Abstract
The Introductory chapter starts with a reading of the story told in an Australian film, One Night the Moon, which illustrates the tragedy that ensues from monocultural ignorance and insularity. The consequences of a white Australian farmer’s refusal to recognise or engage with the expertise of Aboriginal Australians, as the frantic search for a lost girl unfolds, are tragic. Just as the Aboriginal Australian tradition has a deep understanding of the land that could allow the wider populace to live better in harmony with the land, so the wealth of cultural and philosophical traditions that flourished outside the modern Western world have potential to provide knowledge that would facilitate a richer and better balanced, sustainable engagement with the environment in the so-called first or the third world. Indeed, it has potential to alter our very understanding of the concept of knowledge.
The child lost on a moonlit night was not found as those looking for her could see the terrain, but failed to read the signs, and the black man who could read the signs was not asked, and they went the wrong way!
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Notes
- 1.
Perkins, 2001. One Night the Moon is an Australian film by Rachel Perkins, who herself is an Aboriginal woman.
- 2.
Probyn (March, 2002). “This Land is Mine/This Land is Me”: Reconciling Harmonies in One Night the Moon. Australian Cinema and Culture Issue 19.
- 3.
Due to “the arrogance of white attempts to ‘own’ it through pastoral care the lost child story to be reduced to a puzzle without an answer” (Probyn, March 2002. http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/australian-cinema-and-culture/this_land/).
- 4.
- 5.
Almost universally, indigenous peoples respect and love the land as a mother, treating it as sacred, believing that people, plants, animals, water, the land and the sky are all part of the same ongoing cycles of life. These beliefs and the knowledge that flows from them has been passed down through the generations through a wide range of cultural practices, including direct instruction, stories, dances, ceremonies and art as well as networks of sacred places. All are part of indigenous approaches to education that link people to the land through culture—and through culture to the land (UNESCO 2002a, p. 3).
It is declared in a UNESCO document on Cultural diversity and sustainability:
since we live in a world of “markets without borders”, so also our ideas for sustainable development must tap both diversity and dialogue on a global basis. The central idea for organizing such an approach is the idea of sustainable diversity. (UNESCO 2002c, p. 10)
The Australian Native Title Report starts with the following declaration from indigenous peoples in the world (Australian Human Rights Commission 2008, p. 1):
We, the indigenous peoples, have a way of living with the vegetable and animal species of the forests. The forest is our natural habitat, the place where we obtain all the necessary basic elements to ensure our subsistence and cultural development: That way of life enabled us to develop an ancestral self-sufficient system of knowledge about our habitat: land, its management, the management and use of natural resources, based on an ancestral knowledge to meet the needs of our peoples.
- 6.
The colonisers’ rejection of indigenous knowledge could very well be an expression of their fear of natives’ deep relationship with the land, their reciprocity and respect for nature, which the colonisers could neither understand nor respect. “The traditional knowledge about the management of resources and land . … the soul of current neoliberal regimes, contrasts with the spiritual connection with the earth, which is at the heart of the philosophies and traditional practices of indigenous peoples” (UNESCO 2002b, pp. 52–54).
- 7.
ABC 7.30 report 2001 17/12/2001 Rachel Perkins speaks about her film One Night the Moon. Reporter: Maxine McKew Available from http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2001/s442647.htm.
- 8.
“Terra Nullius”, meaning “nobody’s land”, “first people to discover are entitled to take it over” (Shiva et al. 2016, p. 3).
- 9.
The Stolen Generations is a stigma on the colonial history of Australia, which was denied for generations. In 2007, finally, after decades, the trauma of the Aboriginal people and their children being taken away was acknowledged in National Apology to the Stolen Generations to Australia’s Indigenous Peoples by the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, 2007. Available from http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/our-country/our-people/apology-to-australias-indigenous-peoples.
- 10.
Aboriginal people have a special attachment with land; they consider it to be their country . As said by one of the Australian Aboriginal speakers at a United Nations forum, “Country is also centrally about identity. Our lands our seas underpin who we are. Where we come from. Who our ancestors are. What it means to be from that place from that country” (Mick Dodson as cited in Australian Human Rights Commission (2008, chap 5, p. 1).
