Bodha | EP 29 | Grammar of Greed | Aseem Shrivastava | Sai Priya Chodavarapu | Raghava Krishna

‘The excess of light discloses facts and also conceals them.’ — Alfred North Whitehead, Adventure of Ideas
Like gravity, greed is everywhere. But it is rarely called by its true names. Usually some euphemism like ‘incentivisation’, ‘development’, or ‘progress’ is deployed to mask its devastating power. Such Orwellian doublespeak calls for an elucidation of the reigning grammar of greed.
How does this systematisation of greed work in everyday life today? What are the roots of structural avarice in modern history? How is such greed related to war, conquest, and speed? These are the questions that the short meditations in this book seek to address. In ignoring these questions, we risk ecological catastrophe and eventual extinction.

Aseem Shrivastava is a writer, teacher and ecological thinker with a doctorate in Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has taught at universities in India and the West and offered over several years courses on Global and Indian Ecosophy at Ashoka University. He is the author (with Ashish Kothari) of the books Churning the Earth: The Making of Global India (Penguin Viking, New Delhi, 2012), and Prithvi Manthan (Rajkamal Prakashan, New Delhi, 2016).

0:00 - Introduction and Genesis of Grammar of Greed
9:03 - What is the 'Grammar of Greed'? What mechanisms or ideologies make greed systemic and so pervasive?
23:01 - Crisis of Modernity and Possible Solutions in Ecosophy
37:00 - Framing of the Multicrisis
43:51 - Technology, Desire, and Consumption
55:26 - A Spiritual-Cultural Imperative to the Ecological Crisis

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