Price we pay for our happiness || Interview with Acharya Prashant (2019)

  • 7 months ago
Full Video: The Climate Crisis is a Spiritual Crisis || Interview with Acharya Prashant (2019)
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcCMrosY7Fw&t=0s

Video Information: 04.10.2019, Interview Session, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India

Context:
~ What is Climate Change?
~ How to stop climate change?
~ What is the solution to global warming?
~ How can we control the increasing population?
~How can spirituality solve the problem of global warming?
~What is the most effective way of dealing with climate change?
~ How can population control help in dealing with climate change?

Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Transcript
00:00 If I am proceeding towards the world to make myself happy, these are the three domains
00:08 I will encounter.
00:09 I will encounter human beings, I will encounter animals, birds, rivers, trees and I will encounter
00:14 man-made objects, cars, buildings, clothes, gadgets.
00:24 What will I do with all these?
00:26 What option do I have?
00:27 Do I have an option?
00:29 I am hungry, I am unhappy and I don't know from where would happiness come.
00:35 So do I have an option?
00:36 What am I going to do with all these three?
00:38 I am going to eat them up.
00:43 That's what man has been doing not since the last two centuries, not since the mills came
00:49 about.
00:50 He has been doing this since he has been known to be conscious.
00:56 That's what he has been doing.
01:01 He wants to eat up everything.
01:03 Now what is the result then?
01:07 When man eats up man, the result is population.
01:14 What is this population?
01:15 The woman goes out and eats up the man.
01:20 You have babies.
01:21 The man goes out and wants to eat up as many women as possible.
01:25 You have babies.
01:28 So, from the drive to consume, first of all come babies when the object of consumption
01:39 is a human being.
01:42 The next object of consumption is man-made objects because they too are available.
01:46 Why must I spare them?
01:49 So when man wants to consume man-made objects, the result is he guzzles up fossil fuel.
01:58 Give me more diesel, give me more petrol.
02:00 Where else would the energy come from?
02:03 I want buildings.
02:05 I want to consume and whatever you want to consume has to be firstly manufactured.
02:09 How will I manufacture it if I don't have energy?
02:13 And energy from any of the sources as we currently know is carbon intensive.
02:23 Even the so-called green energy has a strong carbon footprint when seen in totality.
02:36 So when man consumes man-made objects, again the result is more consumption and more carbon.
02:49 And then man says I will consume the natural world as well.
02:55 Why should these folks roam about happy and untouched?
03:01 Maybe they can make me happy.
03:02 How about some beef?
03:03 How about more corn?
03:04 How about turning a great banyan tree into a bonsai?
03:13 I want it in a little pot.
03:17 I'll keep it in my bedroom.
03:20 Are you getting it?
03:25 How about developing a delectable waterfront by the side of a great river?
03:35 I'll go there and satisfy my senses.
03:38 And what is the waterfront all about?
03:40 Tons and tons of cement.
03:45 Tons and tons of cement.
03:49 I'll consume everything.
03:53 And if you will look at these three types of consumption, you will understand what climate
03:57 change is in all its totality.
04:00 Nothing drives climate change except these three.
04:05 Man consuming man, and when I say man, I mean mankind.
04:10 It's not a gender specific thing.
04:13 When I say man consuming man, that gives birth to unsustainable populations.
04:22 When I say man consuming man-made objects, that is what is meant by, generally meant
04:29 by the level of consumption.
04:34 And when I say man consuming the natural world, that is what is meant by loss of biodiversity,
04:42 excessive fishing, extinction of species and what not.
04:51 So that's the overall framework.
04:54 You cannot look at any small part of it.
04:56 You have to go to the very basis of it.
05:00 The very basis of climate change is the constitution of man himself.
05:05 It is not a specific activity of man that is leading to climate change.
05:12 And do grill me on this.
05:14 I just don't want to go away untested.
05:20 I want both of you to question me on this.
05:23 I would love to have a clearer understanding.
05:29 But this is my thesis so far.
05:33 The very constitution of man is such that he is bound to destroy everything.
05:38 It's just that sometimes he calls his destruction as construction.
05:42 Real construction is something totally different.
05:48 It does not come from that line of thought which prohibits man from looking at itself.
05:53 Real construction or real creativity comes from another mind which due to the various
06:04 vicissitudes of history could never gain enough prominence or power to guide the course of
06:11 history.
06:12 That kind of mind has sometimes been found in the Orient.
06:22 Though it is fairly lost now.
06:29 So man as he is, is climate change.
06:35 So climate change is not merely man-made.
06:40 Climate change is man's compulsion.
06:45 Man cannot help climate change.
06:48 Man is climate change.
06:49 [Music]

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