Video Information:
Advait Learning Camp, 28.12.19, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India
Context:
~ What is the meaning of welfare?
~ What is the difference between material and non-material welfare?
~ How the economics and spirituality are connected?
~ How to grow Externally?
~ What is the difference between external growth and internal growth?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .
Advait Learning Camp, 28.12.19, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India
Context:
~ What is the meaning of welfare?
~ What is the difference between material and non-material welfare?
~ How the economics and spirituality are connected?
~ How to grow Externally?
~ What is the difference between external growth and internal growth?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Pranam Acharya ji. The first question comes from a 26 years old participant who is doing
00:14PhD in economics. He writes that, Acharya ji, if we talk about the subject matter of
00:19economics, it was said by the father of economics, Adam Smith, that economics is a science of
00:26wealth, where he puts money over man. So, over the years, as time passed and the scope
00:32was broadened, the economist Alfred Marshall told that economics is the science of material
00:38welfare, where he puts man over money. But his definition has been a lot criticized in
00:47the academic world because he divided welfare between material and non-material. So, my
00:53question is what is the meaning of welfare and should it be divided between material
00:57and non-material? Pranam. Ultimately, welfare or wellness is an experience
01:23within the experiencer. Irrespective of where the object of that experience lies, the experience
01:48is always within. You might be experiencing pleasure from a great building in front of
02:08your eyes, but the building outside is in itself not the pleasure. The pleasure that
02:26you are experiencing is a subjective thing happening obviously within the subject. So,
02:43whether it is something as tangible as a building or something less tangible like a
03:06thought or a memory, the experience that you draw from it is always internal. The object
03:19might be external or apparently not so external, but the feeling of wellness is always internal.
03:30So, when we talk of human welfare, we are essentially talking of something within the
03:45human being. The human being might say that the cause of that wellness or lack of wellness lies
03:57outside of himself, but still the effect is always experienced within. Right? Now,
04:13this experience within has been observed to be only partially a function of the conditions
04:25outside. There is ample proof. Japan is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and the
04:39Japanese have been known, empirically known, to be one of the unhappiest people on the planet.
04:51That by no means establishes that material welfare is inversely correlated with internal
05:05wellness. We also have examples of highly impoverished nations where the people are
05:23internally unwell because of the poverty outside. Material poverty, therefore, is a known reason
05:40for lack of internal wellness. At the same time, material abundance is not a known reason for
05:53internal wellness. So, till some point, human welfare is indeed material welfare, we cannot
06:04deny that. Till a particular point of prosperity, internal wellness is indeed directly proportional
06:15to external tangibles. It is a little inconceivable to have a situation where a person does not have
06:31food to eat, shelter to live under and basic decent conditions to socially abide in and is
06:57yet internally peaceful and satisfied. Rather inconceivable. So, we do need basic material
07:12prosperity, no doubt. Hence, economics, till a point, must be about material prosperity. The
07:30catch is, in most of the developed world, that point has long since been exceeded. The basic
07:52minimum prosperity that is needed, the basic threshold of material availability has been
08:08breached. Achieved is a rather lenient word. It has been many times overachieved. And beyond that
08:25point, there is no incremental return in terms of internal wellness with the increase in external
08:43abundance. After that point, the curve becomes rather flat. You may even have an inverted U-shaped
09:00curve where with the increase in material prosperity beyond a point, you actually start
09:12finding that internal wellness is diminishing. The world in general, on an average, has come
09:25to a point where external growth is no longer going to help. External growth is largely
09:34saturated. Though there are deep regional variations, what is true for the United States
09:43is not quite true for, let's say, Bangladesh. But if I talk of a broad average, then further
09:56wellness on this planet now cannot come through external growth. We have come to a very special
10:05point in the history of mankind. Till this point, all history was about material growth,
10:18external prosperity. That is what dictated the course of history. That is what dictated the
10:26rise and fall of empires and so much else as well. But now that factor, external prosperity,
10:42is, as we said, saturated. It will not help anymore to have more money. Now what we need
10:57is internal growth, not external growth. Further internal wellness, I am asserting,
11:06will not come through external growth but only internal growth. In fact, if we insist on more
11:15external growth, we are going to have catastrophic results for the planet as we are already witnessing.
