Riding The Reset Button Constantly

Twelve
full moons have passed, and so have 360 sunrises as I write this. Holidays and
observances have gone by! Chartered Accountants are known to keep burning the
mid night oil to meet deadlines after deadlines. The year is over, Sir! It is
already Diwali.

Time
has flown by, to never return. Time is invisible, touching all there is. Time
is a temptress – every day looks like another day – but it really isn’t! The
Sanskrit word for time is Kaala. The word Kaala shares its root
with the Sanskrit words for death and black. Perhaps they all – time, black and
death – represent that which absorbs everything to a point of no return to its
original state. This Editorial therefore focuses on something to ponder around
the New Year.

Yuval
Noah Harai in his latest book – 21 Lessons for the 21^st Century
– writes about three threats staring at humans – Technology, Nuclear War and
Climate Change. A compelling new vision is not coming through in our fragmented
world order – from political, business or spiritual sides. How connected and
how evolved we are and yet how fragmented and shallow are some of our actions.
Take the recent Living Planet Report 2018. It tells a tale of what
humans have done so far to life around them. Homo sapiens have destroyed 95% of
all species that have ever come to this planet; since 1970, 60% of all wildlife
that existed then is extinct by manmade causes. Yet we are going on as if it is
business as usual. While we are focused on a $80 trillion world economy (or
whatever that number is), Nature gives us services worth $125 trillion per
year. Some of what humans do is not just cruel, but outright stupid too. No
other creature goes on a binge to destroy itself like humans. The word
Amazon brings an image of the online retail store these days, but 20% of the
real Amazon (forest) got wiped out in the last 20 years! Guess what –
consumption has played a big part in it. In other words: Amazons kill Amazon.
By Amazons, I mean the entire economic chain that entices us to consume. All
that we got and all that we need has its source in Nature. Just imagine the
pressure humans put on the planet – since circa 1800 the global population has
grown 7 times and Economic growth has been 444 times. Reading the report made
me wonder how misplaced our tools of measurement and epistemology of growth
are. We are moving fast but in the reverse gear!

On
the other hand there is good news. A new generation is re-shaping a messed up
planet – it does not want to own, does not need more and so it does not consume
like a maniac. This generation gets free news from the internet, sources free
books online¹, believes in solar and wind energy², they
are creating a sharing economy³. While the last generation bought
toys for their kids, this generation borrows toys from an online platform and
tells their children to take care of them, so that other children after them
will be able to play with them. This promise of change from ownership and
possession to sharing and circular economy – is a change in human thinking that
challenges present economic laws, legal structures, ideas of nations and rancid
belief systems. As one author writes, Geopolitics will be replaced with a
biosphere consciousness⁴. This silent transition will replace
consumerism by sustainability, capital by social capital, and being rich by
being valuable.

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1    Even
the E Book share has nearly doubled in last 5 years to 25% of total book sales.

2  Germany’s
share of solar power is 7.5% of total consumption and India 2.2%. China has
added solar assets like never before – 43,530 MW in 2015 to 131,000 MW in
2017. 

3  Statistics
say that sharing economy can eliminate 80% vehicles. Additionally, they will be
replaced by EV and perhaps driverless cars.

4   Refer ‘The Third Industrial Revolution’ by
Jeremy Rifkin.

Exclusivity
is substituted by inclusivity; a pyramid structure is giving way to open
source. People are realising that forest fires, floods, landslides have a
connection with hamburger and the beef⁵  in it. Simply speaking, many are finding out
that everything is interconnected and all that we do intimately affects someone
else and will boomerang back to us. 

End
of 2016, I decided that through 2017 I won’t buy anything for myself (except
food) – like fasting on most forms of consumption. I could manage. As we march
into the New Year: let us consider to Refuse. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. As
we begin the New Year let us consider offering back to the planet because if it
is not YOU then who and if is not NOW, then when?

New
Year means new beginnings – a cut-off to draw up a balance sheet of life and
revisit the reset button and stay at the beginning. As Jim Carrey puts it: “…Now
I am always at the beginning. I have a reset button. And I ride that button
constantly”. This festive season BCAJ wishes you and your family the very
best to ride that reset button whenever you need it all through a wonderful New
Year!

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5   The second biggest cause of climate change
supposedly is methane emissions from animals. Popular beef requires 28 times
more land than chicken and pork, 11 times more water, and results in 5 times
more climate warming emissions. Compared to potatoes, wheat and rice: impact of
beef per calorie is 160 times more land and 11 times more green house gases.

 Raman Jokhakar

Editor

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