The problems
are:
Depletion
and degradation of life-support systems such as water, air, and the earth’s
fertility.
Shrinking
biodiversity, which provides the basic material for innovative gene
combinations.
Man’s
waste-making industrial culture, which guzzles up the world’s raw materials.
The
present art/science of development as the process of converting nature’s
limited gifts into consumables for Man.
An
educational system that is a marketing process for industrial products.
A general
mindset replacing nature’s spontaneity with manmade structures, wiping out
humanity’s Sneha, Prema, Daya, and Bhakti.
The
psychological effects of all-round degradation of nature's systems, family,
community, health, entertainment, driving humanity towards narcotizing
entertainment, drug culture, alcoholism, depression, and warfare, all resulting
from the collapse of Man’s psychological support base of family and community,
society, and the ecosystem.
As we navigate the complexities of environmental stewardship, the path forward intertwines innovation, education, and societal cohesion in the following areas:
1.
Promoting Circular Economy: Embracing Recycling and Reuse:
Metal,
plastic, and wood-made articles, machinery, and consumable hardware can be
used, reused, and re-reused. Manufacturers should offer buy-back options when
they sell hardware. The materials can be easily reused. Water is said to have
fifty uses, each use exploiting only one virtue of the element. With water
resources shrinking at an alarming rate, recycling and multiuse technologies
must enter the scenario.
2. Innovating
Sustainability: Beyond Fossil Fuels:
Merely substituting fossil energy sources with renewable energy sources won’t serve any purpose if man’s mindset in consuming energy at the present rate continues. The pity is man continues to think in the old fashion in a totally new context. Take millets, for example. Each millet has a specific virtue, but the recipes for millet-cooking simply substitute millets for potato, amaranthus, rice, or wheat. Such fine arts and usages are being lost. Such mistakes occur because of man’s long-lasting friendship with Nature and its bounties fading out. Technology is a mindset that neglects fine details and individuality. Creative thinking and innovation processes emerge from closely watching and observing each gift of Nature.
3.
Educating for Sustainability:
Dr. Ian Brown conducted a survey of 3000 schools across the world at the request of his mentor Maharshi Mahesh Yogi. Dr. Brown’s survey reveals the fact that the present-day school education cannot teach our children the worthwhile values of (1) Morality and ethics, (2) Appreciating Nature's (asthetic) values, and (3) Compassion. Green education has to include these vital lessons in its curriculum. Education both formal and mass education has to play a major role in environmental safety. The present education, a marketing process, is luring the student into accepting a particular lifestyle as appropriate.
The old system of education based on memory tests and rote is being edged out. Education has to be more entertaining to keep the students from running away from the classes. One Scientist, educator of England has pointed out that the teachers have to use more and more medicines to quieten the children and pin them down to the classroom. The teacher has to be the administrator of knowledge in a more entertaining way so that the child is retained in the classroom. The teacher has to retrain himself to administer education in a more alluring way because he has to compete with more attractive media such as cell phones, telephones, internet TV, etc.,
This makes the teacher’s job unenviable, and the teachers have to act like edutainers to attract students. In India, the attendance in Government school classes is continuously slipping down questioning the very effectiveness of Government schooling systems. The school has become part of the market, and it has to fight for its place in training the human mind. Uncontrolled media, social media, etc., grab the minds of the children. The present post-corona scenario forces teachers to admit they find it very difficult to run the offline classes for cell phone-addicted children.
True education simply does not dish out information but makes the student learn on his own. To wean the learner away from his groove of old consumption patterns, the teacher has to show enormous patience, love, eco-awareness, and communicate his/her wisdom to the student. MA VIDVISHAVAHAI. “Let us love each other” has to be the classroom ethos. The society accustomed to five hundred years of waste-making consumer culture will not yield its dearly held affiliation without a mother-like persuasive appeal by the teacher.
4.
The Green Warrior's Path: Yoga, Kriyas, and Sustainable Consumption:
The green warrior embodies a holistic approach to sustainability, advocating for reduced consumption while emphasizing physical and psychological well-being through practices like Yoga and Kriyas. They understand that personal sacrifices yield rewards such as strengthened will, relaxed body, and heightened consciousness, setting a trend for societal change towards mindful living. Asking man to consume less, without offering some physical and psychological compensations, is not going to be easy. Yoga and Kriyas, which strengthen man’s will-power, enable man to do with less and less of the pleasures derived from external objects, will certainly help. A relaxed body consumes less food and absorbs the nutrients from the food in a better manner. This may not mean much to the food economy, but the opinion-makers and society leaders will set the trend for the common people. Ultimately man has to prove for himself that every sacrifice will reward him in the form of strengthened will, relaxed body, better concentration, greater consciousness of the mind, and a greater amount of love. Unless a green warrior accepts this principle, it will be unfair for the world to ask him to forego external sensual treasures.
