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00:00:00Today, on behalf of UC Berkeley, we welcome you all to an interactive session with Acharya Prashant.
00:00:06Acharya G is a Vedanta exegete, philosopher and social reformer, columnist, and national best-selling author.
00:00:13Democracy has been the best system known to us.
00:00:17Now, limitations of the system are being ruthlessly exposed.
00:00:22Places where people are not educated are the places where democracy becomes its own annihilator.
00:00:32If these people can vote for me only if they are uneducated, then as a policymaker, I would deliberately keep them uneducated.
00:00:39We are honored to welcome Acharya Prashant G.
00:00:43Talking about, you know, global conflicts recently with multiple wars all across, you know, the globe, on the news every day.
00:00:51And, you know, sometimes can feel very, like, anxiety-inducing, but oftentimes it's, you know, a cause of human factors.
00:00:59So, we want to ask you, what human factors do you think have led to this unrest in global peace?
00:01:08See, it has mostly to do with the rise of right-wingism across the world.
00:01:21Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, and several other budding minor conflicts.
00:01:40If you look at them, some of them might not even be international in nature.
00:01:44But if you look at them, they are centrally related to the rise in right-wing attitudes.
00:02:01Now, where is that coming from?
00:02:04That is coming from a few places.
00:02:11I'll try to enumerate them.
00:02:15The first is that the democratic model probably itself is flawed.
00:02:21It is not populations that start a war, you know.
00:02:24You cannot say Russians invaded Ukrainians.
00:02:30That didn't happen.
00:02:35It is the ruler, the man at the center that starts the war,
00:02:42mostly for his own personal ambitions and based on his personal ideologies.
00:02:48What's remarkable is that this man at the center and that's what we are seeing across the world today
00:02:56is mostly a product of the democratic process itself.
00:03:04Or at least a semi-democratic process.
00:03:07At least a pseudo-democratic process.
00:03:09Even in Russia, you won't officially call it a dictatorship.
00:03:17Right?
00:03:18And that's happening in the U.S. as well.
00:03:23The democratic process believes that people, just as they are,
00:03:32are capable of taking wise and sane decisions.
00:03:43Now, this principle, this assumption,
00:03:47is obviously better than allowing some random person to assume authority.
00:03:55And that's why democracy has been, in a relative sense, the best system known to us.
00:04:02But now, 80 years since the war,
00:04:18the limitations of the system, its fault lines are being ruthlessly exposed.
00:04:26You are talking about people casting their free vote.
00:04:37But people, are they free first of all, in the inner sense?
00:04:46If they can be tempted, manipulated, excited, are they free?
00:04:53If someone can come and incite you with racist ideas or communal doctrines,
00:05:12how free really are you?
00:05:13If they can be tempted, they can be tempted to accept it.
00:05:16But democracy says, no.
00:05:20The person is the sovereign decision-making unit and we'll respect that.
00:05:31So, I call that as fallacy of respect number one.
00:05:35Number one, there is another place that the liberal democratic system respects too much.
00:05:44We'll come to that.
00:05:47Yes, obviously, there has to be universal
00:05:53adult franchisee and people should have the right to vote.
00:05:59But then, a lot must be invested in education.
00:06:07Places where people are not well educated are the places where democracy becomes its own annihilator.
00:06:20Tyrants come to occupy the throne using almost perfectly legitimate democratic means.
00:06:33So, there is not much really that you can even complain about.
00:06:39The fellow will say, I am a democratically elected leader.
00:06:41So, along with democracy, what should have been mandated?
00:06:56Just as we say, universal adult franchisee.
00:06:59Similarly, we should have said compulsory and universal education till adulthood.
00:07:05For democracy to succeed and for these insane wars to stop, you need educated populations.
00:07:21And then it comes to the matter of how to define education.
00:07:25Because our centres are determined by material profit and numerical success.
00:07:37Therefore, the highest kind of respect that we give to education
00:07:48is to vocational and professional education.
00:07:51Science, technology, as you have the STEM.
00:08:00Now, these do very little in terms of educating a young person about her own interiors.
00:08:09How does the mind function?
00:08:12How has man travelled through history?
00:08:18There is so much to be learnt from history.
00:08:19But a typical MBA grad is unlikely to know much of world history or psychology or philosophy or sociology or anthropology.
00:08:39Even though in the education market, in the job market, this person is going to command the highest price.
00:08:47You will say, what a well-educated person this one is.
00:08:55B-Tech MBA.
00:08:58You can be a B-Tech MBA or whatever or a doctor or this or that.
00:09:03But if you have not gone through education of the self,
00:09:08then you are extremely vulnerable to psychological manipulation.
00:09:14I was going to say, yeah, I mean, at Berkeley, it's a public school.
00:09:26So, you know, those optional courses we're talking about before, you know, people aren't always really required to take them.
00:09:31And although every engineering major has to take an ethics course, I've noticed a lot of students like my peers don't really care about them.
00:09:39But even if I feel like I can take the time to understand and learn history and understand ethics, a democracy is a body of people.