- 11.
“In order for the settlers to make a place their home, they must destroy and disappear the Indigenous peoples that live there” (Tuck and Yang 2012, p. 6).
Tuck and Yang 2012 explain that
Indigenous peoples are those who have creation stories, not colonization stories, about how we/they came to be in a particular place—indeed how we/they came to be a place. Our/their relationships to land comprise our/their epistemologies, ontologies, and cosmologies. For the settlers, Indigenous peoples are in the way and, in the destruction of Indigenous peoples, Indigenous communities, and over time and through law and policy, Indigenous peoples’ claims to land under settler regimes, land is recast as property and as a resource. (Tuck and Yang 2012, p. 6)
- 12.
Merchant 2004, p. 27.
- 13.
A hymn of prayer and praise to Prithivī or deified Earth (Book 12. 1.1-63/ Hymns of the Atharva Veda, by Ralph T.H. Griffith 1895).
- 14.
In India, for example, Earth is eulogised as mother Earth: “Mild, gracious, sweetly odorous, milky, with nectar in her breast”, and a common prayer is: “May Earth, may Prithivī bestow her benison [blessings], with milk, on me” (Book 12.1.11/ Hymns of the Atharava Veda by T.H. Griffith 1895).
In China it was Tao, the great mother earth and the influence of motherly love is seen in the shaping of Chinese philosophy (Chen 1974, p. 51).
In Ancient Greece, Nature as Magna Mater, the mother was the Gaia, the mother Earth, which had mostly disappeared by the seventeenth century but has again re-emerged in Gaia theory, named after the Greek Earth goddess, Gaia. Gaia theory considers the Earth to be a self-organising or autopoietic organism, not an object, but a subject (Verhagen 2008, p. 7).
Wackernagel and Rees (1996), in their seminal work on the ecological footprint, which measures the “load” humanity imposes on nature, also claim that it is humanity that depends on nature and not the other way around.
In Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, “the entire surface of Earth with life itself is a self-regulating system” (2000, p. ix), very similar to the Mother Earth of Atharva Veda. “O Prithivī, thy centre and thy navel, all forces that have issued from thy body; Set us amid those forces; breathe upon us. I am the son of Earth, Earth is my mother” (Book 12. 1.12/ Hymns of the Atharva Veda by T.H. Griffith 1895).
- 15.
Modernity has constituted nature as an “exploitable” object, with the increase in the rate of profit of capital as its goal (Dussel 1998, p. 68).
- 16.
“Indigenous knowledges possess lessons, principles, and practices that can teach people of other heritages and nations about living sustainably” (Whyte 2017a, p. 7).
Unfortunately, indigenous knowledge and wisdom have been undermined by the experience of colonisation, industrialisation and globalisation. By and large, indigenous priorities and systems of education have been supplanted by the somewhat narrow view that the environment and culture are valuable only in so far as they are economically productive. The consequent disregard for the land and culture has meant that knowledge, values and skills for living sustainability have been underplayed in contemporary education. (UNESCO 2002a, p. 3)
- 17.
For example, the Biblical command to “fill the Earth and subdue it” (Gen. 28), (Merchant 2004) is very different from the Indian Vedic understanding of caring for mother nature as it cares for us and not exploiting it, or harming it: “Let what I dig from thee, O Earth, rapidly spring and grow again. O Purifier, let me not pierce through thy vitals or thy heart” (Book 12.1.35/ Hymns of Atharva Veda by T. H. Griffith 1895).
- 18.
- 19.
Nature was the “unspeakable dangers lurking in ‘wilderness’—spaces yet untouched by human ordering zeal and often starting just a few yards beyond the farm fence—the fearsome ‘unknown’. Even the dangers threatening from other people were seen as the side effect of the drawbacks in taming nature” (Bauman 2002, p. 20).
- 20.
