Sustainability Crisis: Why Humans Consume Endlessly
Questioner: Hello sir, my name is Himanshu. I am doing an MBA in Sustainability Management here, and my question is: does sustainability come from inside, at a spiritual level, or at the subconscious or conscious level?
Acharya Prashant: See, there is no other point to begin with. There is just no other point to begin with. Please understand why the question of sustainability is relevant only to our species, out of the billions of species on this planet.
It is such a stupid question, actually, no? How can we live sustainably? This question does not even apply to the fish, or to the deer, or to the lion, or to the species that even got extinct or would probably appear in the future, because it is a mindless thing. Every species is supposed to live; it is designed to live. It cannot be an additional thing to think of. But in the case of our species, it is. Why? Because we have one thing that other species do not have, a deep urge within to consume.
Where does that come from?
A deep inner restlessness. That restlessness is a fact, because we experience it. We are not satisfied with our present conditions. We remain uneasy. But because we do not know where that restlessness comes from, we look for consumptive solutions. We feel, “I am not okay, so let me go out and visit the mall or plan a vacation abroad, and that will set me okay.” Getting it?
Now, other species are not confronted with this problem. They are already okay. Give them some food, give them their basic physical requirements, and they are okay. Human beings cannot be okay the way animals are, and that is what makes this whole thing a spiritual problem. We cannot be okay the way animals are. We are not okay.
But because we have not diagnosed our disease, our internal situation properly, therefore we come up with false solutions to our internal problem. Anything, if it goes undiagnosed, obviously the treatment would be in the wrong direction. We have not diagnosed why we keep feeling uneasy, restless, incomplete, dissatisfied. We do not diagnose that.
So we go for a very obvious and cheap remedy, retail therapy; go and buy, or go and have a relationship, or go and have babies, or go roam the planet. These are the solutions we come up with, and these solutions are what you can call the sustainability crisis, which includes, obviously, the climate crisis.
So we have a problem because we do not know the real problem. Are you seeing how it all starts within?
Why would no other species destroy the planet, but we do? Because we have a hollow inside us, and that hollow demands to be filled.
So we want more and more, manufactured products or natural products, more meat, more luxury, more money. And the sad part is, none of that really succeeds in fulfilling you. But you still want to consume endlessly. And that endless consumption, arising from a spiritual point, is what the sustainability crisis is today.
Therefore, if you are genuinely interested in the sustainability question, you will have to look towards education of the self. You will have to look towards that invisible entity called the ego, the self. And you will have to confront it and ask it: what do you really want? Because there is so much that I have already given you, but you never seem to be satisfied.
And when I look at others who have given you a thousand times what I have done, I find that even they are not satisfied. But in the process of pleasing the ego more and more, you destroy the planet. Hundred species, or maybe more, disappear every day due to man-made reasons.
Questioner: Other than that, the EU has been doing really well in mandating sustainability requirements for companies. How is it that the EU has already developed and been able to implement such mandates, while India is still in this phase? Can we do such things in India? Can we implement such mandates in India?
Acharya Prashant: No, there is no mandate I can ever come up with for a sovereign, free entity like a company or a country.
I can only offer suggestions that I keep doing, and it is not difficult to come up with those suggestions, because what is happening at the family level, then at the social level, then at the corporate level, then at the national level, and then at the global level is all actually starting from the person himself.
All aggregations are reflections of their constituent unit, and that’s who you are. If you can see how you act, you will be able to see how a corporation acts, because a corporation in itself is not a living entity. There are people up there, the stakeholders, who run the corporation, who own it, who made it, and who can dissolve it. The corporation exists for their sake.
If you can see your own instincts and impulses, you will also see how the biggest corporation in the world is functioning in much the same way. The instincts of a child, if understood, would help you understand the instincts of the top 500 corporations as well. If you can understand how a child functions, you will also see how the tech giants are functioning, or the big oil companies are functioning.
Questioner: Hello Acharya Ji, I am Ashutosh Shukla. As we were talking about corporates, I want to know: when we talk about climate change, most of the emissions come from big corporates, and then we also talk about how climate change starts with individual efforts. How do we categorize that, and how does individual contribution matter in climate change?
Acharya Prashant: You are very right that; almost not sure of the exact figure because it keeps changing, almost 40 to 50 percent of emissions come from a handful of companies. It depends on where you want to draw the line, but I think some 25 to 50 corporations contribute to almost 40-50 percent of global carbon emissions.
That makes it tempting for us to say that the individual has a very little role, and that it is the mammoth corporations that are at fault. But look at the linkages, please. Can corporations emit on their own?
First of all, if the individual consumer is not ready to buy into their propaganda and then their product, right? They emit because they produce. And they produce because they sell. And they sell because you purchase. So, they emit because they produce. They produce because they sell. And they sell because you purchase.
It does not stop here. You purchase the product later, the propaganda comes first. And that is propaganda masked as philosophy, pop culture, the culture we are all steeped in, the culture that gave birth to us and then brought us up. That is the culture. We think it’s our culture. No, it is propaganda. It is consumerist propaganda.
And if there is propaganda, you must always ask: who benefits from it? And you will see who does: the corporations, the politicians, the religious authorities, and their massive structures. They are the ones who benefit from this propaganda.
And this propaganda says: live your life in a way that maximizes your consumption, and then you will be called happy and successful. That is the philosophy that has been given to you. So we could say that corporations are responsible for so much of the climate crisis.
But if you look at it closely, you will figure out that the indoctrination that the common man has become a victim to is at the heart of the problem.
Are you getting it?
How can you stop the corporations, or how can you get governments to make the right policies, when you are the customer and you are the voter? As long as you remain ready to support their greed, ambition, and stupidity, they will continue in their ways.
If your choices as a customer change, won’t the seller have to change his business plans? And why will the seller change his business plans if the customer remains happily stupid, or the voter remains happily stupid? Think of it.
In fact, if we do not see through their propaganda, we are inviting aggression upon us. Don’t you see? You might be, or I might be, an okay fellow, not knowing myself very deeply, not understanding the world or life or philosophy but I am the happy-go-lucky kind of Joe, the average person.
But because someone wants to sell his product, or include me in some religious order, or extract my vote, that person will come and indoctrinate me using my ignorance. So actually, these systems leave me worse off as a citizen or as a consumer.
They succeed in doing what they are doing only because we are very gullible, sitting ducks, easy prey. And as long as we remain who we are, there is no way to selectively change corporations using moral means, ethical means, or policy measures. That won’t happen. That is wishful thinking won't materialize.
So there is no way except mass awakening. I know it sounds tardy and idealistic, time-consuming and too long-termish. But unfortunately, that is the only option we have; the awakened individual, and the awakened individual who does not stop at himself or herself, having seen what he has seen, then wants to radiate it all around. That is the only possible solution.