11:22Some parts of this planet still need external growth. India is one of those parts. We still
11:37have large chunks of population who need to have more external prosperity. We still have people
11:45who don't have even very small houses or even basic sustainable incomes, as you said, or means
11:56to decently educate their children. So, in their case, yes, still more growth is needed but only
12:09for them, not for the planet in general. Please get this distinction clear. The developed world,
12:18for example, and the developed world, you see, accounts for three-fourths of the planet's total
12:28production and GDP, though it amounts for only a sixth of the total population of the planet.
12:41The developed world, especially, cannot target any more external growth. The developed world
12:52cannot talk the language of GDP anymore. It would be suicidal. They do not need GDP growth. If they
13:01want to have GDP growth, it would only help them have some kind of shallow psychological
13:06satisfaction. But it would not contribute to internal wellness. Their internal wellness,
13:13I am repeating, does not depend anymore on external growth. And the planet has no more
13:22to offer to accommodate external growth. How will you get external growth? The planet has
13:31already given you as much as it could. You cannot draw any more from it. Sooner than later,
13:47in the next few decades, even the developing world would reach the threshold after which
14:00external prosperity does not help. So, we can very safely and very confidently say that for
14:17the world in general, the future is internal growth. If economics is about welfare, then
14:31further welfare of this planet and of mankind in general is not going to come from GDPs. It is
14:41to come from an internal ascension. And if that internal ascension is not being targeted and is
14:55instead being sought to be compensated by more and more external goods, then it is very unwise.
15:14So, it brings us to a peculiar conclusion. Economics now onwards would be spirituality.
15:36If economics is human welfare, then further welfare is not going to come from more goods,
15:51more productivity, more lavish markets. Further wellness or welfare is going to come from an
16:04internal center. So, economics which dealt only in the language of numbers and productions and
16:19such things will have no option but to turn inwards and maybe develop some kind of an indicator or
16:36coefficient of internal growth, CIG. Nations will need to be ranked on their respective CIGs,
16:51coefficients of internal growth. It is another matter that if a country rises sufficiently high
17:01on the CIG index, it will cease to have great interest in remaining a country in the conventional
17:13sense of the word. If there is real internal growth, the concept of parochial boundaries
17:27as history has known would cease to be relevant and a lot more things would happen. With internal
17:38growth you would not need to rank nations in terms of the number of nuclear warheads that
17:46they possess. The P5 in the United Nations Security Council would need not be relics of
17:58World War II era. You would not say that the Security Council would be decided on the basis
18:10of the winning side of a world war. You would not say that only those who possess nuclear weapons
18:21deserve to have a permanent chair. In fact, if the CIG manages to do well instead of a
18:37Security Council, you might have a Spirituality Council. Hopefully, India will be the chairperson.
18:44But then that's not quite a spiritual statement, is it? When I say India,
18:56I do not really mean a political formation. Are you getting it? So,
19:10the concept of wellness, welfare, growth, prosperity, the very idea of progress has
19:23to go a fundamental transformation if we have any sanity. You cannot just keep talking the
19:38language of endless numbers. You cannot say now we have reached X trillions and what is ahead?
19:47What next? X plus 2 trillions and then X plus 4. An endless movement amounting to what?
20:00Certainly not internal welfare. The economic idea that human welfare is to be measured
20:17through material availability is now getting outdated. Maybe it had relevance 50 years back.
20:28Maybe Adam Smith and Keynes were right but only topically right. Right only as per the
20:49situation of their times. How right is the old definition of economics today needs to be
20:59re-asserted. But rest assured, the time of growth is over. And when I say growth,
21:16I mean external growth. People feel that because human intelligence knows no limits
21:29and human desire knows no limits, therefore the human race is going to keep expanding endlessly.
