When Jose “El Pepe” Mujica became President of Uruguay, the country was already well on its way to freeing itself from fossil fuels.  During his five year term, he led in gaining consensus from all of Uruguay’s political parties for relying on renewable sources.  As a result of continued growth in hydro, wind and solar power the country began exporting its excess power to neighboring Argentina and Brazil. Payments for its power exports enabled increases in funds for programs benefiting workers and the poor.

Following the 2014 election, Mujica soon gained an international reputation as the “poorest President in the world”. He remained housed in the three room farmhouse owned by his wife Lucia, also a veteran of the Tupamaros guerrilla movement. He rode public transit and drove a vintage VW beetle.  Ninety percent of his presidential salary the couple gave away to small businesses and non profits benefiting the poor.

“El Pepe“ objected to being described as “poor”. In correcting this miscaracterization he usually cited the Stoic philosophers, “As the old thinkers Epicurus and Seneca defined it, and as the Aymara people, indigenous to South America do: it is not the one who has little who is poor.  The one who is truly poor is the one who needs infinitely more, the one who is never satisfied.”

Our current international system which compels us to think we need more to be fulfilled and live happily is simply unsustainable.  At the 2012 UN Conference for Sustainable Development, Mujica declared, “The real problem is not climate change”.  He explained, “Humanity is in grave danger because of the system we have created.”

His diagnosis of the problem conveys the solution: “The danger is rooted in what we have come to seek to make us happy.”  It seems Mujica’s fifteen years in the military dictatorship’s jails, seven of which he was denied any books, may have taught him the primacy of living simply. “My message is very simple: Economic growth and progress must add to human happiness, not take away from it.”

Our current system is not only not sustainable he reminded leaders at the Rio Conference: “Does the world have enough resources for the entire human race, seven to eight billion of us, to live like the Western societies that keep making more and buying more than they need?”  What is the effect on relationships with other people he then asked, “Can we really talk about the solidarity of humankind and kindness to each other, even togetherness, when we are constantly competing to outdo each other?”

He then concluded his talk with these words: “These are the building blocks of our happiness as humans: having satisfying relationships with others; raising children; making friends; spreading love in the world.” One is again led to ponder how his years of solitary confinement contributed to “El Pepe’s” bold, simple wisdom.