00:09:49And it feels very isolating to be the only one who cares and who feels like they understand.
00:09:55How do you get the people around you, get your whole body to systematically change if it's one person?
00:10:01Wonderful. So just as democracy is a system, similarly, the education that needs to necessarily accompany democracy has to be systemic.
00:10:14You cannot say everybody will vote, but education is as per your own sweet will.
00:10:26Education has to be something that the state takes care of.
00:10:29And every single person must be educated right till the age of 25 at least, at least.
00:10:35We have come to a point where with AI and stuff and increased longevity of life, we don't really have to start working necessarily at 21.
00:10:55You need to start working at 21 if you were to live only till 60.
00:10:59Or if you were to become a victim to many kinds of diseases and morbidities at 60.
00:11:07Today you remain healthy till 80.
00:11:14Today medical science has found ways to keep you not only alive, but fully functioning for a longer time.
00:11:24So you can devote 25 or 30 years of your prime to education and you must.
00:11:33And you must. Why not?
00:11:35And that has to be, we said, a system.
00:11:38Otherwise, you are very right.
00:11:39You would feel like an island.
00:11:41Well, I am concerned about all these things.
00:11:43But others are taking a very emotional and a very instinctive and reactive view of everything.
00:11:51And coming up with very superficial arguments.
00:11:54But because these crowds are in large numbers, so they prevail in a democratic system.
00:12:02So we are at this peculiar point in history, where democracy will need to correct itself.
00:12:08It is offering, we said, too much respect to human discretion.
00:12:16It is assuming that man, as he is born, a human being, just by birth, is capable of exercising discretion.
00:12:27And that is not really the case.
00:12:29We are not respecting the facts if we believe in this thing.
00:12:32The second thing that the liberal democratic system is respecting too much is faith.
00:12:49Faith, which is nothing but a belief system.
00:12:51You see, if I come to you and I say I believe in a flat earth,
00:12:57you would smirk, you would mock, you might laugh at me.
00:13:02And if you are kind-hearted, you might want to educate me.
00:13:06Right?
00:13:07But if I come to you and say, I believe in a flat earth, because that's what my religious book says.
00:13:15Then you would leave me alone.
00:13:18And you would say, you know, it's a matter of faith.
00:13:20And I respect all faiths.
00:13:22No, this is nonsensical.
00:13:23If we are free to denounce, contradict, bring down all kinds of irrationalities,
00:13:37and superstitions, and illogics, why have we continued to be so respectful of this thing called blind faith?
00:13:47And people just get away with anything.
00:13:54You know, it's my personal belief system.
00:13:56I don't want to argue on it.
00:13:59I don't want to argue on it.
00:14:03I believe that land belongs to me.
00:14:06I don't want to argue on it.
00:14:07Now, that would start a war.
00:14:08Right?
00:14:10I believe that that particular land belongs to me.
00:14:14And don't argue with me, because this is my holy belief system.
00:14:20My holy lord appeared in my dream, and commanded me to invade that land.
00:14:25And argue with that.
00:14:29And since decades, we have been educated to retreat in the face of such nonsense.
00:14:34If somebody does a mathematical equation wrong, you would not hesitate in correcting that person.
00:14:45Right?
00:14:50But somebody comes up and says, you know,
00:14:55I believe the earth was made in four days by four holy angels.
00:15:01You would not argue.
00:15:01You know, why not?
00:15:10No, this is my holy belief.
00:15:13I understand why this value system arose in the first place.
00:15:19It was so that we can stay clear of conflict.
00:15:24This person believes in one thing, citing it as holy or religious.
00:15:28So, we said, let both of them maintain their beliefs in their personal private space.
00:15:40And we are not going to argue with them.
00:15:43But it's no more in the personal private space.
00:15:45So, we say, let's say, let's say, to all kinds of bigotry, and to name any problem of the modern world.
00:15:58And it is arising from a belief system.
00:16:02It is arising from an unscientific and illogical view of the world and oneself.
00:16:06yourself. And those who have reason and logic on their side, they very respectfully retreat
00:16:17when faced with an unreasonable kind of animal. Why this respect? No, we don't want to hurt
00:16:28somebody's feelings. It's not about feelings, it's about facts. Facts must always prevail
00:16:35over feelings. What is this dictum about not hurting anybody's feelings? And if you don't
00:16:45want your feelings to be hurt, then you must keep your feelings very secured in your personal
00:16:50space. You must not expose them. I am not going to enter your house or your heart to hurt your
00:16:57feelings. But if you come up with your feelings in the public space, and you even have to be
00:17:04even want votes over your feelings, then allow me to hurt your feelings. But that's not
00:17:13happening. Are you getting it?