Merchant (2008) goes on to confirm what Bacon wrote on similar lines when he said:
But any man whose care and concern is not merely to be content with what has been discovered and make use of it, but to penetrate further; and not to defeat an opponent in argument but to conquer nature by action; and not to have nice, plausible opinions about things but sure, demonstrable knowledge; let such men (if they please), as true sons of the sciences, join with me, so that we may pass the ante-chambers of nature which innumerable others have trod, and eventually open up access to the inner rooms. (Bacon cited in Merchant 2008, p. 733, footnote 6)
Merchant went on to write that “Bacon’s ultimate objective was to recover the ‘dominion over creation’ lost in the Fall from Eden in order to benefit humanity in material terms. That dominion, however, was achieved by the constraint of nature through technology, a process that exacted heavy costs from nature itself” (Merchant 2008, p. 734).
- 21.
Montuori 2013, p. 206.
- 22.
Tuck and Yang 2012, p. 6.
- 23.
“Descartes’ dream was to realise the power of the magicians and alchemists, but to exercise it over a disenchanted nature that is tame and safe. In this vision, there is no longer need for awe of the world and its supposed Maker, nor a need for awareness of our ignorance. Such hubris was certain to bring about its nemesis” (Ravetz 2007, p. 275).
- 24.
This period marks a radical turning-point in human thought, as Grayling, in a recent talk at the launch of his new book, said about modernity:
we moved from the alchemy and astrology of John Dee to the painstaking observation and astronomy of Galileo, while the Church-favoured classicism of Aristotle gave way to the evidence-based investigation of Francis Bacon. (From A.C. Grayling Talk). Available from http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/conversations/a-c-grayling/7832048
- 25.
The traditional English view of sovereignty was described by William Blackstone in the eighteenth century as deriving of necessity from one “supreme, irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled authority”. Available from http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/orgs/car/docrec/policy/brief/terran.htm
- 26.
Kumar 2003, p. 15.
However, considering the absurdity of this claim, Gandhian follower, and a great sustainability scholar and activist Satish Kumar refers to the Gaian view of the world in which “the idea that humans are the superior species having dominion or stewardship over the Earth is preposterous” (Kumar 2003, p. 20).
- 27.
In Australian Native Title Report 2008, chap 5, Indigenous peoples and climate change, it is clearly stated by indigenous people themselves:
Understanding the significance of the impacts of climate change on Indigenous peoples requires an understanding of the intimate relationships we share with our environments : our lands and waters; our ecosystems; our natural resources; and all living things is required.
An Australian elder Galarrwuy Yunipingu expresses this relationship:
I think of land as the history of my nation. It tells me how we came into being and what system we must live. My great ancestors, who live in the times of history, planned everything that we practice now. The law of history says that we must not take land, fight over land, steal land, give land and so on. My land is mine only because I came in spirit from that land, and so did my ancestors of the same land… My land is my foundation. (Australian Human Rights Commission 2008, p. 1). Available fromhttps://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/native-title-report-2008-chapter-5)
Whyte, from the native people living in America (2016, pp. 2–3), exclaims with exasperation that indigenous people everywhere in the world are suffering not because of their doing, but because of the modern development oriented culture as “technologically advanced societies on the planet have built their modern lifestyles on a carbon energy foundation.”
“For every problem and crisis created, ever greater applications of the extractive, linear, and blind logic are brought to bear” (Shiva et al. 2016, p. 4).
- 28.
In this era of Anthropocene (Handa 2017).
On the basis of a “profound belief in the possibility of restructuring nature and reordering it to serve human needs and desires” (Smith 2003, p. 23), “climate change is denied, as are the ecological impacts of non-sustainable agriculture on soil, on biodiversity, on water, on livelihoods. The conflicts emerging from non-sustainable and unjust resource use are not seen in their ecological context but reduced to ethnic and religious conflicts”.
- 29.
- 30.
“In the world of endemic uncertainty and ambient insecurity”, as Bauman claims, “people have good reasons to be nervous and afraid” (2002, p. 24).
- 31.
Keulartz 2007, p. 30.
- 32.
Norberg-Hodge 1992; Sivaraksa 2009. It is rightly said that Sustainable development is an “oxymoron” (Redclift 2005, p. 212) contradicting itself. Also see Wisdom of Sustainability. Available from http://www.wisdomofsustainability.com/pdf/SulakExtract.pdf .
- 33.
While writing of this nature and culture dualism instigated by Descartes’ ideology, Whiteside (2004, p. 359) states:
It is not just its quest for “mastery” that makes [this] Cartesian philosophy so environmentally problematic. Its method—analytic, dissociative, predicated on linear causality—stands in the way of understanding holistic phenomena (e.g., ecosystems), in which apparently simple parts interact in complex structures to create previously unknown properties
.
- 34.
Rees, preface to Washington, 2015, p. xviii.
- 35.
“The disenchantment of the world was ‘the extirpation of animism’—the removal of animistic and spiritual features from all things and the reduction of nature to mere matter. Instrumental reason separated morality from rationality, leaving individuals free to act so as to maximize power over other people and nature itself” (Merchant 2008, p. 376).
- 36.
“Together, cultural diversity and biological diversity hold the key to ensuring resilience in both social and ecological systems” (UNESCO 2002b, pp. 8–9).
- 37.
UNESCO recognises that:
There is a reciprocal relationship between diversity and dialogue. The causal link that binds them cannot be severed without jeopardising development’s sustainability. This is the process that forges cultural diversity into a common language that the whole of humanity can speak and understand. Diversity of this kind, defined in this way, leads to the discovery of features that are common to all, since cultures—like individuals—encounter an irreplaceable element of their own humanity in others. Thus, cultural diversity unites individuals, societies and people. (UNESCO 2002b, p. 7)
We believe that the sustainability of both forms of diversity, which are closely inter-connected, is crucial for the very survival of humankind. Let us never forget that this interdependence is our past, our present and our future. (UNESCO 2002b, p. 5)
- 38.
Norberg-Hodge’s film “Economics of happiness” (2010) says it all. Today’s capitalist and consumerist society, looking for happiness from economy, has lost the sight of real happiness. Santos, in his critique of the dominant capitalist discourse prevalent in the world, calls it a “utopia,” saying that “I mean the exploration of new modes of human possibility and styles of will, and the use of the imagination to confront the apparent inevitability of whatever exists with something radically better that is worth fighting for, and to which humankind is fully entitled” (Santos 2008, p. 270).
- 39.
The consequences are “not only predictable, but predicted” (Oreskes and Conway 2014, p. 1).
- 40.
An Australian Climate scientist and environmentalist Tim Flannery, in his research, has explained how human activities have been causing global warming since 1950 (Flannery 2006).
- 41.
Taylor 2017.
- 42.
Extending social justice and rights to nature is crucial for true human well-being (Meadows et al. 1972).
- 43.
UNESCO 2002b, p. 52.
- 44.
An understanding common to most non-Western and indigenous knowledge systems is:
Seeing the individual as part of nature ; respecting and reviving the wisdom of elders; giving consideration to the living, the dead, and future generations; sharing responsibility, wealth, and resources within the community; and embracing spiritual values, traditions, and practices reflecting connections to a higher order, to the culture, and to the earth. (Dei, Hall, and Rosenberg cited in Merriam and Young 2008, pp. 72–73)
- 45.
- 46.
These perspectives are, for example, “embedded” in Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism and Hinduism. These philosophies emphasise the following:
The universe is a network of hierarchical systems. Nothing is isolated and independent in the universe. Change is an integral aspect of existence. Study of parts (or a system), without the context of the whole (or the system’s environment ), will distort or mutilate truth /reality. (The paticcasamuppāda [dependent co-arising] and the Yijing paradigms rest on the assumption that everything exists in mystical integration of yin and yang, entities that are opposed to one another and yet also are connected in time and space as a whole.) (Gunaratne 2010, p. 475)
- 47.
- 48.
“Religion was not a compartmentalized component of Indigenous life but rather a ubiquitous aspect of daily life. Where Europeans sought ‘endless accumulation of capital…’…, Natives found wealth in the abundance of their environment . The land supported their way of life and therefore they were by necessity stewards of their environment”(Venkatesan 2015, pp. 111–113).
- 49.
UNESCO 2002b, p. 52.
- 50.
Wackernagel and Rees (1996, p. xi) in their seminal text on the concept of eco foot-print, as a measure of energy consumption, declared that environmental crisis “is less an environment and technical, problem than is a behavioural and social one”.
Society, as Orr (2011, p. 57) wryly observes, is “Walking north on a southbound train”.
- 51.