21:38They are taking inspiration from history. They keep saying that if you look at history,
21:46man has kept ceaselessly inventing. If you look at history, man has kept endlessly progressing.
21:56If you look at industry, if you look at history, then man has never stopped at
22:04particular level of development. So, from this historical trend, they want to extrapolate that
22:15the future will be the same as the past. What they forget to factor in is a simple variable
22:27called the carrying capacity of the earth. Yes, till now we have kept materially expanding both
22:41in terms of consumption and in terms of population because the earth, this planet,
22:48could afford that. But now we have come to a very special point in history. We cannot do it
22:57any further and that is irrespective of the kind of efficient technologies we bring about. When it
23:11comes to technology and efficiency, the more efficient a technology becomes, the more widespread
23:22its use becomes. Hence, the net material consumption instead of declining actually
23:31increases. So, if you say that a particular raw material or resource is in scarcity and hence we
23:50need a better technology to enable its more efficient consumption, then that better technology
24:00would indeed make the consumption more efficient and therefore more affordable and therefore more
24:08widespread and hence the net result would not be a decrease in consumption but actually an increase
24:17in consumption. So, let's get over the idea that with better technologies, we'll be able to continue
24:26expanding materially forever. That is not going to happen. People give the example of Europe. They
24:33say see, in the middle of the last century, Europe was as polluted as India and China currently are.
24:48Look at the Ganga today and look at the condition of Thames in the 1950s. They say
24:59not much difference. They say look at the Delhi sky today and look at the London sky in the 50s,
25:05not much difference. But Europe, that's what they say, progressed more materially and more
25:20material growth was the answer to pollution. That's their line of reasoning. So, they say
25:27that if you want to overcome the problems facing earth today, the solution is not less consumption
25:34but more consumption. Because today the Thames is quite clean and Europe is quite green and the
25:44air quality in Europe is just fine. And how did this come about? This came about by more growth,
25:55more consumption. So, their logic is let there be more technology and that will lead to a solution
26:05to our problems. What they forget is the difference between a local optimum and a global optimum.
26:15Europe is clean today, yes, but at what cost to the rest of the world? It's almost like saying
26:31that a five-star hotel has pretty pleasant ambience. Yes, obviously, but at what cost
26:43to the overall environment? It is quite clean, comfortable. What is it doing to the environment
27:04in general? Are you getting it? So, that kind of a logic is misplaced. Further, let's not forget
27:22that in global terms, Europe is just around 30-35 crore people, less than UP and Bihar combined.
27:38Europe can indulge in material extravaganza. If the rest of the world starts following the
27:53standards of America or Canada or Europe or Japan, then we will have an unremitting scale
28:14of disaster. The mind of the economist now has to stop thinking in language of consumption. You
28:33are an aspiring economist, that's my advice to you. Unfortunately, just too many economics are
28:41still very very old school. All they talk of is demand and supply, production and consumption.
28:50Consumption is not the way ahead. Economics and spirituality have to now converge. You cannot
29:02keep measuring human wellness by human consumption anymore, not possible. You have to train yourself
29:10to think in different terms. Your internal model of human wellness has to be very different now.
29:20It has to be an internal model. What does an internal model mean? You will have to ask how
29:28peaceful the person really is. And remember, now you cannot ask whether the fellow has basic means
29:38of survival. Because as we said, the developed world already has those means and within a few
29:46decades, almost all of developing world too will have those means. So that question has become
29:52very irrelevant. Does the fellow have food to eat? Does the fellow have clothes to wear? Does
30:00the fellow have basic security, physical security? Those things will become irrelevant soon.
30:07Then you will have to train yourself as an economist to ask, does the fellow really
30:15understand life? Does the fellow really know love? Does the fellow really have it to remain
30:29stable in face of psychological turbulence? These are the things that will now define and
30:39determine your wellness. Are you getting it? So, be ready for the new world of wellness.