Subdue the earth? No!

In graduate school, a classmate remarked that his Jewish family would watch out for Jewish names in the news, whether it was good or bad.  I told him that I found doing something similar--watching out for Indian names.  And, if it was a Tamil name, then it was even more exciting.

Of course, sometimes the names pop up in unfortunate circumstances (like here or here.)  But, and thankfully, those are rare.

The cherry on top of awesome news was undoubtedly getting a dosai connoisseur as the Vice President ;)

It is human, after all, to applaud "our people."  An applause that does not have any baggage of superiority of inferiority.

It was that same graduate school excitement that I felt when I read the name of the lead author of a UK government report on the economics of biodiversity: Sir Partha Dasgupta.

My man!

All I read was the Headline Messages.  I love it.

The report notes this: "The Review develops the economics of biodiversity on the understanding that we – and our economies – are ‘embedded’ within Nature, not external to it."

We are embedded within Nature, not external to it.

The fact that we even need to be reminded about this fundamental aspect of life!

Back in graduate school, one of the discussions was the framework that the Judeo-Christian religions offered in contrast to many others around the world.  In the Judeo-Christian approach, god made man in his image and likeness. Then:

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

In the Judeo-Christian framework, god rules over man, who rules over nature.

That relationship is very different from what the faith in the old country told me.  Whether it was Native Americans or people in India or elsewhere, nature was worshiped.  There wasn't a sense of everything on earth as humans to take any which way it pleased them.

Sir Partha Dasgupta reminds us that we are embedded in Nature.  We don't rule over it.  We are so much intertwined with nature that "Dasgupta said assigning absolute monetary values to nature would be meaningless because life would simply cease to exist if it was destroyed."

Dasgupta's report notes:

[Relying] on institutions alone to curb our excesses will not be enough. The discipline to draw on Nature sustainably must, ultimately, be provided by us as individuals. But societal change – particularly growing urbanisation – has meant that many people have grown distant from Nature. Interventions to enable people to understand and connect with Nature would not only improve our health and well-being, but also help empower citizens to make informed choices and demand the change that is needed

Read the 10-pager.  Spread the word.  Be good to Nature.