There are times I look at the world and I get worried about the incessant drive for more and more growth in business. I remember my own days in the corporate world, we used to plan for growth year after year and seeking ever greater market share for our products. Old products are discontinued and new products kept on being launched into the market. I wondered then how long we could sustain the growth; but if we did not that would have meant the gradual decline and eventual death of our company. Today, I feel more certain that this unending growth cannot go on forever.
In the quest for economic and business growth, we have gutted the earth of her mineral resources; we have irretrievably lost forest covers; we may have irreversibly polluted our planet; and species are dying off because of the loss of their habitats. How long before the earth become inhospitable to the human species?
And yet it need not be so. There are sources and resources that are renewable, recyclable and reusable. We can have clean and unlimited energy by tapping the sun, the wind and water. We need to balance our needs with our consumption instead of keeping and having more than we need. The body, at a certain stage, seeks no longer growth but homeostasis – that internal balance and stability to keep itself alive, taking only what it needs from the environment, nothing less but nothing more. Diseases happen when this balance is broken.