Image Courtesy of Yunus Centre, Dhaka.
Christian Bracht: My deepest belief is that through creativity we can bring about change. I’m interested in how people can produce an echo chamber of inspiration by working together creatively. How do you find the inspiration to be creative?
Muhammad Yunus: One can inspire creativity in others while also being inspired by their own experiences, visions and thoughts. The best creativity comes when you are not looking for it, when something fires your imagination and it fuels you to create. Inspiration like this is a kind of magic moment. It triggers a child-like curiosity. A lot of my inspiration comes from being with people. When I go to villages and meet communities, I am able to learn so much. Listening to stories of Bangladeshi women is the most moving experience; hearing their struggles and how they’ve overcome them provides me with a lot of strength and courage.
Similarly, I recently visited two branches of Grameen America, one in northern Manhattan and the other in the Bronx, both of which are very low-income areas, home to marginalised communities. During my visits I spoke to around 60 women who wanted to share their personal stories with me. At least half of them had tears in their eyes while they were talking. Hearing their experience of domestic violence and how they overcame it was so inspiring. Grameen has given these women the financial ability to start again, to move forward and build something for themselves. So much of my inspiration comes from interacting with people and sharing experiences.
CB: So your inspiration comes from conversation?
MY: I saw how loans operated and how terrible they could become for the people taking them out. There was a lack of transparency and support, combined with a lack of education. My objective was to protect people from this dishonesty, to provide them with a service that teaches them how to use money. This was especially important for Bangladeshi women who wanted to be in control of their own money, but had never done so before. I’ve seen women who are afraid that taking money will ruin their life, fearful that their husbands may not like it. These women have never been taught how to read or write. I wanted to provide a money-lending service that was also an opportunity for self-discovery, self-development and education.
CB: You once said that you believe that all human beings are entrepreneurs.
MY: Human beings are born with unlimited creativity. Life is about unleashing it. There are countless institutions and careers that suppress this, suppress our humanity. We have to relearn how to be human, how to unleash our creative energy. That’s why our education system at Grameen raises questions like “What would you like to be?”, “What do you want your life to be like?”, “What is your purpose?”. By posing such questions, we are encouraging people to pursue their creativity and happiness. Discovering who we are and what our purpose is, is the most important task of every single human being. We all want to leave something behind from this short amount of time we’re on this planet, but to do so we must find happiness and joy within ourselves and our purpose.
CB: Joy is one of your seven social principles. Why is joy important?
MY: Joy measures whether you’re on the right path or not. There is no joy if you’re not on the right track, if you’re unable to express yourself fully. Life can be so joyful. Without it, what is the meaning of life? If you’re bringing joy, feeling joy, then you’re in the right place. There’s a lot of power in joy.
CB: You seem to have found your joy in building a future without poverty, climate change and unemployment. But how do we get there?
MY: We have created a world of wrong. Our world is based on greed, on money, on hierarchies, on profit. Now more than ever, with people freezing in their homes, we’re seeing how money is favoured over human life. We saw it in the pandemic too, when the rich were buying up vaccines, storing them and limiting access to people who really needed them. We’re stuck in this unjust system of structural power that only favours the rich. We must work together, collectively, in order to create a world of peace, of sharing, of creativity, of caring, of no judgement.
CB: How can we stay optimistic in times that feel so negative and overwhelming?
MY: If we cannot imagine with optimism, then it won’t happen. We have to stay optimistic. We have to imagine this new world. All the big things in the world have come from imagination; the human imagination makes the impossible possible.
CB: Where does your happiness come from?
MY: Inspiring people. Helping people. My happiness comes from seeing people have hope, and belief in the future. To me, these are the most powerful people.
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Muhammad Yunus
Muhammad Yunus (born 1940) is a Bangladeshi social entrepreneur, banker, economist and civil society leader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance.