World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

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the "factory-and-loom" countries, particularly China and India, have seen the growth of their own middle classes who also aspire to a lifestyle of comfort, with all the benefits of education, entertainment, and health care. The differences between the developed world and the developing world are disappearing, which brings both blessings and difficulties.
The difficulty with development lies in scarcity of resources and unmitigated pollution. The air quality, soil purity, and clean water availability in India have reached a point of crisis. Though some improvements have been made to air quality in Delhi and other cities due to stringent legislation, the sheer growth of the number of automobiles will soon erase any gains. The Yamuna River in particular has become little more than a runoff ditch for Delhi's industrial and human waste; a once sacred site has been rendered profane through pollution. Even though modern technology exists that can help improve the situation, countless cleanup attempts for both the Yamuna and Ganges Rivers have yielded few results. As we look toward solutions, it seems that a strengthening of will and moral resolve in the style of Mahatma Gandhi must prevail to counteract the greed of industrialists and the culture of corruption.
For Gandhi, nonviolence entailed kindness to animals, both human and nonhuman. Gandhi's nonviolence required vegetarianism as well as a willingness to engage and converse with and ultimately have compassion and even love for one's antagonists. In our current situation, we must learn to even better love nature, love animals, and, for the purposes of change, develop an effective approach to redress the injustices committed by the new colonizers of the world, the multinational corporations. Habits and practices, both personal and in society and in the business arena, must be transformed to bring about a sustainable economic environment.
Gandhi emphasized that "we must become the change we want to see in the world." The root of ecological degradation lies in the profligate usage of resources, which does not fully take into account an eventual scarcity or the consequences of waste disposal. Human consumption is disproportionate to the carrying capacity of the planet. Consumerism has become a replacement religion, whereby some persons attempt to find happiness by acquiring goods, defining their sense of worth by the monetary value of their possessions. This has lead to an escalation of acquisitiveness, with deleterious effects on the ecosystem, and dubious results in terms of human happiness. In fact, studies have shown an inverse relationship between wealth and happiness once basic needs have been met. By practicing the lessening of possessions, known as aparigraha, we can move toward reversing, in the words of John Cobb, this "religion of economism" and restore balance to modern lifestyles worldwide.
The current ecological crisis might bring Gandhi's key insights on the
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