot see any scientific gadgetry removing all the greenhouse gases that we have put into the atmosphere, over the last 100 years. There is no way this is possible. It cannot be done. What science and technology can do is to give us other forms of transport and other forms of energy. That is possible. But there is a limit to what science and technology can do. We have been taught that science and technology can do everything. We have an almost religious faith in science and technology to solve all our problems and it is a very misplaced faith indeed.

Science and technology can solve a certain number of technological problems like going to the moon. It is a remarkable achievement to go to the moon, but it does not solve any problems. Man has never suffered for not going to the moon. He has had a lot of problems, and that has not been one of them. The problems we face today are due to the disruption of natural systems, and there, science and technology can do very little.

If a family breaks down, and you see families break down all over the world (and that is why you have delinquency, crime and drug addiction - all these terrible social problems are largely due to the breakdown of the family in the community - we know that); there is no gadget that is going to put the family together again. There is no gadget that can bring back a community that has broken down, or that can restore a cultural pattern which holds a society together.

There is no gadget that can bring back any of the 200 or 300 species of living things that we make extinct everyday - many of which have never even been identified. There is no gadgetry that can do anything about the tropical forests that we cut down, because once you cut them down, all the living things underneath are exposed to the elements - they no longer have this closed canopy to protect them and a very large number of them simply die off.

So science and technology is fine for certain things, but to supposed it is going to solve all our problems is one of the great, great illusions we suffer from.

I understand your critique of science and technology but do you think it will be possible to disinvent both science and technology?

I am not suggesting that it is going to be easy. I agree with you, you know. People believe religiously in science. The scientists today are the priests of the industrial society. That is what they are. They dress in their white aprons just like priests dress in their ecclesiastical costumes. They reek of formaldehyde just like priests reek of incense. They are always photographed next to their laboratory instruments just like priests are photographed in their churches with all that paraphernalia. They are the scientists. What they say goes.

If you suggest that science is wrong, you are taken to be totally ignorant - almost an idiot. If things that they say are not scientific and necessarily false, are proven to be true, and you suggest there is something wrong with science, what you say is taken to be the work of a charlatan. That is how we see things. They are the Gods of today and they want to transform the world, just as if they were God. Well this is unacceptable, totally unacceptable, something has got to be done about this - it is quite evident. I don't believe in science and technology, to tell you quite frankly.

But what can be done about it?

We need massive change. Fortunately much of conventional knowledge is being discredited today. We see that all our experts are wrong on just about everything of importance. We see that our society is heading very rapidly towards a disaster. In fact, a lot of serious people - all the people I know who study the problems that I am interested in - all agree that we are heading in the direction of the extinction of the human species, and that if we continue in the present direction, it is a question of time before this planet becomes uninhabitable - and I am talking about decades not centuries. We are moving now - every single day, this planet is less capable of supporting complex forms of life like man, every day.

Despite the fact that we are heading in this direction, it is totally, totally justified in the light of conventional wisdom (and when I say conventional wisdom, I mean the wisdom of our scientists and our economists and even our sociologists and politicians). So there must be something radically wrong with the conventional knowledge that we teach in our universities. It is not only wrong, it is the opposite of the truth! People must really begin to realise that. We need a very, very different view of the world.

The most fundamental change that is required is that we must see that the real wealth that the real world provides, as being obtained from the normal functioning of the natural world. This is our real wealth. Our real wealth is our stable and favourable climate that I have already referred to, its fertile soil, its abundant and pure water. We are not taught that. We are taught that all our wealth is man-made.

• Health is something that you obtain from hospitals or by eating pills.
• Education is something that is acquired in a specialised institution called school or university.
• Law and order is something produced by the police force in conjunction with the law courts and the prisons.

Everything is man-made. Everything that we need, all benefits, all wealth, is derived from economic development. It is the opposite of the truth. Don't you see? In some respects, that is the most important thing to realize. Now if you believe and accept today's position on wealth, then of course, the only way to obtain this wealth and to satisfy man's needs and to increase our welfare and prosperity, is to have more economic development, which we equate with 'progress'.

