Behavioural change needed for sustainability starts at home
I am still working as a faculty but mostly in an advisory role. Life has been a total random walk from starting in a small town in South India to joining a major technology institute for BTech and then following the trend to the United States for higher education. Even the Ph.D. was a harsh lesson in how sudden funding cuts can leave one feeling hopeless about the future. But luck favoured me and I got into another Ph.D. program at a much better university. Then it was a research experience at NASA and then teaching and research at a major university in the US.
I got involved in some interesting work with farmers at a peripheral level in India and spent sabbaticals at a couple of well-known institutions here. Frequent visits to various research and educational institutions were always great learning experiences. Finally, after spending almost 35 years in the US, I returned to India in 2018. Teaching and doing research in India at the ‘top’ technological institute in India has been remarkably educational in terms of how students choose options under parental inputs and pressures, how researchers pursue their interests, how institutions function, etc. Being an outsider, integrating into the system offered many challenges but that’s for another day.
Over the years, teaching and interactions with students have been the most satisfying experiences. Even though my entire life has been spent in academia, dealing with parents and children in various contexts, including in the family, has allowed me to filter down the details and extract this essence.
What words of wisdom can an old academic give to youngsters?
It is natural for parents to expect their children to do better than them in studies and in life. And yet, it’s not easy to accept that winning is not everything. Some of the best lessons in life come as bitter pills of failure. No matter how smart a kid is, there may always be a smarter one, someone who does things better or faster, and is more adept at communicating, etc.
But if the kids learn to put their heart and soul into their studies, friendships, projects, social interests, and even social work, they may find a satisfaction that makes them immune to comparing themselves to others or getting anxious about how well someone else is doing. This is likely the best thing parents can teach their children in this intensely competitive and aggressive world with an information deluge — real and fake.
Life at home affects children more than we ever realise!
The other thing I learned with my own experience and also by interacting with students and parents is that life at home affects children in very deep ways and may remain hidden. That’s not a new insight but it is always insightful to see how little attention we pay to this rather obvious fact. Children may become more dependent on external inputs — good and bad — if communications at home feel constrained. Relations between parents and kids need not be a one-way street.
Parents being sensitive to their own children’s concerns at any age and being open to admitting their own mistakes will help children believe deeply that home is where they can get the best hearing and advice. These have nothing to do with the family income or wealth.
Nuclearisation of families is now inevitable. Relationships between elderly parents and grown-up children are often dysfunctional and seem irreparable. Life away from parents may even feel like a beautiful island. But even such an island may eventually become an exile. The loss of grandparental affection to grandchildren may manifest as failures in their own ability to form relationships.
A sense of gratitude maybe the most effective antidote to what ails relationships
Another age-old wisdom that has been lost is the fact that a sense of gratitude for things small and large, brings internal peace and balance. Respect is critical not just from youngsters to elders but the other way as well! When mutual respect and affection become a natural part of life, then familial harmony and peace are assured.
Gratitude also makes us absolutely sensitive to our interactions with others in everyday life. A smile and a thank you leaves everybody feeling appreciated and happy. Children also learn by watching the elders. These can then become cultural memes and spread just as easily as negative behaviours spread.
Every human being who brings a life into this pressure cooker of a world owes it to their offspring to give them the most peaceful and affectionate life at home. If home itself is an abode of negativity, society will only be a reflecting pool of negativity. World peace starts at home. We all have a role in giving posterity a sense of peace and harmony.
Sustainability depends ultimately on our ability to accept wins and losses
In the context of the evolutionary timescale challenges humanity has faced, sustainability and living in harmony with the planet as well as all other species is the greatest one and we are facing it now. One could argue that only a sense of peace and harmony from individual- and family-levels to community levels can bring about global behavioural changes needed to face this challenge successfully.
These behavioural changes again come down to accepting wins and losses in terms of compromising for the sake of local to global sustainability. As the economist Herman Daly always argued, environment is not separate from us and our economies. The more we ‘grow’ our economies, the less space there is for the environment to function sustainably. That also means economic development must bring quality of life and standard of living for all.
And that’s only possible with inner peace and harmony from individuals to families and communities. That’s something that will add up to global peace and harmony. Sustainability is a natural outcome of such an existence.
Raghu Murtugudde, Centre for Climate Studies, IIT Kanpur, Mumbai, India; University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, US.
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth