Nietzsche said "GOD IS DEAD".
But he was himself not sure. He couldn’t even find His dead body(or anything signifying His death). Moreover, he ignored the fact that God is immortal by the very definition. It is surprising that a man of his caliber jumped to such rather preposterous conclusion! Actually he was just articulating the frustration of his age. Man was confused, things were falling apart and he wanted His special counseling. Urgently. But he couldn’t find Him.
World wars followed!
Nobody thought, "God is absconding"!
By definition, God loves mankind. He wanted to respond to his solicitation but He was scared. Firstly He was upset with the identity crisis Man has forced him into. Secondly He knew for a fact that He wouldn’t be able to meet his expectations.
As far as the issue of identity crisis is concerned, God turned out to be the only one in this universe without a religion and sex. He was overwhelmed with the shame of His zero religiosity and sexuality and decided to live outside the universe.
Adam Smith and co. proclaimed that 1.the desire of Man is unlimited, and 2.the resources are scarce. God found this idea particularly offensive and His self-esteem was sorely hurt. How could He be so miserably myopic in vision while creating the world that was to be so unresourceful for his beloved children!! This time the sense of shame was so overpowering that He decided to take refuge in Vedic era (when Man used to sing hymns in His praise and awe).
When His confidence was restored, He pondered whether He could do something to satisfy the desires of Man. Suddenly, like a flash of light, the truth presented itself. It was the UNLIMITED desire of Man that MADE the resources scarce! The second statement was tautological; it could be straight derived from the first (which was just an assumption, or a propaganda)! He could see a cunning conspiracy, a dangerous deception! He immediately sent Gandhi to say to the people that the earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.
But nothing happened! Nobody noticed him. Gandhi was no Churchill, after all. Nobel peace prize is for those who bear a freedom fighter's gun along with an olive branch. People stop and listen to them who speak loud. Gandhi had no gun and so nobody bothered him. After sometime Man taught him the power of gun, Gandhi took his last lesson and his all experiments with truth ended. God sighed in sheer helplessness.
Well, life went on...It goes on, the feeling of indispensability is just self-aggrandizing. Even God is not indispensable. He realized it sooner than later. Economy prospered. Economists prospered even more. They were respected because they had the magic formula to satisfy every man's greed. And like every great discovery it was incredibly simple!! They had invented a NEW God for Man. The invisible hand of Market had been invoked to deliver man from the atavistic concepts of abstinence and thrift (How uncool!!). The new God was not at all scared of human desires. He not only promised to satisfy our desires, but also in fact systematically created more desires. He made himself close to indispensable and assured ceaseless devotion because ONLY He had the cure of the disease he produced! I live in that diseased world, with you.
The learned economists, the pious priests of the new God, say that the emancipation can be attained only by economy. People believed... and so economy prospered and economists prospered even more!
After sometime the faith of the mass ran short of breath and they questioned the efficacy of the invisible hand. The economists immediately came up with a few mantras against this blasphemy: One of them was the trickle down theory, the ultimate hope! This gave rejuvenating boost to the moribund patience of people. The starving people of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Indian subcontinent waited with open mouth for the Amrit(Nectar) to trickle down . The Amrit for which they were made to hold the wrong side of SheshNag(the king cobra,WTO) in the manthan(churning,Free Trade) of the world of commerce. *
They are still waiting,according to the latest updates.
*[Note:The analogy may or may not be appropriate but the mythological tale of SamudraManthan is highly interesting and deeply meaningful. Read it if you have not.]
Our learned economists gave momentum to the feminist movements also. Let's see how.
They have divided the world in two parts -
1. Market, and 2. Household.
According to the market mythology the growth of the economy is indicated by something called GDP. They have interestingly defined GDP so that the work done at household do not contribute anything in its calculation and thus in the economy. By doing this they have redefined work. Remember terms like working/non-working woman? Well, I am yet to meet a non-working woman. Have you? Given the absence of extreme condition that might render them incapable of any physical or mental exertion, I know that they work practically 24*7,at least in India. Anyways women work more than men do, Any Doubt? Now it is atrocious to divest them of their dignity by calling them 'non-working'. This misadventure triggered an obvious reaction from womankind, already fuming with the injustice of history. In order to redeem their well-deserved respect and dignity they strived for working in market. Apart from a few chauvinistic men, others positively encouraged women's decision to liberate themselves from the state of worklessness because life devoid of self-respect is not worth living. But at the end of the day, sociologically speaking, this didn’t bring any revolutionary rise in our 'happiness index' because it has little(or rather negative) qualitative significance.
