The universality of dharmic thought
Recently I came across an argument that sustainable lifestyles promoted by dharmic thought can be implemented only in "sustainable geography"-- meaning tropical regions where life forms thrives in abundance-- and cannot be implemented in "unsustainable" geography like deserts or colder regions of the earth. In this post, let me try to deconstruct this argument. There is definitely an influence pathway between "sustainable geography" and a culture of sustainability. But to say that there is an exclusive causal relationship between the two, would be a great oversimplification. Worse, this argument also leads to some kind of a fatalism. Other than tropical regions of the world, we cannot sustain anywhere else anyway, therefore either these cultures collapse, or they dominate and consume others (leading to a collapse of the entire world-- but much later). Such kinds of fatalism are typically only used to justify one's reckless acts-- for instance, a t