The Bane of consumerism! >> Let's start by addressing consumerism as crack cocaine of modern civilization and equally a bane as well. We as humans or thinking beings have been enslaved by smart marketers and their corporate agendas to the extent that we have surrendered our reasoning, intellect and everything that sets us apart in the animal kingdom to them.
Consider an average day and keep count of the no. of ads in a pocket diary or a tablet that are bombarded on our fragile mind through various mediums(TV, Newspapers, Internet, Hoardings, Billboards). The figures would surely amount to tens of dozens and the havoc they must be wrecking on an individual's mind.
Most
of these ads serve just one purpose. It's not tapping into an
underlying need but to create wants that are absolutely unnecessary. In
the process humans turn into zombies dancing to the tunes of
advertisers/puppeteers. This disease afflicts us to such an extent that
one starts thinking the only way to stay happy and abreast with society
is by possessing as much material objects as one can.
Society
also starts respecting the one who has maximum possessions to flaunt.
The more, the higher respect one commands in social jungle of apes under garb of human skin. Line between needs and wants start obliterating as wants somehow occupy their place as needs in our subconscious.
Insatiable
greed takes center stage in our lives as everything else takes a
backseat. Broken households, mental illnesses, high crime rates,
lifestyle diseases, surge
in suicide rates in developed and developing economies are a fallout of
consumerism as we start identifying ourselves more with inanimate
objects and less with lively things. Let em be relationships, nature,
wildlife and everything that encompasses life in general. That's when
life itself is reduced from a spectacle to mere spectre that keeps
haunting us.
Not to mention environmental degradation, rich poor divide, social unrest largely attributed to consumerism.
Consumerism is so sly that it takes us on a ride of buying perversion without we even being aware about
it. As we keep emptying our wallets and our soul into corporate
coffers, our inner void keeps on increasing thus blurring our sense of well being. Happiness turns ever elusive as nothing satiates insatiable wants planted inside.
Shouldn't
we as thoughtful creatures delve inside, stop being guinea pigs and
start caring for mundane yet priceless things designed by
nature/evolution that indeed define human happiness!!