00:17:20Yes, I think all of us can understand the dynamic that we are speaking about and how there is
00:17:27always, you know, kind of, we keep facts and we keep feelings on one scale. And it really,
00:17:36you just really need to find a balance between facts and feelings. You cannot let one take
00:17:40over the other. Otherwise, you won't be able to think. I'll be a little more ruthless than
00:17:47that. You cannot have facts and feelings balanced against each other. Otherwise, you lose out
00:17:52on the fact. So, the fact is that the Earth is an oblate spheroid. And the feeling is that
00:17:59the Earth is a flat plate. How do you balance these two? And what kind of special geography
00:18:08do you get from that? Think of it. How do you balance these two? One of them has to prevail.
00:18:18There can be no accommodation in this. I have a question about different, you know, different,
00:18:26a lot of different religions have different facts. And there's a lot of facts that we don't
00:18:31know, we don't have the answers to yet. So, how do we say that some facts are more true
00:18:37over others? And is there not value in, you know, just believing that we won't have all
00:18:41the answers? Or is it something that we should try to find, we should try to find all the
00:18:46answers to these factors? Lovely, lovely, lovely question. You see, if I don't have the answer
00:18:50to something, for example, physics still does not know for sure what dark matter is. And
00:18:57that's a big unknown because dark matter constitutes 85% of the weight of the universe. So, that's
00:19:04a humongous unknown. But that does not mean that you come up with a fancy tale saying dark
00:19:11matter is some great monster that was created 4500 years back by this particular demonic force
00:19:18and these such things. If I don't know, I simply say, I don't know. And I am researching into
00:19:24it. And I don't know when I will get the answers. But coming up with stories and labeling them
00:19:34against facts just cannot be entertained. And this is something that we, you see, it starts
00:19:45at the level of the family itself. It starts at the level of your most basic relationship.
00:19:53Don't you see how, in our most intimate relationships, feelings manage to get a weightage that they
00:20:05simply don't deserve. And the results are never good. Results are never good. The feeling
00:20:14has to be aligned with the fact. I am not talking of becoming unfeeling automaton. No. But the
00:20:21feeling has to be aligned with the fact. And then feeling itself attains a bit of sacredness,
00:20:27when the feeling is aligned with the fact. But if your feeling is rather aligned with your
00:20:34ego and imaginations, then how does one respect such a feeling?
00:20:41But the world is... Yes, please.
00:20:45Another thing I was going to ask about this is, sometimes we declare things fact, because
00:20:50someone in power declares it. Like eugenics, for example, you know, when in America, when
00:20:56the white people were in power, and they declared eugenics was truth. How do the people who, you
00:21:01know, don't have the opportunity to speak, voice their feelings? Because in that way, you
00:21:06know, they don't have the facts to say eugenics is not true. They only have their personal experiences.
00:21:11You see, facts by definition are falsifiable. You do not accept something as a fact just because
00:21:21somebody in authority proclaimed it to be. That's not the process by which somebody attains
00:21:26the status of a fact. A fact by definition is falsifiable, verifiable. There are peer reviews.
00:21:35Einstein came up with his relativity theory and there was this huge book published against
00:21:42him. Hundred authors against Einstein. And he came up with a really smart one. He said,
00:21:49if I were false, even one would have been enough. Why hundred? Even one would have sufficed.
00:22:02Why hundred? And that's the thing with facts. If a fact is proven to be untrue even once, it
00:22:14chooses its status. And it is publicly available to be tested and denied. You can test it. You
00:22:20can deny it. It is always in the public domain. The acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 meters per
00:22:28second square. Now this is not a holy commandment. You and I can verify it on our own. And then
00:22:35it becomes a fact. And then there are theories that are not yet in the realm of facts. It
00:22:44is just a theory. It looks like a good theory. This is a theory that is yielding verifiable
00:22:50results. But still it is a theory because there still are gaps. So science is, I suppose,
00:22:58pretty honest about things. And just because things are commonly accepted, they just don't
00:23:10attain the status of facts. I feel about this thing. I feel about that thing. Why do you
00:23:15feel so much? Go and read up. Instead of feeling so much, why not visit a library? An e-library
00:23:23available right on your phone.
00:23:30I think what I was trying to get to is that, now having said that, the reality of our world
00:23:36is that facts usually come from power. It should probably not be that way. Facts should be,
00:23:42as you said, available in the public domain, up for discussion, debate, and perhaps even
00:23:48falsification. But in today's world, facts always come from a position of power. We are
00:23:55so conditioned to looking at things in monetary terms that we believe that the one with higher
00:24:01monetary funds would perhaps be able to get a better judgment of the world is all about.
00:24:07But just on to that, I was trying to get to the question of, it seems as though the most
00:24:14non-virtuous people, at least in the eyes of us...
00:24:18May I address the first part of your statement?
00:24:21See, facts that come from power are called propaganda. That's not a fact. And if you believe
00:24:28in a so-called fact, just because it is coming from power, then it is belief. There is propaganda
00:24:37coming from authority, and there is gullible belief on behalf of the receiver. Nowhere is
00:24:45something called fact in the picture. Why must I believe in something just because some big name
00:24:53is behind it. Some big name proclaims, there is nothing called climate change, it's a hoax.
