Your Worth does not come from Bearing Babies or Breast-Feeding || AP Neem Candies

Acharya Prashant: You have said, “What kind of change our education system needs to have so that our coming generations live together in peace and fulfillment?” Live together with each other, right? You haven’t said they live together with animals. The trees, the rivers, the rabbits, and the lions. That you haven’t mentioned because that probably is not important to you. And you don’t appreciate that unless you put a stop to the coming generations, you will have no lions and no jungles and no rivers very soon.

Just an hour back I was reading that the Yamuna in Delhi is practically dead! If you look at its oxygen demand figures, you will realize that there is nothing in it to be called a river. Who did that—the fish, the turtles, the crocodiles? No. The massive generations coming one after the other. And grandmothers kept wishing and blessing that the brides were constantly pregnant. And Yamuna died!

If you want to teach, teach what I have just taught you. Teach the kids that this planet cannot tolerate even one more human being now! We are already eight billion. At the current rate, we are projected to be eleven billion by 2050. We cannot even tolerate 8.1 billion.

You do not merely want to have kids. You also want the kids to live happily, right? And happiness in common parlance means consumption. Even at the current rate of consumption, this entire planet is not sufficient to meet the needs of this population. You require multiple Earths. And this is at just the current rate of consumption, not the aspired rate of consumption. We all aspire to consume more and more, right? At the aspired rate of consumption, you will require a hundred Earths to fulfill the needs of these billions. From where will you get those hundred Earths?

If there is one thing that we must not talk of as something very beautiful, is the coming of the next generation. It is not beautiful. It is not auspicious. It is not something to be talked of with a smile. It is something to be talked about with an alarm! If somebody gets pregnant, that is not good news. That is almost catastrophic if you ask the rabbits and the lions. Teach this.

Teach the girls that their body is not an instrument to bear kids. Teach them that their self-worth is not at all linked to their motherhood. Teach them where the real fulfilment of life lies and teach them that it is not in birthing or breast-feeding. Teach them creativity. Teach them Love. Give them the kind of knowledge that would help them live truthfully. This is what you need to teach them. And teach ‘this’ generation. Don’t think of the future ones.

Many of the kids that you teach today would probably go into the media tomorrow. Teach them not to declare it a celebration when a celebrity gets pregnant. Teach them to avoid those fancy pics of baby showers etcetera. Teach them to avoid headlines like: “These pictures of Samya and her newborn would give you baby goals.” “These amazing pics of the celebrity couple's wedding in Italy would give you marriage goals.”

Teach them to avoid this toxic propaganda. We don’t just procreate. We are made to procreate. A celebrity couple gives birth, my rabbits give birth, the same thing, but the media keeps splashing the face of this kid, this baby, incessantly, incessantly! A thousand more women are then influenced, rather, compelled to give birth. The media is constantly telling you, “Look at this baby. This is what you need. This is what would give you happiness. This is what would give you the headlines as well.”

Now, what is there in that kid? All kids are the same. And the kid’s ex-celebrity mother might actually be out of business these days, having no work. But the kid affords the headlines to her as well. So she is happy, “You see, otherwise who would have talked about me? Who would have kept me relevant? But this one is keeping me fully relevant!” So the parents now know what can give them some respect, some relevance, some attention. Teach the kids that this is the worst way to become relevant.

We all know that the biggest threat facing this planet, mankind today, is catastrophic climate change. And there are huge international conferences in which all kinds of diverse measures are discussed. And then there are a slew of recommendations. Experts, the so-called most intelligent people on the planet, come together and wrack their brains to come up with solutions. But nobody ever dares to call out the huge elephant in the room, which is that the simplest solution to the problem of climate change is the control of the human population.

You don’t need to do anything fancy to check climate change. Limit the number of human beings and the Earth’s health will restore very quickly. Nothing else is needed. The biggest contributors to climate change, rather, than the only contributor to climate change are human beings and their consumption: quantity multiplied by consumption per head. And both go together. The very occurrence of the quantity is because of a desire to consume. So, it is not quantity multiplied by consumption, it is quantity square. Quantity multiplied by itself. Limit the quantity and everything will be alright. Quite simply, quite obviously. But nobody ever talks of this obvious step. Teach them this!

I am not merely talking from a position of compassion. You know very well that if the forests are not there and the rabbits and lions are not there, you too cannot be there. It is an existential threat. And the threat is right on our heads! It is happening faster than scientific predictions. The forecasts are being overtaken. And if you want to teach them all this, you will have to teach them a lot of what I have been teaching you for the last many months. So, now you know what to teach this generation. Teach them what I have taught you, that is all!

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