But if you see our real wealth as being derived from the biosphere, then you want as little of this economic development as possible. It is exactly the opposite. Your main pre-occupation should be to preserve the critical order of the biosphere, from whose normal functioning we derive all the benefits on which we depend for our survival. It is the opposite world view, and this of course was the world view of traditional man.

t is exactly how he saw the world: all benefits were derived from the normal functioning of the biosphere, and therefore, his overriding goal, was to preserve it. And the course of his behaviour - his behavioural pattern - the cultural pattern of traditional society, was designed to achieve just that: to preserve the critical order of the cosmos.

So you say that the traditional society, such as that of people in Africa or the American Indians, or people in India and Asia, who have lived simpler lives, preserving nature and natural wealth - we should not have given them the notion of "progress", because "progress" is what the modern world believes in ...

It is a total illusion - progress. Life in a traditional society was much more complex, not more simple. Traditional man, first of all, had a very much more elaborate family and community life. A much, much more elaborate and varied range of rituals and ceremonies. Take for example, the vocabulary they had. Some tribal people had a vocabulary of 10,000 - 20,000 words. Compare that with the average vocabulary of a delinquent in New York which is about 300 - 400 words. Their life was not simple it was very much more complex.

The Yorubas in West Africa, are a tribe comprising 40 million people, which is 10 times more than there are Danes or Norwegians or New Zealanders. Despite that, they are still considered a tribe rather than a nation, and they are governed by people who are quite different from them, who live up in the north, called the Hausa. The Yorubas are just one example of many peoples that I refer to - they have a vocabulary of over 150 words just for different members of the family. The Maoris in New Zealand have words for almost every single plant. There are thousands of them - each one has got a Mari name.

How many people do you know in the world today who can name a thousand plants by their native name? I do not think that the world of traditional man offers a more simpler life - it is actually, in many ways, more complex and more sophisticated, the life of traditional man. Of course, he does not have motors cars and televisions and all this paraphernalia that we have today.

Are you saying that this materialistic way of life is not good and therefore we must turn to some religious worldview?

I think the idea of man as a rational man is an absolute absurdity, an absolute absurdity. Man is a rationalising animal not a rational one. He likes to justify what he has decided to do in advance. The reasons we give for doing things are the reasons which flatter us. The reasons that govern our policies, government statistics for instance, are the statistics which serve to justify government policies, that is what they are. That is why I do not attach too much important to the figures that people are branding about.

You see, the idea that you can have a rational man supposes that you can detach the neo-cortex from the rest of the brain, and your reptilian brain, all the way to the brain of step. You assume that you can detach man's rationality from his emotions and his values. That is what scientists assume. They really believe that it is possible to have a science that is value free. They really believe that it is possible to have a science that is not emotional.

Scientists are the most emotional people on earth! They go absolutely berserk when you argue with them. If a scientist was sitting here with me, he would be shaking with rage, full of emotions! The emotion scientists displayed when Rachel Carson's book was written (Silent Spring; also The Sea Around Us), was just astonishing. They went berserk because Rachel Carson actually suggested that the pesticides they had invented, were a disaster.

They had invented a wonderful magical powder which you spread over crops and which kills all the pests, and that added a great deal to their prestige ... Aah. How brilliant our scientists are. How fantastic is progress. Rachel Carson suggested that all these pesticides were a disaster, and should be immediately suppressed. The scientists went berserk. Scientists are highly emotional - just like everybody else. If science is objective, it cannot be built up by observation, among other things, because observation is a totally subjective process.

It is not the eyes (which enable objectivity). If I see you, here, it is my brain that tells me that you are here. My eyes see lights and shadows, and my brain, interprets those lights and shadows, as being Satish Kumar. My brain might tell me that you are a waxwork image of Satish Kumar, or that you are someone disguised as Satish Kumar, or that I am having an illusion, or a hallucination, or that I am drunk, or that someone is playing a trick on me - nevertheless, it is my brain which tells me that you are there. It is my brain! It is the hypothesis which I have formed - a purely subjective hypothesis.

So the idea of verifying the hypothesis is nonsensical. All this talk about 'verification' of scientific propositions, which need to be 'verified' (in order to be scientific). In fact, the original observation is the hypothesis. So to verify it, is just a new hypothesis. you can only verify it, But, in terms of another hypothesis. What makes you think that the second hypothesis, is more valid than the first one? The reality and fact of the matter is that verification involves another observation, which is also a hypothesis. If you actually look at the objectives of science - of the underlying assumptions of science - you will see that none of them stand up, none - none of them stand up. They are all illusion - illusory.

