Mark of Dignity (VAW)

Views and Words - Dr K S Radhakrishnan

Globalization has created a myth that a free society can be created only through open competition and a free society according to globalization is the one that competes for maximum and thus prove its might over the rest. This eventually has become the basic notion of a consumerist society and it has created a very false impression that a good individual is the one who consumes the maximum quantity of consumer goods, whatever it may be. A person respected as good here is the one who enjoys the maximum and this maximum is limitless or undefined. Consumerism firmly believes that an individual who consumes more and more gets respectively more and more power, freedom and happiness; this again is false. The natural outcome of globalization is the emergence of a consumer society. A consumer society is the one which firmly believes in maximum everywhere. No such a society will ever be able to enjoy freedom, as it already has already been explained in the previous sections.

Advaita firmly believes that it is not consumerism that creates a free society but the self regulation imposed by the individuals, societies and the nation on itself. The present consumer society trend is to create more and more consumer goods. Take for example the automobile industry. Every week, a new brand of motor car is being produced by the manufacturers and again every manufacturer is also producing more and more varieties of motor cars. Once it reaches an optimum mark, their advertisements begin to ask ‘what is your second car?’ This shows the fact that the first car has already been purchased and now the individual has to purchase one more, otherwise he cannot be treated as a respectable individual. Similarly, the same strategy says that the identity of a woman can be established only by the amount of gold or diamonds she possesses. The possession of gold and diamonds is treated as the hall mark of dignity and one has to compete. Every Jewelry shop or manufacturer of jewels has the opinion that every woman has to purchase the maximum to keep up the dignity of womanhood. Here, what happens is that the dignity of womanhood is identified with the amount of gold or diamond she possesses. This is nothing but equalization of a spiritual being into a mere material entity. This attitude reduces man to the false assumption that man is nothing but a physical entity alone. It forgets a very simple fact that man is something more than a physical entity. That is why Jesus said that man never lives on bread alone. The globalization and the resultant consumerism, firmly believes and propagates a notion that man is only just a physical entity and he is destined to live by bread alone. This is bare materialism. What I am telling is that consumerism, globalization, market economy and the resultant consumerism reduce the whole society to rare materialism which never gives any hope for the individual to attain some sort of pain or pleasure or happiness. It limits all happiness to the possession of material entities only. Whether the possession of material entities is capable to offer happiness or not, which has never been a concern for this type of society. At present what happens in our society is that the society turns to the uncompromising materialism and a society that believes in it will never be able to enjoy happiness or freedom. 

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