Their philosophy’s “central theme is to return to nature—an intuition that resonates within many of us” (Fieser 2009, p. 32).
- 52.
- 53.
“Interculturalism” has been aptly defined by Bouchard to be “a middle ground between assimilation and segmentation … integration, interactions, and promotion of a shared culture with respect for rights and diversity” (Bouchard 2015, p. 32).
Bouchard finds multicultural lacking in not being dynamic in its vision of relationship between cultures, Transcultualism (interpersonal) promotes a dynamic perspective, not only cultural co-existence, but “an evolution within the shared cultures” (p. 67).
- 54.
Co-authoring culture “building a true and lasting rapprochement of cultures” (Irina Bokova in her foreword to Mansouri 2017, p. 3). “In this context, sustainability, the promotion of cultural diversity, and of intercultural dialogue are not a matter for governments alone, but for all segments of society, including universities, civil society and the private sector” (Irina Bokov in her foreword to Mansouri 2017, p. 3).
- 55.
Mazzocchi 2006, p. 465.
- 56.
Reference to the seminal book by Wackernagel and Rees (1996) Our ecological foot print: reducing human impact on the Earth.
“The perpetual enlargement of the human footprint in nature cannot be sustained, because it will eventually overwhelm the capacity and fecundity of natural systems and cycles” (Orr 2011, p. 67).
- 57.
- 58.
In a market-driven age that we live in, there are limits to “what money can buy”, and “what is important”, as in the unhappiness and continued dissatisfaction attached to the choices that are made, we can see, that materialistic success cannot be a measure of well-being. One of the modern philosophers, and an academic, Michael Sandel explains that how when commodification of goods and services happens, amoral choices are made. Sandel clarifies that in a market-driven society, the choices being made are driven by market values, and not by any moral or ethical considerations. He believes that there is a need for discussions on ethics and morality in institutes (TED Talk: “Why we shouldn’t trust markets with our civic life”, delivered in 2013, TEDGlobal. Available from https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sandel_why_we_shouldn_t_trust_markets_with_our_civic_life/discussion?utm_campaign).
A similar notion is expressed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who while praising the work of the Buddhist monk and Sustainability and Human Rights activist, Sulak Sivaraksa, has said: “I believe Sulak and I share a conviction that if we are to solve human problems, economic and technological development must be accompanied by an inner spiritual growth. And if we succeed in fulfilling both these goals, we will surely create a happier and more peaceful world” (as cited in Sivaraksa 2009).
- 59.
GDP vs GDH. It is the Gross Domestic Happiness, and not the Gross Domestic Product that needs to be considered as a measure of well-being (Buddhist philosophy in Bhutan’s GDH), (Karma Ura and Karma Galay 2004). His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince of Bhutan, remarked in his address at the end of the First International Seminar on Operationalisation of Gross National Happiness held in Bhutan, 2004:
I believe that while Gross National Happiness is inherently Bhutanese, its ideas may have a positive relevance to any nation, peoples or communities—wherever they may be. I also believe that there must be some convergence among nations on the idea of what the end objective of development and progress should be. There cannot be enduring peace, prosperity, equality and brotherhood in this world if our aims are so separate and divergent—if we do not accept that in the end we are people, all alike, sharing the earth among ourselves and also with other sentient beings, all of whom have an equal role and state of this planet and its players. (as cited in Karma Ura and Karma Galay 2004, p. xii)
- 60.
Brooks 2011, “Home in Fiction”, in 2011 Boyer lecture series Our only home. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/boyerlectures/lecture-4/3724604#transcript.
- 61.
“In the realm of culture, outsideness is a most powerful factor in understanding. It is only in the eyes of another culture that foreign culture reveals itself fully and profoundly (but not maximally fully, because there will be cultures that see and understand even more)” (Bakhtin 1986, pp. 6–7).
- 62.
Or what Bakhtin calls “self-exclusion”. Self-exclusion, according to Bakhtin is “the starting point for altruistic morality” (1993, p. 75).
- 63.
Instead of a monologue we need Mikhail Bakhtin’s “‘heteroglossia’, the existence of many voices, some contesting, some cohering, all demanding and deserving attention” (Greene 1993, p. 212). Said explains this phenomenon with “a true enlargement of the mind”, as well as being open and connected to the other, to get a “a large and generous view of human diversity” (1994, pp. 15–16).