There is no doubt that there is some disillusionment, particularly among the young, and a growing interest in religious matters - whether it is meditation, or whether it is living a simpler life in the communities and rural areas. There is a tremendous disillusionment with science and technology, and there is a hunger for some kind of spiritual fulfilment and nourishment. But, what is this spiritual or Perennial wisdom that you seem to indicate that is necessary?

Well I agree with what you have just said 100 percent. I think that it is tremendously important. I think that more and more people are feeling that way. They see the world we have created as being, above all, squalid. It's squalid. The economic policy of this country is utterly squalid. We manufacture torture instruments, in Birmingham, and ship them throughout the world. You see! Torture instruments - we are one of the greatest producers. It's squalid to produce that. An economy that justifies, and a society that accepts that we should earn our money by selling torture instruments, by selling pesticides that give everybody cancer, by selling armaments of all sorts, you see, is a squalid society.

We have created a totally, utterly, squalid society, and people are beginning to realise that. They are reacting against it. I'm sure. And there are people, who as you say, are hungry for these spiritual values. Well - a lot of different spiritual values. There's not one. People are searching, in all directions. A lot of them are looking towards the East, of course, which has a sort of, greater spirituality, than we do here, in the West. But it's a search. In some cases, a frantic search.

You also went to the East. You went to India, and you were tremendously influenced by Ghandi ...

That's right. You arranged for me, in 1974, to go to work for the Ghandi Peace Foundation in Delhi, where I spent some months, and where I learnt a great deal - a great, great deal. Indeed. You were mentioning a few minutes ago, the Perennial philosophy, and that is also, another interesting movement.

The Ghandian Movement is, of course, tremendously important, because I see, Mahatma Ghandi as having understood just about all the problems we face today. He understood them. His understanding of these problems is truly amazing - because this goes back to the 1930s and the 1940s. The notion of our health - as nature cure, our economics - the economics of the Charkha; whatever the problem - all the problems - whatever the problem you look at, he understood it - he understood it.

So it was a tremendous experience for me, to work there for these people, in Delhi. The perennial philosophy is also something I am interested in. It this interest has basically been cultivated, and promoted, by a group of people, perhaps the most famous was Molander Gumalaswami, but there are others - Europeans, like René Gunor, and, Lord Northborne in this country - all sorts of people. And they are really interested in the wisdom which underlies all your traditional societies, and their is such a wisdom. They call it The Perennial Philosophy, and of course, it is based largely on tradition.

They are talking about traditional knowledge. I do not believe that you can replace traditional knowledge. You see, societies have maintained their continuity, by transmitting the traditional wisdom from one generation to the next. That is what education is about. It means that children learn how to fulfil their functions within their community, and to learn to do that, they first have to understand their traditional culture - because their traditional culture provides them with a blueprint for living within their community. We've lost sight of what education is about. Well, it is clear that what you are transmitting, this traditional wisdom, is critical, and if you look at the traditional wisdoms, that are transmitted, they have an enormous amount in common.

This brings me back to what I was saying earlier on. The main thing they have in common, is that they see the world of living things, the biosphere, the cosmos - if you want to look at it beyond our planet - as the source of all benefits. The pattern of behaviour they develop, is that which they regard as capable of maintaining this critical order of the cosmos. If you break a taboo, for instance, why is it so important, so terrible, to break a taboo? It is because, by breaking a taboo, you threaten the critical order of the cosmos, and if you do that, all hell is let loose.

In fact, every problem is interpreted by traditional man as due to his diversion from the path or Way (the Tao - if you like; or the Davna; or the R'ta among the Vedic Indians) that you must follow in order to maintain the critical order of the cosmos. If you divert from it, then this order is shattered, and you get all these terrible, terrifying, problems. You can only get earthquakes, epidemics, enemy invasions, floods, droughts, when this order is shattered. We laugh at that. But it's true.

Why do you think we have droughts today in Asia - in India, for instance? Why are there large droughts? Why are there floods? The answer is because we've cut down all the forests. If you cut down all the forests, you get floods. you have to. Floods can only be attributed to the destruction of forests - because the roots of the forest, are like huge, enormous, sponges. When the rains come, the water is absorbed into these sponges, and released slowly into the rivers. If you cut the forests down instead of having these sponges under the forest and you replace it with concrete, which is hard, and where there's no forest left, then when it rains, the water pours off into the rivers - and takes the soil with it. So, the beds of the rivers are raised, water pours into it, and you get a massive flood. it's happening everywhere.