5. The
Purpose of Life:
Nature is continuously losing its orderliness as shown by increasing entropy. Nature consisting of animate objects cannot reassemble itself. It is the duty of living things to devote themselves to nature’s work. Man, being the highest on the ladder of life, has to take maximum responsibility to restore order. It is an unescapable duty of every man. Man does not have to go too far to search for his duty. That part of nature which gets degraded by the man handling of it should call for his first attention. Therefore, man’s duty towards nature, yajna lies in the objects which he handles in his day-to-day life. This is Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of universal thinking and local working.
6.
Holistic Science: Integrating Analysis and Synthesis:
Science consists of two processes: analysis and synthesis. Man takes apart the constituents of a sugar candy – carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. But he misses two true points. He does not look up at the sweetness of sugar, which is its essence, and he does not come back to reassemble sugar from the parts. This process of synthesis is mostly neglected in science. Though strictly speaking analysis and synthesis make up science together, historical western science gives more credit to analysis than to synthesis. A green warrior has to correct this imbalance.
7.
Cultivating Collective Consciousness: The Role of Social Units:
The individual cultural habits, consumption patterns, and tastes are shaped by his immediate family. A family is controlled by the community, though this control is invisible. The community is protected by the nation, and it helps to retain its cultural values. The nation’s culture justifies the existence of a nation and defines its contribution to the whole world, the whole creation. Its smaller unit is sustained by the larger unit and gets its liveliness from the next lower unit. In this manner, the smaller and bigger units of a nation and its culture are linked by symbiotic relationships. Environmental degradation impacts such relations and social break-up, atomization of the society leads to the breakup of all such entities. Therefore, the green warrior has to care for all such social units. But the individual breaks-up and crumbles to pieces when the family system breaks down. Germany and America are telling examples of such breakdown leading to drugs, personal abuse, alcoholism, and social discord. The inter-cohesion of society is linked to the inner harmony of the individual and vice versa. The role of the family system in providing care and safety for women, elders, and children has been well-studied. Therefore, greater, and greater social consciousness helps not only in saving the individual but also helps in saving the environment in the form of collectives such as grazing land, water bodies, fisheries, and public utilities. The individual, family, community, etc., are stages in the growth of collective consciousness.
8.
Every Moment Matters: Cultivating Mindfulness:
It is the nature of many leaders to try to find universal solutions for every problem. They want a formula, a talisman, a sutra for every problem so that it can be universally applied. This act reduces universal problems to a small level, trivializing local problems. What is needed is a small solution that applies to local conditions and local problems. This comes from attentiveness, also called mindfulness. Clubbing a few unrelated problems in man’s overenthusiastic approach leads to neglecting individual problems. A Gobar gas plant suitable for a rocky and dry area in Tamil Nadu will not work in a water-locked area in the Netherlands. A green warrior has to curb his tendency to become the universal problem solver, a messiah. He has to have the humility to solve the problems one at a time, as they come.
9.
Beyond Imposed Structures: Rediscovering Nature's Creative Flow:
Nature is very creative. It is very lively. It changes its actions frequently. And this unrehearsed action is called spontaneity. But man in his wisdom wants to impose his mentally made structures on the free-flowing nature. One scientist famously said, “This is the privilege of the Scientists, to find out the law of nature and impose human will on it.” This idea comes from the concept that no knowledge is good if it is natural. Every good thing has to be man-made. This has led man to impose his artificially made will, structure, calculatedness on free-flowing nature. Nature is amorphous. Nature does not confine itself to any formula. In that manner, all man’s understanding of its nature is only approximate and much less than the total truth. It is an approach that takes away from our understanding of nature’s creativity, spontaneity, productivity, and biodiversity. Jagdish Chandra Bose talks about nature’s rejuvenescence, nature’s spontaneity, chance, the very charm of living by presenting a series of surprises and keeps man constantly on his toes. Therefore, this structured approach to knowledge leads man to dullness, ennui, and forces man to seek happiness from elsewhere than from nature. This is the reason for man resorting to drugs, alcoholism, and narcotizing entertainment.