- 64.
Loss of ethics and morality, as the philosophical understanding of the purpose of education is being replaced by more practical, technical skills. Having a materialistic attitude means a separation of people from nature and from eachother. It is being argued that we need to give spirituality “a central place in our institutions … to strengthen our sense of connectedness with each other” (Astin 2004, p. 34). Michael Sandel in his philosophical books and talks, also raises this point of “market values” and lack of morality and ethics discussions in the public sphere (on a Question and Answer programme, in which people ask difficult questions to a panel of experts, politicians, academics, writers and philosophers, to clarify, these experts’ position and views on different issues: Q & A on ABC Television 26th March, 2018). Available Q & A Series 11 Michael Sandel https://iview.abc.net.au/programs/qanda/NC1804H008S00#pageloaded.
- 65.
Ram 2005. Ram compares the allegory of Plato’s cave with “maya”, an illusion (p. 64).
- 66.
Ram (2005, p. 64) cites an excerpt from Annas to explain how Plato’s philosopher looks beyond the reality of the people in the cave:
In the Analogy of the Cave, Plato illustrates how the philosopher looks away from the terrestrial world and directs his “eyes” to the region of true reality. For a time, he is blinded by the light of the sun that shines there. But his eyes slowly adjust, and eventually he is able to gaze upon the beings in this metaphysical realm, including the Being that illuminates this region, the sun like Form of the Good. The philosopher makes his way towards the direct contemplation of the Form of the Good, a vision that renders him a perfected soul akin to the Gods. The philosopher moves beyond the human realm and this adjustment and realignment of his “vision” with time enables him to transform his soul and his perspective of reality. (Annas as cited in Ram 2005, p. 64)
- 67.
Bhagvad Gita is an Indian classical text that is a depository of Vedic knowledge. Literally Bhagvad Gita means God’s song and is one of the most revered spiritual books in India. It forms a part of the great Indian epic Mahabharata, meaning the great battlefield. In this long poem, Krishan , the godhead reveals the purpose and the goal of human existence which is self-realisation and attainment of knowledge of the Supreme Being through the path of Karam YoG. The message of karam (action) and dharam (duty) is revealed in His dialogue with Arjun. We will read about this dialogue in details in Chap. 6 Karam YoGi. I refer here to the text Bhagvad-gita as it is by Swami Prabhupada (1984). Victoria Australia: Dominion Press.
- 68.
“Tri” meaning “three” and “vid” or vidyA or tri-vidyA, तरवदय coming from VeD or Veda, which is another word for knowledge, the three in one unifiction of knowledge (Bhagvad Gita).
trayī vidyā appears in all VeDs: Rig VeD, SaaM VeD, Yajur VeD, and Atharva VeD.
- 69.
Sometimes pronounced as sampoorna, but in SampurN the emphasis is on the sound of N as this word does not end in an “aa” sound. Like Ved is VeD and not Veda.
- 70.
In relation to subjectivity, Badiou argues that “a subject comes into existence through the event and its subsequent truth procedure, that is to say the subject becomes a subject through persevering with the truth that is precipitated by the event” (cited in Atkins 2012, p. 9).
The idea of truth then is related to the idea of being truthful to something, and this truth process denotes a process of subjectification which in other terms can be viewed as a “commitment to” an idea, an affect, a new practice, a new way of seeing, a new way of making sense and so on, which involves a struggle where we can be carried beyond our normal range of responses. (Atkins 2012, p. 9)
It is like the realisation of the universal unity: “Tat-tvam-asi—you are that”, meaning “That what Brahman is that is what you are!” (Quote from Chhandogya Upanishad SECTION 12. 3 THE INDWELLING SPIRIT). Available from https://www.swami-krishnananda.org/chhand/Chhandogya_Upanishad.pdf
- 71.
They own their knowledge, as their active involvement in the process “subjectifies” their knowledge (Atkins 2012, p. 9), it is now their truth.
- 72.