00:25:00Somebody comes up and says, you know, population decline is happening. Why can't you check up
00:25:06the numbers? Is it really happening? And it's a very verifiable number. I mean, you are just
00:25:11counting heads. There can be no possible discrepancy in it, unless there is a very organized kind
00:25:17of manipulation. So, authority is in no way a touchstone for something being a fact. Right?
00:25:32And there is no need, one need... And that's the reason why we need to be educated in history
00:25:40and psychology and philosophy. We need to see how entire nations, for centuries, could be
00:25:55successfully manipulated into believing in stuff that was totally fantastical, eye-wash.
00:26:07Once you see that, you realize the vulnerability of the human mind to propaganda.
00:26:14Right. Yes, please.
00:26:17Yeah. So, I mean, this just stimulated me even further. And I was wondering, humans usually
00:26:23have this tendency of not being able to accept uncertainty. We always want everything secured.
00:26:30We always want something that, you know, we know that 10 years down the line, I'll be in this job
00:26:34working at this company with this particular X amount of salary. Right? And we always look for answers.
00:26:41I mean, even in our personal context, when we don't know something, as students, we either try to go to
00:26:47our textbooks in our personal lives, we try to go to beliefs. And often when facts are not proven,
00:26:53they are not verified or falsified. We just try to blindly believe them, just so that we can get some
00:27:00form of certainty, especially that's in my case, you know, if I don't know whether something
00:27:05can be verified or not, I'll take it up from my parents. I'll take it up from the people around me
00:27:10because I need something to believe in. I need something to be certain. So how do you recommend
00:27:15people to not be afraid of this uncertainty, to embrace the uncertainty, and to realize that not
00:27:21everything is black and white. There is a color spectrum that we need to look at when we are looking at
00:27:27different opinions and ideas. It should be, it should be quite easy. It should be very easy. No?
00:27:35Yes, of course, I agree. When we do not know of things, we turn to figures of authority. Right?
00:27:43They could be parents or teachers or people around us, sometimes even friends, colleagues.
00:27:48So, my question is, name the most wicked creature in the world. And I turn to these people for my answer.
00:28:05And these are all cats. And I find that unanimously they agree that the answer is Rat. I mean, shouldn't that
00:28:15ring some bells here? And then I ask these people. This is another set. And they say cats. And I notice, I observe.
00:28:27I observe that these are all dogs. Shouldn't that tell me that the answers in no way are reliable?
00:28:36You turn to your parents, the answer points at one direction. You turn to a career counsellor, the answer is pointing
00:28:47in another direction. Don't you know that the answer is coming from their own centre of self-interest?
00:28:54Should be easy to see. Should be easy to see. Yeah? So, while it is true that one will ask people around,
00:29:05and there is no harm in seeking advice, in letting information come to you from all sides. But one must also see,
00:29:14that the fellow providing the information is going to be biased. And that's why there is going to be a huge degree
00:29:24of subjectivity. And what is good for that person who is counselling you, need not necessarily be the right thing
00:29:34for you, because he is coming from his own centre of self-interest, which will generally not coincide with the point
00:29:43where your interests lie. Totally, yes. Yeah. I think it's really important to understand the context
00:29:52as you were mentioning of where we are getting our facts from. Otherwise, the validity of those facts cannot hold in the first place.
00:29:59Where is that person coming from? You know, sometimes it's possible that the person is uttering just the right thing.
00:30:06But still you have to ask him, from where are you coming? For example, you are in no mood to go out tomorrow. Right?
00:30:21But your girlfriend is insisting. And she says, no, such fine weather and sunny days now and we must venture out.
00:30:32And so, so you look up the weather report, you look up the weather report, and the weather report says, there is a fair probability
00:30:43of turbulence tomorrow and it might even rain and there might be a blizzard or something, something. Yes.
00:30:51And fine. And then she comes up with another report that says that the meteorological department has been off the mark
00:30:59exactly 37% of times. Now, the fact she is quoting is absolutely right. But you have to see where she is coming from.
00:31:08She is coming from a point of self-interest. She is not quoting the fact for the sake of the fact.
00:31:14She is quoting the fact so that she can elicit a particular favorable personal response from you that coincides with her own desires.
00:31:25So, it's not as if people fool us just by hiding the real thing, just by hiding facts.
00:31:34Sometimes people fool us by quoting facts. Even when somebody is quoting facts, you have to ask what is his motivation
00:31:43in quoting this particular number or whatever. For that you don't need a degree. You need to be attentive.
00:31:51You need to observe. You need not be swayed by the authority of the person in front of you. You have to ask.
00:32:00Okay, fine. This is where he is coming from. Can I disproportionately, very neutrally look at him?
00:32:06Yeah. Definitely. I think that's a really great piece of advice for all of us here. And we also had in mind, you know, in today's world, we see the most non virtuous people, at least in the eyes of us laymen, that become the most successful.
00:32:23And we always feel as though the people at the helm are the ones that are wicked, perhaps. So, or at least they do not have a strong inclination towards faith.
