Worry about civilization's future while ignoring your own eternal soul is the definition of ignorance and rascaldom.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Morning Walk — May 17, 1975, Perth 750517MW-PERTH [65:34 Minutes] Walk_750517MW-PERTH Amogha: Well, he's a very..., actually he's a big man, and therefore he's very busy. In their terms he's a big man. He had a lot of seminars yesterday taking him up late at night working. I'll send him something to read.
Amogha: So he's very perplexed by the future, say, a hundred years from now, what will happen if we go on at the rate we're going, taking natural resources.
Prabhupāda: Just like they are taking petrol. This is natural resources. They are taking continually.
Amogha: But he says the CSIRO, most of the people there are involved in researching how to exploit the natural resources more. So he's a little bit different because he's trying to present a clear warning that this is happening. But then again, he doesn't have any potency to stop it. It seemed that when you were speaking to him he related bodily consciousness with the selfishness of the industrialists when they're exploiting natural resources like that.
Prabhupāda: They are doing so many things. They are killing cows for their own benefit. So many animals they are killing. Birds. Śrutakīrti: Yeah, he was making a claim that he was against this because all these cows are in the central part of Australia, and just by their walking they're causing the topsoil to become loosened and taken by the wind.
So he was against all this mass slaughtering. But at the same time, he's eating meat. Also he was saying how everyone is interested in making the fast dollar, the... [break] Amogha: The industrialists and technologists say that they will keep using and using and using, and when they run out they will invent something else to take the place.
When they run out of oil then they will use sun energy or some other energy. And whenever they say that they're running out of something, they say, "Oh, we'll invent something, and we'll do something to arrange it." Prabhupāda: Why they are thinking of the future, and they do not think of themself that whether he was going to be a cat and dog? He is thinking of industrial resources future and not for himself. Śrutakīrti: It shows that it's a natural tendency to think about the future. Prabhupāda: Is there, certainly. Śrutakīrti: Yes. But because they are in ignorance they have to think of so many other things for the future, and they're not thinking of themselves. Prabhupāda: No, no, in future if you become a shrub like this, what you are going to do for that?