Let me demonstrate. Consider this: If A's wife and B's wife work at their house then they don’t contribute anything to the GDP but if they work at each other's house then they do(equal to the market value of their work)! There are two things to be observed- 1. no extra work is done in second scenario, and 2. the quality of work will rather suffer because the feeling of own verses other's work would (adversely) influence the commitment to the task. A person is expected to perform a work with more self-application if he/she feels emotionally integrated with that job.
swadharme nidhanam shreyah paradharmo bhayavayah- Bhagvad Gita
(Better is one's own duty, though devoid of merit, than the duty of another well discharged. Better is death in one's own duty; the duty of another is fraught with fear.)
Don’t try to infer that I am in the favor of the domestication of women. The verse line from Gita inspires the spirit of entrepreneurship also. Before the advent of industrialization, in agrarian societies, women did work with their men folk outside. But the motivation was certainly different.
Apart from that let me just touch upon the fact that this mass procession to market is of pseudo-feminist nature, it is actually a class struggle. Today a working woman leaves her children under the charge of an aaya(maid) and delivers a lecture with passion on women's liberation overlooking the existence of the aaya in the same liberated world. And for each woman who doesn’t condescend to do her chores and take care of her children, there has to be an aaya who is also a woman (Don’t ask me why), but not from a privileged class. This trend fails the ethical examination also because it trembles before the Kantian test of universality. What if ALL women start working out leaving their children or what if they don’t marry at the first place or what if they don’t produce kids?
So we see that the market has annexed our households even. We are virtually living in market. Fully understanding its penetration is, I think, now beyond our reach because it has started pervading not only our conscious but also our unconscious. Ever heard of 'subliminal advertising'? It is the latest one- an intelligent contrivance of psychologists to manipulate our mind through the unconscious! The best brains and the best bodies have been recruited by the invisible hand to bewitch us. They will designs not only our days but also our dreams! Don’t dare to underestimate their power over us. They have already made our sense of freedom an illusion because they affect our decision-making process. We are but the slaves of the images they show before us! Our visual world has been replete with the pictures we see on billboards, TV and newspaper...and they determine whether you are a complete man!
Their modus operandi is.. 1.To instill a feeling of inadequacy (Your insatiable thirst- yeh dil maange more - ensures their salary and your satisfaction is their nightmare) in your mind, and 2. To make you believe that the salvation lies in shopping, esp. in their product, the branded one. The man in the poster is a complete man because he is wrapped in our suit! The woman is the modern woman because she uses our cosmetic! The kid is extra smart because he drinks our health drink! You don’t have a girlfriend because you neighbor owns our bike, you don’t. They don’t say it; they make you say this to yourself. Now the game is more subtle, more sophisticated and more psychological. And very sexual (sex sells and sex sales too). And very dynamic, buy a car and they'll soon come up with a new model with more value to tease your sense of satisfaction. You feel an irritating itch unless you buy this new car. But itching can never be cured by scratching!
You slip once; you get a kiss on your neck! The kiss of a vampire! You are converted; you are converted from a person to a consumer, a mall addict! It starts with a branded pair of jeans or shoes (how harmless!!) but it leads you to an abyss of brand consciousness where even the girlfriend you look for should be branded, whatever it means! Your entire worth gets reduced to what you have and what you consume. You become an ardent devotee of the new God. You, like millions of other pilgrims, bow your head before the temples of new God, the shoppers’ stop.
I am NOT against business and the idea of market. But I am strictly against any sort of invasion on my sense of contentment, my sense of fulfillment and my sense of a complete man. I am dead-against the exploitation of emotional feelings for the sake of commercial benefits (Try to observe the ads and notice how skillfully it is done). I don’t allow anyone to dictate terms for my life in the name of lifestyle, to show me any goddamn dumb-looking model for my emulation. I feel disgusted when someone attempts to make me believe that the existence of misery in the era of credit cards is like an 8th wonder or Man has conquered death by paying premiums in an insurance firm. I don’t need to know my needs by the salesman or his boss and I condemn the market morality which insists "Flaunt it if you have it" because I think it is not only degrading but also criminal in a society with such acute disparity. The promotion of consumption for the health of economy is agreeable and understandable, but the whole phenomenon of 'conspicuous consumption' is outrageous.
