“Will India be able to learn from the missteps of the west regarding ecology, energy and education? Will they recognize earlier in their economic and social development that material resources (such as creativity, innovation and expression) are infinite? Will India achieve a true global consciousness that recognizes the unique contribution of all cultures”?
YES and NO
What happens in the smallest places on earth has an effect on everything else. One single wing beat from a butterfly in western India can travel all the way to the north of the globe and form into a storm on the east cost of Sweden. The butterfly effect is a strange phenomenon but oh so true. I believe fully that the globe is ONE place and whatever we might do in India can have an effect on the rest of the world – and vice versa. So yes, what is said and done for example in America also has an outcome in India, whether we like it or not. It is impossible for India to not hear about the missteps of the west (ecology, energy an education) because they are also a part of the world they also have tv:s and communication channels. If they will be able to learn is for me not the question, rather if they want to learn and why they should? There has been a tendency of the west going around the world, walking in to countries and telling them what they should and should not do. I’m not sure it is suppose to be that way. What about the growing India, don’t they have the right to make some mistakes too or do they have to repent for the missteps of the west. Maybe the globe slowly is going under but I believe India is doing their best and taking their time trying to build up their country.
Many times under developed countries are being “helped” by the western world in becoming a more stable and strong country. We call it helping them but what we do is in fact sometimes the opposite. We are perhaps making them stronger but at the same time when we feed them we regulate their growth and they become needy of us. It is like the evil circle. Like catch 22. Like giving a poor dirty child on the streets of Mumbai a single rupee. It will probably give the child food for the day but what about tomorrow. The child goes back to beg and never has the chance of get out of the spiral. What I mean by this is that I think a country has to be build from within and not from outside forces. They have to learn from themselves, take step by step and it is absolutely their own process. After that it is up to them if they want to learn from others and how they want to do that.
When you go by train in India you often pass a place where the stink in almost unbearable. It’s where the really poor people live. They live among garbage. The people together with cows, dogs and other animals find their food there among the trash. They also do their business at there; they shit at the same place. Every morning the garbage is burnt right next to their house. That is their lives. If I look at it from this point of view it is almost too much to ask a simple question like if they recycle their plastic bottles. How can they think about that when they have to think about how to get money for their next meal all the time? But they do recycle their bottles, strangely enough. And they do feel the terrible smell from burned garbage every day. They do feel how it effects them and how bad it is for them, how the smoke probably takes away a day or two of their lives. It affects them so badly that they also understand that it at the same time affects the earth and the other people on the earth. They just do their best each and every day.
I feel this question is full of doubt. Doubt about India and their people. India already has a true global consciousness that recognizes the unique contribution of all cultures. And if they will recognize earlier in their economic development that material resources are infinite I have to ask; earlier than who? Does everything have to be compared to the way WE did it or did not do it? Are we the strong base to measure everything against? I don’t know maybe that is how we work. But India has existed for thousands of years. They have all the knowledge here and have had it much longer than the western world has known. Much longer than the existence of America itself. It is also an ancient country with morals and knowing that still the western world doesn’t have. Do they go out and tell us what their missteps have been and how we can learn from them? I believe all the knowledge they need is here it just has to be used the right way, the Indian way. We have a lot to learn from each other and we are not as far apart as we sometimes think. We just have to do it with humbleness towards each other and of course the rest of the world.