10.
Unity in Conservation: Collaborative Environmental Roles:
The art of protecting nature, ecology, and environment has to be according to roles allotted to different segments of the society. The Governments can make only laws. And any law is as good as the lawmakers’ capacity to implement the law. Therefore, the Government has to have faith in the heart of man to save the environment. It can only make laws that emanate from the community and the individuals. The individual is very sensitive about the degradation of nature and is the first to suffer when the environment crumbles. Therefore, he is the starting point of any move to restore nature to its pristine harmony. But the voluntary organizations consisting of sensitive individuals, scholars, opinion-makers have to act as intermediaries between the individual and the Government. They have to control the greedy individual by the common ethical values and alert the Government about the impending damages. Therefore, each segment has its well-defined role in saving the environment.
11. Holistic
Health: Embracing Natural Healing Alternatives:
A learned doctor with long-standing experience in the profession has written an article about medicines in this volume. Chemicals as opposed to herbs and nature cures are fighting for man’s attention. The medical corporate sector has such enormous clout that its budget is larger than the combined budgets of many countries. Therefore, medicine manufacturers use all their muscles to inject all kinds of chemicals into the human body. These chemicals prevent man’s natural self-healing energy, and the so-called modern medicine is a great threat to the human bodies all over the world. One science writer has written that if we could close all the hospitals today, we can think about human health fifty years afterward.
12. Water: The Modern Charkha for Green Warriors:
Jayaprakash Narayanji once said that he was searching for the modern equivalent of Gandhiji’s Charkha, the spinning wheel. This systematic tool has to be simple; it has to be relevant to all, and it has to keep man mindfully engaged and it should appeal to everybody’s need. Modern Green warriors have found that tool, for forming a cohesive society in WATER. Collecting, serving, distributing, recycling, and applying the multiple uses of water could be a society-building tool for humanity. It touches the lives of everyone and is already a universal problem touching not only human lives but also the lives of plants and animals.
13. Empowering
Leisure: Cultivating Well-Being:
Asked what the greatest danger and problem for humanity in the future could be, double Nobel Laureate John Bardeen said “LEISURE”. All the speeding equipment, vehicles, airplanes, etc., glorify speed and science itself has equated speed with efficiency. Saving time in his workplace and travel, man has been left with much leisure time, not knowing what to do. He allows himself to be lured by drugs, alcohol, and narcotic entertainment. Ms. Magadelene, the ex-U.S. Secretary of State, drew our attention to this danger, wherein we fail to observe the beauties of our paths. The centenarian Paramacharya of Kanchi and Vinoba of the Bhoodan movement have enjoyed walking to the workplace, allowing themselves enough time to interact with people on the way. Modern speed-equipment leaves a great footprint on the traveller’s mind. He is agitated, moving, and restless, even when he has completed his journey. Tagore’s beautiful article “Walking barefoot to the school” should teach us what we miss when we run away or travel by a speeding-up vehicle.
14. Foot-loose
Societies:
Schumacher, the energy expert, has bemoaned humanity’s habit of foot-loose traveling in the name of tourism. In Ancient India, everyone has to find happiness in his immediate surroundings, and an occasional traveller has to return to his base as early as possible. Today, smaller houses, crowded cities, the drudgery of work, drive people away from their habitats, causing a great drain on the world’s fuel stock. Man has to control his traveling to irreducible minimum to save fuel and to find happiness within himself and in his immediate surroundings.
Amidst mounting environmental challenges, a resounding call for change reverberates across sectors. The prelude sets the stage for a transformative journey towards sustainability. Embracing circular economy principles, stakeholders advocate for a paradigm shift in material consumption, promoting reuse and recycling. Beyond renewable energy adoption, the narrative urges a deeper cultural rethink of energy consumption. Education emerges as a linchpin, with calls for a holistic approach that instils values of morality, ecological consciousness, and compassion. The path to sustainability intertwines with personal wellness, as yoga and mindfulness empower individuals to consume consciously. Social cohesion and collective action emerge as essential pillars, urging communities to reclaim their roles in environmental stewardship. From local adaptations to global collaborations, the propositions paint a portrait of hope, resilience, and collective determination in the face of environmental crisis.
Vivekananda
Kendra, NARDEP has produced a manual Environmental Awareness in day-to-day
life. It could be our manual not only for saving the earth but also for saving
oneself.
N.Krishnamoorti
Editor
Vivekvani & Senior Worker of Vivekananda Kendra
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