Sunday Reverie in Stream of Consciousness
I am styaing in a hotel in Madras. Breakfast is served and free; we may say that it is part of the tariff. As it is a buffet for us, everyone is eating everything available. I must say that everyone eats as much as one can eat for a day in the name of breakfast, or breaking the fast. I am not the exception. Though I am eating heartily as others are doing, I am aware of it.
What is the inference of mine and other’s behavior? Rent-seeking behavior in place of rational behavior. It is the reflection of a scarcity mindset. Historically, it is a fact that human civilization is heavily burdened because of it: possessions and possessiveness, acquisition, acquisition for acquisition’s sake. Needs of life have become hoarding.
No animal in nature hoards. No animal in nature has property rights. There is territoriality but not personal hoarding. From a Freudian point of view, it is the component of the Id, one of the three components of the human psychic structure (the other two being the Ego and the Superego). Ego is the reality principle and Superego is the ideal.
Food and sex are the primary instincts of self-survival and species survival. So what. Through our sense of fear of the future, using the hands as implements and seeing into the future with the twin eyes of fear and pride (born out of a sense of inferiority and vulnerability), we have developed technology and unbridled production.
It takes away the charm of living. It takes away the soul of living. We live in constant fear of losing with an impending sense of danger. It is sub-normal and sub-optimal living. It has replaced the spontaneity and creativity in life. The sense of adventure is lost. The sense of abundance and bountifulness is missing.
This is not an Indian phenomenon but a global phenomenon. It all started with technological telescoping. And the resultant mass and high production and civilizational economic model is: produce more, consume more, earn more, spend more. These are the metronomes of human living now.
We see the embellishments of art and environmentalism, charity and the rest of it, but the basic economic model and its superstructure social model and resultant human condition have not changed, and we are on a roller coaster.
Is there a salvation from this situation? Can we step off from this roller coaster? Yes, we can. Only if we can reassert our autonomy and sovereignty. How can we regain it? There are no external solutions but internal ones. By harnessing our spiritual reality and purpose.
Spirituality is not religion and ritual. It is the quintessential ontological search for the knowledge of one’s own reality and nature and purpose of living.
There is a great mix-up in civilization:
- The mix-up of livelihood and life.
- The mix-up of living and purpose of living.
