Is conservatism being sustainable? Or is there something like sustainable consumption. Can’t we define a level of consumption as the grade for that lifestyle. And as consumption comes at the expense of energy, cant we term sustainable consumption as a kinetic state. And differing grades of lifestyle requiring different levels of energy. A high level of lifestyle perhaps requiring high level of energy. Well then how can it be sustainable if there is so much energy requirement. Let’s say we as beings also have energy and we could also be contributors to energy, then is lifestyle generating tools and service actually drawing energy from external sources and conserving our energy. Could we call it inertia. Now look at it from the other angle, the more we expend our human energy, the less we need external energy to support us, compare taking a car and walking. As human beings are we exploiting other energy resources, just coz they do not have an instantaneous way of retaliation? Is our definition of lifestyle topsy turvy?

 

Ethics to me is a brainchild of our consciousness. And consciousness an ever growing or diminishing wrapper around us. Like infinity it has both a positive and a negative aspect to it, but unlike infinity the negativity is not a measure of reduction but a measure of detail and depth. Despite the seeming complexity around its definition, the concept like most powerful scientific phenomenon is decorated by its brevity and simplicity – and that is, when a wrapper is defined, there is a single straight line which joins any situation to its ethical route. In my opinion most people love constraints. It gives them a box to operate within. But what I have often found, is that the sense of the framework’s presence does not mean that the framework limitations are well understood. The bad thing about it is that most people do not stand up to the challenge of solving problems where all the constraints that their chosen framework poses are honored. But in all cases the limitation leads to creation of a new value system, separated from the earlier by a degree of delta.

 

To me Ethics is about ensuring sustainability. And I admit that here I am biased by my consciousness’ limitation. And to a degree my lack of understanding of chaos in nature leads me to preclude it. My answer to an ethical dilemma is to choose the route which favors sustainability. And this could pose interesting challenges when the framework within which one is expected to take a decision only offers suboptimal solutions or solutions which threatens sustainability.

 

The thought which have oft confounded me is the relationship between human beings and nature. There is no doubt that they are intrinsic to it, but unlike other living beings no one has as much power to affect its state. Now if we consider every action of human beings as a nature driven action, then any change brought about by that to human beings or ‘nature without human beings’, is actually attributed to nature. Therefore the changing form of nature (inclusive of our adaptability or the lack of it leading to our extinction) is not something which should surprise us. And therefore we have the authority to act randomly and sustainability as a concept is flawed. And this is a point where society as a concept comes in, as a way to preserve us ‘by conformity’ and thus sustainability takes form. And this clearly is a bias aimed at existence of the human race. And therefore pursuance of environmental sustainability per the triple bottom-line paradigm is actually like a mirage but the maintenance of its status quo is essentially derived out of the demand for maintaining social sustainability.

 

As mentioned above, I believe ethics is a way to ensure social sustainability. And once you enter the social strata leaving the environmental strata, you are in the middle of nowhere. On the one hand one can argue that ensuring environmental sustainability could be an objective equation, but when it comes to social sustainability we are clueless. Here we are talking about civilization. There is no science to it. And art is merely a reflection of it. Who is right? What is right? Simple questions, impossible to answer.

 

There was a preacher in medieval India called Mahavir Jain who asked his followers to not do anything which kills other organisms as much as humanly possible. Live frugally and preserve nature. I wonder what would the world be if everyone followed his sayings? Is nature really like that? Aren’t there ample examples to prove that nature follows the dictum of “Survival of the fittest”. Aren’t we then programmed to behave in that way. And even in extinction aren’t we perhaps contributing to the evolution of the next generation of species more adapted to the realities of that nature state? Whoa, we can never be wrong then !

 

Why I say all that I said till now, because I am not in a situation where my decision making is directly related to the bread that I earn. If I were in a situation where I had absolutely no option – analogous to beggars can’t be choosers, then I would follow the path which ensures my morsel, and that would be my(or for that matter anyone’s) ethics. Ironically it brings us to the micro level of sustainability where we are preserving a trivial entity of nature – that is me by not having any choice. Wouldn’t I be expected to have a far far-reaching consciousness? Maybe yes, but of no avail. Whoever said action speaks louder than words couldn’t have been more correct.

 

Its hard for me to identify ethical dilemma. I think everything I do has numerous ethical dilemmas attached to it. As a simple example when I drive my car instead of taking the public transport where there is an option, I deal with it – though now I have successfully been able to bury it and very rarely does it sprout from my sub consciousness. I could give you bigger more graver sounding examples from my social life where I took a stance but as mentioned, in social context where there is no clear line of sight with the wrapper there is hardly a way to say what is right and for whom. When species extinction is a truth, sustainability a way of life and redundancy , an all encompassing concept its hard to solve an ethical dilemma. And add to it numerous out of the box(constraint challenged) alternatives, and you do not even have a dilemma.

 

Here we are talking about Ethical Leadership. As much as it is aimed at solving ethical dilemmas, it is also about creating awareness about a possible stance. A scenario out of ordinary day to day life which challenges us to reassess our understanding of the mundane and makes us realize there are things which we don’t care to think, follow it like a herd without caring if there could be ethical misconduct buried within it. Social innovation (in short, civilization) is all about challenging the status quo and as leaders the battle of ethical dilemmas lie there.