00:32:33And we were wondering what your response is to, you know, when we always keep on preaching about the fact that we should follow faith, but sometimes people feel as though faith never takes them into success.
00:32:46Again, there can be different interpretations of success in this context, but we were just wanting to know why is it that we see the most non virtuous people at the helm of success in today's world.
00:32:57You see, they are there not by virtue of anything special or extraordinary that they have. Right?
00:33:12Okay, yes.
00:33:14If you take a very slimy kind of liquid, thick and slimy, you know, and you put a speck of dust in it. Or you can even take the speck of dust and place it right at the bottom of that fluid.
00:33:41What would the fluid do to it? It would throw it up right to the top position, because it is slime and it loves to put dirt on its head.
00:33:57The person that you see at the helm of affairs is a personal representation of an aggregate consciousness.
00:34:10If you find that person to be non virtuous or wicked, it is because people in general are non virtuous and wicked.
00:34:19So that's the person they chose for the top job. There is nothing that special that that person has done.
00:34:28In fact, if you can get a bigger crook, he would unsettle this man at the top.
00:34:37There is nothing honorable there. There is nothing to be learned from that person.
00:34:46You cannot go to that person and ask him, please share your great secret with us. How did you come to occupy this high throne?
00:34:55He didn't come to occupy it. He was placed there by forces beyond his control.
00:35:05He might think that he is a smart man and he fought in election or did something great and then he manipulated the audience and this and that and then therefore he obtained the popular vote and got there.
00:35:16But that's not happening. In the kind of system that we have, democracy, that person there is representative of how the electorate is.
00:35:28And if the electorate continues to be confused, confounded, ignorant, bigoted, then these people will continue to sit atop.
00:35:45So, there is no need to idolize them. There is no need to take it to heart.
00:35:56There is no need to feel demotivated or depressed on seeing such people at the top.
00:36:03In fact, if they are at the top, in some peculiar way, it is the greatest insult that could be shot at them.
00:36:15Assume, we here have some kind of counter Mensa. You know of Mensa, right? That hallowed group of people with high IQs.
00:36:32Yes. Let's say this set of my friends sitting over here are a unique group of people with low IQs. Let's say.
00:36:42And they all elect me as their supreme leader. Is that a compliment or the biggest humiliation that I could face?
00:36:55It is indeed. So, why should you be then jealous of me or why should you then think,
00:37:02Oh my God, this person, in spite of being non-virtuous, has attained such great heights?
00:37:08Do your own thing. I suppose it was Albert Camus who said that this world is so screwed up that just being truthful to yourself is an act of great rebellion.
00:37:30These are not the exact words. You can look up for the exact thing. There is nothing in these people full of pomp, pelf, power, nothing.
00:37:45Nothing. There is no way you should be ascribing any respect to them. You need not go and throw a shoe at them. That's not needed.
00:37:55But inside here, you should be free of any respect to them. And when it comes to throwing a shoe, if you know you get such a chance, that tattoo is fine.
00:38:16Yeah. I had a question because oftentimes it's like, it's easy to feel disassociated from these people in power and say that, you know, they didn't get there rightfully.
00:38:25But at the end of the day, sometimes these people in power have such a weight over, you know, your life, the people like society's life, if they're people in power.
00:38:32And it feels demoralizing to, you know, feel hopeless that the people in power are not going to be representative or do justice to what we do.
00:38:42We do. So how do we, like, how as an individual can I make an impact to put people in power and like get everyone else to put people in power that represent us?
00:38:53Create a little domain, a circle, a field of your own, untouched, uninfluenced, uncorrupted. Obviously, they are lording over entire countries and continents.
00:39:08And practically we know, we cannot go out and fight them. That's fine. But still, we can have our own little private islands of serenity and sacredness. And we should not allow anybody to enter those places.
00:39:27Those should be our private temples. Small places involving just the right kind of people for the right purpose. And then, as you grow in your inner rootedness, you might find that circle widening.
00:39:50And if we can have enough number of such circles, each of them gradually widening, one day they'll all come close and coalesce into a big upsurge of real virtue.
00:40:14But you cannot start with the aim of something tectonic. Let there be a great earthquake and let me bring all these structures of authority down. You cannot start with that.
00:40:35You need not start with that. Start with your little thing. Five people, ten people, twenty people and keep widening, keep widening and know that it's human nature to strive for freedom, for purity, for sacredness.
00:40:53So you would not be alone in this. So you would not be alone in this. Unknown to you, some other place, somebody else is doing the same thing. And if your circles keep expanding, one day the two circles will come into contact.
00:41:12And then something great will result.
00:41:17Yeah, that's a really relatable statement for me because, for example, I'm very passionate about climate justice and climate change.
00:41:25And, you know, UC Berkeley is said to be one of the very environmentally friendly universities.
00:41:30But since coming here, I feel like a lot of my peers actually don't really care.
00:41:35And you talk a lot about climate justice and climate change.
