The Sustainability Paradigm

In today's formal education, creativity is a primary virtue. The initial rote learning, compliance and discipline that students are subject to, are eventually meant to make them creative "self actualising" individuals. 

Creativity takes on various forms. It could be in the form of creating a piece of technology, or creating artistic expressions. 

But regardless of the nature of creativity, in order to be creative, we need to get into a frame of mind, or "paradigm" that promotes creativity. We need to "see the world differently" or imagine possibilities, and so on, in order to become creative. 

Oftentimes, we are not even aware of the paradigm that drives our thinking and it takes a lot of introspection to discover how our thoughts are structured, and what other paradigms could there be. 

Creativity, as a paradigm, has specific characteristics. In order to get into a mindset of creating something that is not there, we need to be fundamentally unhappy or dissatisfied with what we have! Indeed there are schools of thought, that believe that creativity stems from suffering, and in order to be truly creative, we need to suffer! 

Given that creativity is a virtue, and a virtue is something we need to advocate to the world at large, we are in effect-- in our institutions and homes, encouraging everyone to suffer-- so that they may become creative! 

Creativity is also fundamentally minimalist as a paradigm. Creation is goal-oriented, where at each step, we evaluate and optimise our resources and efforts towards the end goal. Anything that is not helpful towards the end goal of creation, are useless, and are discarded. Hence for instance, if our end goal is to create a mango orchard, anything that does not contribute to this end goal, becomes extra baggage and needs to be weeded out. For instance, suppose our mango orchard in the making, has a number of tomato plants. In this paradigm, unless these plants can be shown to be useful to achieve the end goal of producing more mangoes, they are useless, and are weeded out. In this paradigm, suppose we need to use a fertiliser that maximises our mango yield, but which would be harmful to the tomato plants, we would go ahead with it, because mango is our fundamental goal-- not tomatoes. The fact that tomato is a legitimate plant in itself has no bearing in our goal-oriented approach.  

One who has internalised the creativity paradigm tends to become elitist, and view society in terms of "higher" and "lower" classes. Even in the Maslow "hierarchy" creativity or actualisation comes at the "top". In an internalised paradigm of creativity-- creativity itself is the goal, and the objective of our lives is to work towards achieving this goal. Clerical activities that "merely" support creativity are considered lower in the hierarchy than creativity. The character of Sheldon Cooper from the TV series "The Big Bang Theory" where he grants a "high honour" to his friends by getting them to drive him to work, portrays this stereotype well. 

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Traditional Indian culture based on the concept of dharma or "sustainability," has a fundamentally different paradigm. Here, creativity or self-actualisation is not an end in itself. All forms of pursuits-- be they creative or service or clerical activity-- are rooted in a paradigm of sustainability. 

Sustainability as a paradigm is fundamentally different from creativity. Sustainability aims to preserve or sustain what is there, rather than create what is not there. 

Sustainability, by its very definition is not "goal-oriented" approach. It is a "state maintenance" approach. State maintenance has no end goal. We need to maintain a desired state (of life, society, etc.) for as long as possible-- knowing fully well that, nothing can sustain eternally. 

The pursuit of sustainability may need us to become creative, and invent stuff that. is not there. But creativity is not a goal in itself. It is an element of a larger pursuit towards sustainability. Similarly, creativity is not "higher" in some pecking order than other forms of non-creative, clerical activities. Sometimes, clerical bookkeeping may be more critical towards sustainability, than creative outputs. 

Sustainability or preservation is also fundamentally "maximalist" in nature. The very definition of preservation urges the sustainability paradigm to aim to preserve everything-- unless there are specific reasons not to do so. Sometimes, preserving something may adversely affect the sustainability of everything else in its vicinity, in which case, it makes sense to let it go, to maximise sustainability. 

For someone who has internalised the sustainability paradigm, efforts like "save the tiger" makes no sense. Sustainability does not focus on a single entity in an ecosystem. Sustainability aims to "preserve the forest" rather than "save" a specific species. Sustainability also doesn't agree with the concept of "keystone" species-- where one species (typically a predator) is considered to be the keystone, that keeps the entire ecosystem running. The idea of a keystone represents a hierarchical or linear relationship between species, which is not the case. The dharmic mind knows that a forest comprising of all prey (like deers) and no predators (like tigers) can sustain, but a forest comprising of all predators and no prey, cannot sustain. 

The sustainability paradigm requires us to think "holistically". We cannot focus on one entity and its sustenance. We need to promote sustainability of everything. 

In the sustainability mindset, "growth" is not an end in itself either. The dharmic mind knows that nothing can grow forever. Growth saturates and is subject to diminishing value of returns. Like creativity, promoting growth is important-- but not as an end in itself.