Our traditional man understood this. He said if you have a drought or if you have a flood, it is because you have upset the order of the cosmos. Well that is precisely what we've done. We've cut down the forests. And so it is with every problem you look at. In fact, their interpretation of the problems is correct, whereas our interpretation, the scientific interpretation, is the opposite of the truth. We say, but we say, that the problems are due to insufficient diversion from the Way (from the correct path). We say that we haven't diverted from the Way sufficiently.

If we have a problem, for instance, over-population, we say it is because we have not distributed enough contraceptives, or because these people are poor therefore they have insecurity, therefore we'll have to develop them and then they'll have security and then they won't have so many children. If they are sick, we say it is because we have insufficient numbers of hospitals. Every problem is interpreted in such a way as to justify further economic development, yet this is an offence - a further diversion from the correct path you must take to maintain the order of the cosmos.

Every solution is in fact a further destruction of this critical order - by covering more and more land with cement; by cutting down more trees; by eroding more soil etc. So, we interpret our problems with all our science and technology in the totally wrong way. Our interpretation of the problems we face, is exactly the opposite of the truth, because we see these problems in terms of the totally wrong worldview.

Is there a balance between the traditional social way of life, and individuals' desire for freedom?

Well, of course, there is an element of truth in what you say, in that if you live in a very cohesive society, you are subject to social control. It is control which is applied by public opinion, and this is reflected in traditional customs and laws. And some people today, in particular, find this intolerable - because the tyranny of public opinion can be considered worse than the tyranny exercised by a dictator. That is how people feel.

But this social control is the only control that ever works. The police don't maintain order. I have seen graphs which show that the more police you have, the higher the crime rate increases. You would think that the police were actually committing the crimes - but it is nothing to do with that of course - it so happens that your crime is increasing in any case, and that the police can really have very little effect on it. The only control we have is the control of public opinion - it is the only one that ever worked. Social control is the only one that has ever worked.

Now, this notion of freedom - we see freedom as the freedom to do what we like: 'free trade' - it sounds good. It's free - but 'free trade' is the freedom of corporations to exploit, pollute and destroy, without any controls applied to them - without labour controls, without pollution controls, without any controls - that's what free trade is about.

You see, we think freedom means free from control, but what is freedom? For the Greeks, of course, freedom was the ability to govern yourself. The Greeks were free because they governed themselves. The Persians were slaves, the Persians, because they were governed by an autocrat. But to govern yourself requires discipline, and the Greeks displayed this discipline - considerable discipline. Therefore, it was not a question of 'doing your own thing' and doing anything you liked - total anarchy. That is not what they endorsed. That was out of the question - that's not freedom.

Now if you are thinking in terms of individualism, you will find that individuals in a traditional society do not lack individuality. I never noticed that there are people lacking in individuality in traditional societies. What we've created is a world of anonymous, alienated people, who are subjected to no social constraints of any kind - and I don't think these people are happy - at all. I think these people are miserable.

The problem with our youth today, is not that they are being subjected to social constraints, as Freud would have said. It's the opposite: it's that they're subjected to no constraints. They don't know where they are. As we mentioned earlier, they have no identity. They don't know where to go. They're like leaves, blowing in the wind.

But Teddy, your whole philosophy seems to be very pessimistic. Is there any hope for this world?

Well, if we carry on and continue going in the present direction, the answer is no. The humans species is extinct in a matter of decades, and I do not believe that anybody can seriously deny that. It is perfectly evident that we are making this planet uninhabitable. But, that does not mean that we have to continue in this direction. I can see, a possibility of a real awakening. I think that there has been an explosion in environmental consciousness in the last two years - an explosion which has not been translated into any action by our politicians or industrialists, who have done practically nothing.

Our governments have made small cosmetic changes, but they have really done nothing of substance to counteract the major problems that we face. But I think there is a chance that this will change. It is by no means certain. But I think it is at least possible.

And you and your brother Jimmy, are trying?

Well, we are among a very large number of people who are trying, fortunately.

Thank you, Teddy.