'Prosperity' for each individual will be disastrous || Acharya Prashant (2022)

Acharya Prashant

Full Video: Policymakers, wake up! || Acharya Prashant, with O.P. Jindal University (2022)  Link:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOg5KLEcGoY&t=0s  Video Information: 24.05.2022, Greater Noida  Context:  ~ What do the halves have? ~ What is it that we all do need? ~ Is it good to be prosperous for everyone?  Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~

Transcript

00:00 For someone, let's say, who is poor and who is oppressed, he or she would know that and

00:09 aware of the fact that well, they are poor, and they do not have access to the resources

00:14 that they would need for their upliftment. And at the same time, they might not even

00:19 have the access, like safe education, or like even understanding what they could do in like

00:26 for them to come out of the of the traps that they are in. Under such a situation,

00:32 do you think there is a solution that can actually help in any kind of upliftment at all? Or do you

00:38 say that we are actually like moving the gap is the gap between the haves and the have-nots is

00:43 just widening further and further? The question is what do the haves have?

00:47 Do they really have something worth coveting?

00:55 Indeed, people need something, but what is it that we all do need?

01:01 No point running the same race. The have something, the haves have something.

01:12 And if all the have-nots aspire to have the same thing that the haves have,

01:20 then all we'll have is disaster. Think of what will happen

01:26 if the entire population of India is able to have the same per capita consumption

01:36 as the population of US. Will we survive? Will the earth last even six months?

01:49 Is consumption first of all the goal of human life? And when I say consumption,

01:56 that includes education as well. Because our education is very much consumption-centric.

02:03 So, you talked of the solution. The superficial solution obviously is to bridge the gap.

02:14 And that you could do by various means. You could do that by subsidies, you could do that

02:19 by affirmative action, you could do that by social schemes, by reservations.

02:26 There is so much that you can do and if you do that, there will be some positive impact and you

02:34 are entitled to feel good about it. But so far and no more. That takes you no further than this.

02:46 If you really want wholesome change, then you need a social system, an education system to begin with.

03:02 That will be the first thing. That encourages the right values.

03:10 And the moment I use the word values, it starts sounding cliched, even trite. Because the word

03:20 values has been abused so much and slighted so much. It has lost its meaning. It has become

03:30 insignificant. Maybe we need another word to suit our minds. We need to understand what is it that

03:40 is first of all valuable in life. And that is what each human being must have. Each kid that is born

03:50 is entitled to have something in life. The question is what is that something? Disneyland, a trip to Mars,

04:02 Ivy League MBA,

04:06 wonderful kind of clothing.

04:14 What is it that we ought to have? Obviously, there are the basic physical needs.

04:24 We require good food, we require shelter. But being a human being, there is something more

04:33 that we need. Something that animals do not need but we do. And that's the central thing.

04:41 That I dare say is even more important than food and shelter.

04:45 I'm not discounting the importance of food and shelter.

04:48 So figure that out and ensure that everybody gets to have that.

04:59 [Music]

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