00:41:39And I was wondering, you know, this idea that like I have this idea that, you know, climate change is my issue.
00:41:45And as an individual, I have to do a lot for it. And that it's also sometimes disheartening, especially because you see a lot of like big corporations doing most of the impact for climate change.
00:41:55But I know you talk a lot about how climate change is like human consciousness related.
00:42:02And I was wondering if you can elaborate on how our inner void and compulsive consumption are linked to environmental destruction and how we can also manage that as purely individuals that have such a much smaller impact on environmental degradation.
00:42:20You see, it's very simple. It can be explained even to a kid. And I do that. So, we are upset within. We are not okay within. We are unfulfilled and we do not know why.
00:42:37Because we are not educated, not trained to have an inward focus in life. We don't look at ourselves, we don't reflect at our thoughts, actions, feelings.
00:42:49So, we remain upset, unsettled within. And when we are that way, then we want to go out and do things.
00:42:56Let's go somewhere. Let's eat out there. Let's fly to that place. Let me buy new stuff. Why can't I have a private jet? Why can't I fly to my job daily?
00:43:18So, when you do things outside, it's obvious it requires energy. And it so happens that the more uprooted you are inside, the more is the number of unending things that you compulsively want to do on the outside.
00:43:46I am not at rest. I am not at peace. Sometimes I go and pick that up. Sometimes I go and try putting that chair over there. Sometimes I run upstairs, drop something there.
00:44:05Oh, what if I could have a badminton coat in the adjacent lawns. So, I will cut down, uproot all the trees and have a cemented coat there. And I will do all these things. And I am doing these things because I am not alright within. Just that doing all these things requires energy. Energy.
00:44:32And a thing of coincidence is that most of the planet's energy today comes from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels. So, when you go out and do things, you release carbon. It's as simple as that.
00:44:52Now, going out and doing things is not really the problem. Because if you are doing something for the right end, it usually has an end point as well. But when you do not know what you are doing, then you do it endlessly. Like corporate profits.
00:45:10Go and ask somebody in the board of corporate, you know, do you have an end point? This is how your P&L and balance sheet looks. Is there ever going to be a point where you would say enough is enough, it's saturated and we are not proceeding any further?
00:45:31We don't require at least an ever increasing number against my profits. Even a stable level of profits would do. Go and ask them. Not a single person, not a single CEO, not a single stakeholder is going to say there is a definite end point.
00:45:53They will say we require it to increase every year. Now, for it to increase every year, you will have to consume energy. You will have to dig out stuff from below the surface of the earth. You will have to burn things. And you will have to brainwash your consumers into believing that the products of your company are needed for them to have a sustainable or respectable life.
00:46:20You will destroy everything. You will destroy your employees as well. Because since you have no upper limit to your profit, so you will want to extract the maximum from your employees, offering the minimum you can to them.
00:46:39You would exploit the earth, you would exploit your employees and obviously you will exploit your customers. And all that is climate change.
00:46:49When you extract stuff from the earth that requires energy, that releases carbon dioxide and methane. When you brainwash your customers, they purchase not just your useless products. They get identified as being purchasers and consumers. So they keep on purchasing everything. Not just your stuff.
00:47:14Not just your stuff. And when you purchase, then somebody manufactures. For somebody to manufacture something, again what is needed is energy.
00:47:21So climate change is nothing but a product of the unfulfilled dark interiors of this species Homo sapiens. No other species is born with this kind of unrest within. No other species is responsible for the climate disaster.
00:47:43We are. Why? Because only the human being has a hollow in her heart. A hollow that she keeps trying to plug in using all kinds of material things. A new haircut, a new pair of shoes, a new husband, a new job.
00:48:11This, that and all of that is energy. I am not feeling well. Your feelings are carbon. Because in feelings, as we said, there are no facts. You do not know what the facts of your insights are. All you have is feelings. And feelings are blind.
00:48:33Feeling, to feel so much is to experience so much without understanding anything. When you feel something, do you ever understand it? You feel you have a headache, right? That doesn't mean that you understand how the brain works and why it is aching.
00:48:50So we feel a lot. So we feel a lot. But we are not at all in touch with facts. And this feeling, given the kind of respect we give to feelings, makes us run hither dither. And all that is carbon emission.
00:49:05There can be no scientific, no economic, no political, no technological solution to the climate disaster. Not at all. Because this is purely a spiritual crisis.
00:49:19I agree that, you know, overconsumption is one of the biggest problems for climate change and climate justice. But sometimes it's not even overconsumption. You're consuming the bare minimum.
00:49:33But like you were talking about technological advancements, how do we stop our society from going stagnant? Because innovation, every innovation in every field now requires some sort of large carbon footprint. And how do we, is there a way to coexist with innovation, spirituality, and climate justice?
00:49:53You know, I do not see how innovation is out of tune with mitigating the climate disaster. Right now, what you call as innovation is nothing. But a particular kind of innovation that would further the capitalist objective.