UNESCO’s (2002c, p. 18) Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity claims that society is in a “markets versus cosmologies?” position. “The main arguments for the importance of bio-diversity are grounded in the reality that the earth does not have an infinite capacity for being abused and that the global commons depend on the preservation and nurture of biodiversity, at all environmental scales”.
- 73.
A philosophical concept that may be considered is “the resolution of opposites” (Haley et al. 2016, p. 284).
- 74.
Acknowledging alternative ways of thinking and knowing, Haley et al. in a recent study in education for sustainability write:
Breaking from Cartesian dualism is essential if we are to reach a more rounded pluralistic view of the world and the education we practice. This concept has been practiced in many Eastern traditions for centuries. In Zen Buddhism dualism may be resolved in the teaching of koans, or paradoxical riddles. In Taoism, the Taijitu symbol brings Yin and Yang together as ‘YinYang’. (Haley et al. 2016, p. 284)
- 75.
- 76.
“The issues of sustainability are primarily ones of fairness and intergenerational rights, not ones of technology or economics, as important as these may be” (Orr 2006, p. 266). Orr believes that
Genuine sustainability … will come not from superficial changes but from a deeper process akin to humankind growing into a fuller stature. (Orr 2011, p. 67)
- 77.
Which has come to be considered the only valid way to understand and speak about the world, is based on “This arbitrary separation of analytic ‘truth’ from morality, ethics and beauty” (Prasad 1997, p. 102).
- 78.
As if only “Baconian science —a uniquely European production—is capable of providing us with the ways and means of grasping the Truth of things” (Prasad 1997, p. 92). Recognising the “standard associated by Westerners with only their own scientific legacy” means following “a single minimalist universal epistemology” (Harding 2008, p. 215).
- 79.
As Lovelock (2000, p. xiii), a strong advocate of Gaia thesis in which Earth is a living organism, states: “Our global challenges enjoin us now to call for the unity of heart, head and hand”. Genevieve Bell, in the final of her 2017 Boyer Lectures remembers what Norbert Wiener had written more than 60 years ago, that to be successful in this new world: “either the engineers must become poets, or the poets must become engineers”. Lecture 4: Fast, smart and connected: How to build our digital future. Available from http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/boyerlectures/series/2017-boyer-lectures/8869370.
- 80.
Prasad 1997, p. 102.
- 81.
“This is an eternal process and each and every person is endowed with the ability to be awakened to this dimension of self-analysis or enlightenment” (Ram 2005, p. 68).
- 82.
Handa 2017.
- 83.
Sivaraksa 2005, p. 5.
- 84.
Change, as we have established, is the very need of today, which ironically is also the condition that the world is in. As Sennett (as cited in Bauman 2002, p. 19) suggests, “Continuous discontinuity, constant change, is our shared condition”. Building on this idea, Bauman (2002, p. 25) explains that we live in an age of uncertainties which marks a “start to the long and tortuous process of reshuffling and refurbishing our joint, enlarged, global home in which uncertainty, once a despised aborigine meant to be civilized or an illegal immigrant meant to be rounded up and sent home, has been issued with the permission to stay and made to feel welcomed”.
- 85.
Human intelligence tries to illuminate a self in one which according to a great Indian philosopher and saint, Sri Aurobindo:
A truth greater and truer than the knowledge given by Reason and Science, a Right larger and more divine than the moralist’s scheme of virtues, a Beauty more profound, universal and entrancing than the sensuous or imaginative beauty worshipped by the artist, a joy and divine sensibility which leaves the ordinary emotions poor and pallid, a Sense beyond the senses and sensations, the possibility of a diviner Life and action which man’s ordinary conduct of life hides away from his impulses and from his vision. (Sri Aurobindo 1997, p. 85)
“The idea of truth then is related to the idea of being truthful to something, and this truth process denotes a process of subjectification which can be viewed as a ‘commitment to’ an idea, an affect, a new practice, a new way of seeing, a new way of making sense and so on, which involves a struggle where we can be carried beyond our normal range of responses” (Atkins 2012, p. 9).
- 86.
“[A] silence amidst the chaos of life” (Ram 2005, p. 68).
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Handa, N. (2018). One Dark Night of the Full Moon. In: Education for Sustainability through Internationalisation. Palgrave Studies in Global Citizenship Education and Democracy. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50297-1_1
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