Climate Change: the hole in man's heart || Acharya Prashant (2019)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00I am hungry, I am dissatisfied, I want to consume and I do not know what is it that

00:16would appease me, make me happy, quench my thirst.

00:24So I will try out everything, any guess is as good as any other guess.

00:35I cannot just spare anything, it's a matter of deep inner unrest.

00:44I have to try out all possible ways.

00:47So man tries out all possible ways.

00:51Who is this man?

00:53Just to put the whole thing together, who is this man?

00:56This is the man who is coming from a mode of thinking that lays no emphasis on understanding oneself.

01:11It is much more concerned about the outer world and of course, when it is concerned

01:16about the outer world, there would be great progress in science and technology, in everything

01:21that can be seen outside.

01:25So this man is coming from that domain of thought.

01:33He will not look at the thing called ego, he will not look at the self.

01:38It's not very interesting and it's tedious.

01:45Why look at the self?

01:48Also it is humiliating at times, especially if you are a philosopher, it is great to philosophize

01:56about this and that, but if you start philosophizing about yourself, it doesn't turn out too good.

02:04So you want to think about money, masses, dialectics, nations, communities, modes of

02:19production, what not.

02:22You want to think about all these things.

02:24What is it that you want to strictly avoid?

02:28You want to avoid looking at yourself.

02:30Firstly, it is not very interesting to the uninitiated mind.

02:34Secondly, it can turn out to be humiliating.

02:43You can have a lot of grandstanding when you point fingers at this and that and say, I

02:48know who you are, I know who you are.

02:51There is no grandstanding when you look at yourself and say, I don't know who I am.

03:02So it is a compulsion with this man who comes from that line of thinking to keep proceeding

03:12only outwards and he finds these three categories outwards.

03:18There is man, there is man-made objects and then there are the trees and the animals and

03:25the rivers and the mountains.

03:27What is he going to do with all these three categories?

03:34Can he spare any or either of the three?

03:37Why must he?

03:40Why must he?

03:41He will try out everything because he does not know anything.

03:45When you do not know anything, you have no option but to try out everything, obviously.

03:51When you do not know where your redemption lies, you will knock at every door and these

03:55are the doors that are available to the man who proceeds outwardly in order to make himself happy.

04:02If I am proceeding towards the world to make myself happy, these are the three domains

04:07I'll encounter.

04:08I'll encounter human beings, I'll encounter animals, birds, rivers, trees and I'll encounter

04:14man-made objects, cars, buildings, clothes, gadgets.

04:23What will I do with all these?

04:25What option do I have?

04:26Do I have an option?

04:28I'm hungry, I'm unhappy and I don't know from where would happiness come.

04:34So do I have an option?

04:35What am I going to do with all these three?

04:37I'm going to eat them up.

04:42That's what man has been doing not since the last two centuries, not since the mills came about.

04:50He has been doing this since he has been known to be conscious.

04:56That's what he has been doing.

05:00He wants to eat up everything.

05:02Now what is the result then?

05:06When man eats up man, the result is population.

05:13What is this population?

05:15The woman goes out and eats up the man.

05:19You have babies.

05:20The man goes out and wants to eat up as many women as possible.

05:24You have babies, right?

05:30So from the drive to consume, first of all come babies when the object of consumption

05:38is a human being, right?

05:41The next object of consumption is man-made objects because they too are available.

05:46Why must I spare them?

05:48So when man wants to consume man-made objects, the result is he guzzles up fossil fuel.

05:58Give me more diesel, give me more petrol, where else would the energy come from?

06:02I want buildings, I want to consume and whatever you want to consume has to be firstly manufactured.

06:09How will I manufacture it, I don't have energy and energy from any of the sources as we currently

06:18know is carbon intensive.

06:24Even the so-called green energy has a strong carbon footprint when seen in totality.

06:35So when man consumes man-made objects, again the result is more consumption and more carbon.

06:48And then man says I will consume the natural world as well.

06:54Why should these folks roam about happy and untouched?

07:00Maybe they can make me happy, how about some beef, how about more corn, how about turning

07:09a great banyan tree into a bonsai?

07:13I want it in a little pot, I'll keep it in my bedroom, are you getting it?

07:24How about developing a delectable waterfront by the side of a great river?

07:35I'll go there and satisfy my senses and what is the waterfront all about?

07:40Tons and tons of cement, tons and tons of cement, I'll consume everything.

07:52And if you will look at these three types of consumption, you will understand what climate

07:57change is in all its totality.

07:59Nothing drives climate change except these three, man consuming man, and when I say man,

08:08I mean mankind, it's not a gender specific thing.

08:12When I say man consuming man that gives birth to unsustainable populations, when I say man

08:22consuming man-made objects, that is what is meant by, generally meant by the level

08:29of consumption, and when I say man consuming the natural world, that is what is meant by

08:39loss of biodiversity, excessive fishing, extinction of species and what not.

08:50So that's the overall framework.

08:53You cannot look at any small part of it, you have to go to the very basis of it.

08:59The very basis of climate change is the constitution of man himself.

09:04It is not a specific activity of man that is leading to climate change.

09:11The very constitution of man is such that he is bound to destroy everything.

09:16It's just that sometimes he calls his destruction as construction.

09:21Real construction is something totally different.

09:26It does not come from that line of thought which prohibits man from looking at itself.

09:31Real construction or real creativity comes from another mind which due to the various

09:42vicissitudes of history could never gain enough prominence or power to guide the course of history.

09:50That kind of mind has sometimes been found in the Orient, though it is fairly lost now.

10:07So man as he is, is climate change.

10:13So climate change is not merely man-made.

10:18Climate change is man's compulsion.

10:23Man cannot help climate change.

10:26Man is climate change.

10:30If you have this big a hole in your heart, what else will you do?

10:35You will use the entire universe to plug this hole and if you find this planet earth, too

10:48little to fill up your hole, then you will proceed towards other planets.

10:56Of course, man is the only animal blessed with intellect.

11:00So you can do that.

11:02You can do that.

11:03You can now go and colonize Mars and you can say we have eaten away whatever there was

11:10to be eaten on the earth.

11:13Now it's the turn of another planet. Gobble it up.

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