00:50:14We don't just innovate. We don't just innovate. We don't just innovate. We innovate only in particular directions. Directions that would enable us to have more profit. So we are not having real innovation. Mind you, we only innovate where there would be an ROI on the innovation.
00:50:34So, it's not as if innovation goes necessarily hand in hand with consumption. That's the kind of innovation we are seeing. But that's not the rule. This idea that unless there are more profits and these things, we would not progress.
00:51:04Are we even testing this idea? You see, man does not exist for the sake of financial growth. Instead, financial growth is for the sake of the human being. Right? True. Do we realize first of all, what we truly want? Now, obviously, to an extent, money is important in that.
00:51:34Isn't there a point beyond which the returns start diminishing? If you live in a third world country with very little financial resources, then obviously, having money would contribute to your welfare. We all agree. Right? You'd get better enrichment. You'd probably get a roof over your head. Your students would get better schooling.
00:52:02Your kids, that is. All that would start happening. We understand. But a point comes when more money or more consumption does not contribute any more to your welfare. The curve starts flattening.
00:52:16Is that not so? And then there might be a point when the curve actually starts dipping. Negative marginal utility. So why do we continue to believe that unending growth in per capita income or per capita consumption is the sine qua non for human progress?
00:52:41That's not that way. It's an assumption that we need to challenge. Look at, there are several countries, where the per capita income is very modest. Yet, the average life expectancy is better than some of the first world countries.
00:53:11innovations are happening at the same rate or at a faster rate than the global north.
00:53:20Japan is known to have people who live the longest. No?
00:53:26Are Japanese richer than the Americans? No. In terms of per capita income? No. But they are more peaceful and happier. So is capital money, financial growth needed for its own sake?
00:53:54For its own sake? Or is all economics actually for the sake of the individual? And do we understand what the individual really needs? We are not saying the individual needs mystical salvation. No, we are not coming from there. No spiritual mumbo jumbo here.
00:54:17We fully understand that we need money. But being rational people, we would also want to plot money against welfare and see where the curve attains saturation. And beyond that, if you are still invested in earning money, then you are wasting yourself, your life and also destroying the planet.
00:54:42That's what is happening. That's what is happening. That's what is climate change.
00:54:47So I had an interesting point to add to this because the other day I was taking a class on human happiness here at Berkeley and we were discussing how in the US there is the curve that you just described.
00:54:58For an average American, for an average American, the curve sort of stagnates at $75,000 annually. After that, the diminishing effect of money, as you say, sort of proves out to be.
00:55:13And it's interesting how within that same class, we were discussing how wealth is a factor of human happiness, but the primary factor of humans being happy is human relations connection, your connection with oneself and with others and how fulfilled you are in those connections.
00:55:32Wonderful.
00:55:33And yeah, it was just something that I wanted to add.
00:55:35Wonderful, wonderful, lovely, lovely. You see, is that something that the Forbes 500 chaps would want you to propagate? No, no, no. If you are happy in your relationship with yourself and worthy people around you, would you find it necessary to go out and burn rupees or dollars?
00:56:01So that you can have some piece of unconscious happiness. They will not want you to know this, that money serves no purpose, rather negative purpose beyond a point. And just as I'm glad you brought up this $75,000 figure, just as I'm hearing it for the first time, I'll look more into it and it's very interesting.
00:56:29Just as you could come up with a figure beyond which the returns start diminishing. Similarly, there is an established figure on the per capita material consumption that is sustainable for the planet.
00:56:48We also have very established, very scientifically proven figures on the per capita emissions that can be sustained by the planet. So all that is very well known. Just that the policy makers themselves are financed by the ones who want us to endlessly consume. And that's a problem with the democratic model.
00:57:16You see, I am the top manipulator and I want these people to vote for me. So I leave them worse off psychologically than they ever were. I will condition them. I will indoctrinate them. I will radicalize them. I will leave them worse off.
00:57:44That's what democracy does to an ignorant voter. Please understand. If these people can vote for me only if they are uneducated, then as a policy maker,
00:57:56I would deliberately keep them uneducated if I want to come back to office. If these people will vote for me only when they are radicalized, I will ensure I keep radicalizing them deliberately so that they keep voting for me.
00:58:14And that's a huge flaw in the democratic model. The entire world is experiencing it. We will need to correct it.
00:58:21I also wanted to ask more on, you know, as you brought up a really interesting point about how climate change is not, it's more spiritual than anything else that we know of, and how we are ourselves the contributor to climate change, consciously or unconsciously.
00:58:44I was wondering then if that is the case, as you said, democracy has its own flaws. Who really is responsible for driving this spiritual change within folks? Is it us ourselves or who exactly should we look up?
00:59:02The culprit is the culprit is the culprit is the fellow who understands, yet not acts.
00:59:09The electorate we said is ignorant in general. The ones in power have vested interests in keeping the electorate ignorant.
00:59:24Then who can be termed as responsible for the state we are in? The ignorant person is as good as someone asleep. If somebody is sleeping, you don't go and blame them, right? They don't know anything at all anyway.