In my world, materialistically speaking, everything is for me and I am only for myself. Brands are nothing but indicative of popularity or assurance of quality, not status symbol as they are made to be. Man makes a brand, brand cant and doesn’t make a man. Brands can only make a fool out of a man. And we must resist to be a fool if we are not one. The same code of conduct should be enforced to technology too. It should not forget that the very purpose for existence is to serve man. It must behave accordingly. We see that it has started demanding submission from us and our bourgeois mentality has almost brought us to prostrate before it. How shameful it is! How pathetically happy we make ourselves by keeping grotesque gadgets and ugly gizmos! Names and numbers have started startling us and ruling our thoughts.
Their modus operandi is.. 1.To instill a feeling of inadequacy (Your insatiable thirst- yeh dil maange more - ensures their salary and your satisfaction is their nightmare) in your mind, and 2. To make you believe that the salvation lies in shopping, esp. in their product, the branded one. The man in the poster is a complete man because he is wrapped in our suit! The woman is the modern woman because she uses our cosmetic! The kid is extra smart because he drinks our health drink! You don’t have a girlfriend because you neighbor owns our bike, you don’t. They don’t say it; they make you say this to yourself. Now the game is more subtle, more sophisticated and more psychological. And very sexual (sex sells and sex sales too). And very dynamic, buy a car and they'll soon come up with a new model with more value to tease your sense of satisfaction. You feel an irritating itch unless you buy this new car. But itching can never be cured by scratching!
You slip once; you get a kiss on your neck! The kiss of a vampire! You are converted; you are converted from a person to a consumer, a mall addict! It starts with a branded pair of jeans or shoes (how harmless!!) but it leads you to an abyss of brand consciousness where even the girlfriend you look for should be branded, whatever it means! Your entire worth gets reduced to what you have and what you consume. You become an ardent devotee of the new God. You, like millions of other pilgrims, bow your head before the temples of new God, the shoppers’ stop.
I am NOT against business and the idea of market. But I am strictly against any sort of invasion on my sense of contentment, my sense of fulfillment and my sense of a complete man. I am dead-against the exploitation of emotional feelings for the sake of commercial benefits (Try to observe the ads and notice how skillfully it is done). I don’t allow anyone to dictate terms for my life in the name of lifestyle, to show me any goddamn dumb-looking model for my emulation. I feel disgusted when someone attempts to make me believe that the existence of misery in the era of credit cards is like an 8th wonder or Man has conquered death by paying premiums in an insurance firm. I don’t need to know my needs by the salesman or his boss and I condemn the market morality which insists "Flaunt it if you have it" because I think it is not only degrading but also criminal in a society with such acute disparity. The promotion of consumption for the health of economy is agreeable and understandable, but the whole phenomenon of 'conspicuous consumption' is outrageous.
In my world, materialistically speaking, everything is for me and I am only for myself. Brands are nothing but indicative of popularity or assurance of quality, not status symbol as they are made to be. Man makes a brand, brand cant and doesn’t make a man. Brands can only make a fool out of a man. And we must resist to be a fool if we are not one. The same code of conduct should be enforced to technology too. It should not forget that the very purpose for existence is to serve man. It must behave accordingly. We see that it has started demanding submission from us and our bourgeois mentality has almost brought us to prostrate before it. How shameful it is! How pathetically happy we make ourselves by keeping grotesque gadgets and ugly gizmos! Names and numbers have started startling us and ruling our thoughts.
It is high time we realize what is being done on us and who is doing that. Freedom is not for those who don’t constantly fight for it, and knowing what is trying to rule us is a battle half won. Don’t expect anyone to guard your freedom, even the media is owned by big corporate companies and it sells news, the spicy news, the chicken soup for your most basic instincts. It shapes your taste, it makes flippancy fashionable. It hides information more honestly than it disseminates. In fact it has become an instrument of political propaganda, so watch out! Or read Chomsky.
*In my characteristic enthusiasm I have criticized some fundamental principles of economics. I am aware of the possibility of errors I might have made but I am not at all apologetic. I just expressed a common sense view. I agree that some uncommon sense might be needed to fully appreciate the profundity behind those principles. But I am here to play with ideas. Making mistakes is my birthright and I am not going to forfeit it. I think this is one of the best way to learn. It works for me at least.
So lets play, you and me.
*In my characteristic enthusiasm I have criticized some fundamental principles of economics. I am aware of the possibility of errors I might have made but I am not at all apologetic. I just expressed a common sense view. I agree that some uncommon sense might be needed to fully appreciate the profundity behind those principles. But I am here to play with ideas. Making mistakes is my birthright and I am not going to forfeit it. I think this is one of the best way to learn. It works for me at least.
So lets play, you and me.
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