Climate change, population policies, and social conflicts often arise from a common source: narrow love. People, communities, and nations justify actions that benefit their own group while overlooking broader consequences for humanity and the planet. True care is not exclusive or identity-based; it is expansive and inclusive. Even motherhood, patriotism, and family concern can become limiting when reduced to narrow self-interest rather than guided by wisdom, freedom, and universal responsibility.
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Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. I'm Puja. I'm a software engineer working in Bangalore. My question is about, nowadays, we are hearing about heat waves in India, and on the same hand, I have heard a recent announcement made by the CM of Andhra Pradesh to pay a one-time incentive of 30,000 on having a third child and 40,000 on having a fourth child for encouraging population growth.
And on the other hand, Amsterdam in the Netherlands becomes the first capital city to ban public advertisements on meat products and fossil fuels. So, even a small country like the Netherlands is becoming more conscious about climate change, and India seems to be moving in the other direction, more ignorant about climate change and population growth. So, how can we understand these two events on the same?
Acharya Prashant: There's nothing to understand here. There are directions in front of the ego, and every such direction is an option with a rationale, a justification. Whatever options you have in life to choose from, they all carry some argument in their favor, and then you choose which argument to prefer. There is the argument of narrowness, and there is the argument of wideness. There is the shrinking ego. There is the expansive ego. It's a choice to be made.