00:59:45Who is to be blamed then? Who is to be blamed then? The fellow who knows and yet not acts. He is the one to be blamed. And this is the person all real positive change will come from. The fellow who knows and acts.
01:00:06Unfortunately, we have too many people who do not know, but act vigorously. And there is a great dearth of people who know, first of all, people who know, they themselves are a rarity.
01:00:21And even among this rare class, those who know and have the love, the guts, the responsibility to act. They are absolutely rare. Those are the people that will bring about change.
01:00:39Yeah, I, I completely agree with that. And honestly, like, I feel like I try to be that person sometimes, but it's really difficult. I'll give an example. I like, I live in the dorms and here, you know, the water or whatever, it takes a long time to heat up.
01:00:59And sometimes I've seen my friends, you know, turn on the shower, go and like do something else and come back. So it's warm. And I was telling my dad about this and I was like, yeah, like, I don't really like how people do this.
01:01:10And he's like, so you wait in this cold shower and you just like, you just deal with it because you don't want to waste water. And my dad tells me that, you know, the way to get it, like, you can't be the person taking all the burden and all the blame for climate change and dealing with it.
01:01:26Obviously, this is a very small example. It's just water. But like, how does one person manage that burden and, you know, even educate other people when oftentimes climate change is something that it's not an impeding issue for most people.
01:01:39It's not very urgent. So for many people, it doesn't feel like they have to do anything. And so for oftentimes people who do know and who do act, it feels like they're the only ones who do care and they can't get other people to care.
01:01:53That's a wonderful thing to bring up. You see, we said climate change is the thing that emanates from the hollow within the human being's heart, right?
01:02:07So, this would suggest, and so has been my experience, that addressing climate change directly does not help. Because you are addressing the emission. You are not addressing the source of emission.
01:02:28The source of emission is not really the exhaust tube of the automobile. It is the heart of the human being. That has to be addressed. And if you address that, let's say, without even bringing in these two words in the discussion, climate change, you might still find that the fellow has become, in general, more sensitive towards the
01:02:58the surroundings, the surroundings, the surroundings, her actions, her relationships, her entire being.
01:03:05See, that's the problem with climate activism. We want to behave as if climate change is an isolated problem. We do not want to, or we fail to see the clear, very strong relationship between human beings,
01:03:34and unfulfillment, and the burgeoning emissions. It's not as if we have been especially unfulfilled only since the last hundred years or so, when the CO2 PPM started rising.
01:03:57We have always been like this, just that, till around 1850 or 1870, we didn't have the technological means to burn so much fossil fuel, or burn anything, and reproduce so much, and sustain such large populations. We didn't have the wear with all. So, just by virtue of our incapacity, the Earth somehow managed to remain saved.
01:04:26But after the Industrial Revolution, we developed the might to do things on a never seen before industrial scale. We were always like that, you know, wherever we went, we brought destruction in our wake. It's not that we are destroying species, annihilating entire species, just today, we are destroying species, annihilating entire species.
01:04:55We have been doing that since centuries, just that the rate has exponentially grown.
01:05:02We went to Australia. What happened to the native species there? Both animals and human beings. We went to America. What happened to the natives there? Wherever we go, we go with a sword and a torch. We are destroyers. We are destroyers because,
01:05:09because we are unhappy within, unfulfilled within, unfulfilled within, joyless and loveless within.
01:05:16If you address that in a person. If you address that in a person, you might find that the issue of climate has been taken care of,
01:05:23without even bringing in the word. You never talk to that person about climate. You never talk to that person about climate.
01:05:30and yet you find that the fellow has become more responsible. The fellow does not even know that the fellow has become more responsible.
01:05:37the fellow does not even know that his carbon footprint has shrunk. And yet it has. Whereas, when you,
01:05:44are on the side of activism, you keep harping on this thing, you know, you keep harping on this thing. You know, you please manage your water consumption.
01:05:51And yet it has. Whereas, when you are on the side of activism, you keep harping on this thing you know, and you have to manage your water consumption,
01:05:59that his carbon footprint has shrunk and yet it has. Whereas when you are on the
01:06:08side of activism then you keep harping on this thing you know you please manage
01:06:12your water consumption and see you must shut down these lights or
01:06:19use less of this, use less of that and all that is just so boringly
01:06:25moral, who would want to hear that? So be it the vegan activists or the climate
01:06:33activists or the plastic activists, they are abhorred. People run away looking at
01:06:40them because they are so predictable and what is predictable becomes boring. Now
01:06:47she will come and pontificate on this and that I have had enough of that no I don't
01:06:55want that. Why not speak to people about about their life, about their love, about
01:07:03great literature, about the pressing issues in the world. Take them deeper into
01:07:10themselves. There is such fabulous literature available on the wisdom side. Why
01:07:18not have a club that discusses such literature? And a very silent by-product
01:07:24of this thing will be that people will become more climate responsible.
01:07:30Very silent by-product.