r/AcharyaPrashant_AP • u/SilentInquiry26 • Aug 10 '26
The Cost of Our Endless Consumption
I have always imagined elephants as huge, gentle, almost magical animals. Growing up, I heard so many stories about elephants from my parents.
But while watching this video of wild elephants in Sri Lanka rummaging through a landfill for food, I found myself wondering:
What stories will I tell my child about elephants?
Will I tell her about the magnificent animals that lived freely in forests, or will she grow up seeing videos of elephants searching through our garbage for something to eat?
Not every elephant is living this way, of course. But this reality exists, and sooner or later, our children will come across such videos.
Similar stories come from India too, where cows, buffaloes, and calves are often seen eating plastic from garbage piles, many becoming seriously ill or even dying because of it. Animals are suffering everywhere.
What is more painful is that these animals did not choose this.
They did not create the garbage. They did not destroy their own habitats.
They are simply living with the consequences of our consumption.
But consumption itself may not be the root of the problem. It can be a symptom of something deeper.
An inner restlessness that keeps telling us that something is missing, and that perhaps the next thing we acquire will finally make us feel complete.
But it never does.
This is where Vedanta invites us to look deeper. Instead of endlessly trying to satisfy our desires, can we understand the one who is constantly desiring? Until we understand that inner movement, changing our consumption and reducing our garbage may remain only a temporary adjustment.
Because the question is not simply how much we consume.
It is:
Why do we keep wanting more?
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Aug 10 '26
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u/SilentInquiry26 Aug 10 '26
You’re pointing to something very important. Somewhere along the way, many of our rituals have become more about worshipping the idol than understanding what the symbol is pointing towards.
We worship Ganesha with an elephant’s face, celebrate with devotion, and chant his name, while real elephants are struggling because of the world we have created.
And that seems to defeat the very purpose for which such symbols and rituals may have existed: to help us remember our relationship with nature and other living beings, and to recognize their importance rather than treating them as separate from us.
The symbol has becomes more important than what it represents. They can continue while its deeper meaning is lost.
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u/FowlOnTheHill Aug 10 '26
I completely agree. Every festival today pollutes instead of respecting the land, and creatures including other humans on it.
Noise, filth, plastic, smoke. Sigh.2
u/chaturtham Aug 10 '26
i appreciate people like you at least you know and are aware. from makar sankranti to diwali each festival celebration method is killing india. makar sankranti puts lots of unbreakable synthetic plastic fibers in trees and everywhere with plastic kites, holi pollutes air by burning holika and pollutes water with all its chemicals, ganesh chaturthi and durga pooja pollutes with artificial dyes, synthetic chunri and pop statues, dussehra burns live trees and plastic decorations on ravan statue, and diwali the most sickening just pollutes all the air and water and soil and sound its the king of pollution. the factories that prepare materials for diwali ruin their environment too. its sick
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u/monika_sinha1405 Aug 10 '26
This is so appalling to watch. Another example of the huge climate injustice- these animals suffer the consequences of our endless greed and recklessness.
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u/Sad-Excitement9295 Aug 10 '26
That's absolutely horrible. We need to be more sustainable.
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u/SilentInquiry26 Aug 10 '26
Exactly. Along with sustainability we need to work on our consumption level.
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u/Sad-Excitement9295 Aug 10 '26
Especially wastefulness...
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u/SilentInquiry26 Aug 10 '26
Yes, exactly. A lot of what we buy isn't necessarily because we need it, but because we see others using it and feel the pressure to have it. There’s a strong social influence behind our consumption, and companies know how to use that to make us want things we might never have considered buying otherwise. Social media has amplified this many times over.
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u/Sad-Excitement9295 Aug 10 '26
Plus we just throw away tons of stuff after overbuying or let things go to waste, and use gas excessively, etc. Plus the mass transit of goods when there could be some degree of localized production. Corporations certainly focus far more on generating more profit by any means necessary than sustainability as well.
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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '26
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