The Neo-Philosophy of Consumption || Acharya Prashant, IIT Guwahati (2023)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00 Efficiency in production has been continuously improving. So, we have a very mesmerizing

00:10 kind of diversity and abundance in the choices available to us. You visit the market and

00:17 there is so much available for you to consume. Now, so that you can consume, the producers

00:28 have very cunningly instilled in you a philosophy that consumption is the purpose of life. You

00:42 see, if somebody keeps producing, that does not guarantee that the product will sell.

00:49 When you produce, you have to produce the product and you also have to produce the consumer

00:56 of the product, right? Only then you will make profits. Otherwise, the product will

01:01 be there, nobody buys it and you just run into losses. So, the producers have been very

01:11 active in conditioning the entire population and that's been happening across the world,

01:18 all countries. That son, daughter, you exist to be happy, be happy, be happy and how to

01:27 be happy? Go have more, have more, have more, come on, buy. The supermarket will provide

01:33 you happiness. The more you consume, the luckier you are. How to measure how great a nation

01:42 is? Just look at the GDP. The emphasis that you put on GDP is a thing of philosophy. Do

01:49 we see that? The philosophy that says that production and consumption is a measure of

01:54 human welfare. So, even as you sit here, you very well know the kind of respect that you

02:03 will allot to your batch mates or your seniors who get the fattest kind of placements, right?

02:15 Somebody who has been a total jerk all four years of B.Tech somehow lands one of those

02:24 coveted jobs and he becomes a respectable fellow, does he not? Or does he not? What

02:35 does that tell you about your internal philosophy? It says the measure of a man is his pocket

02:42 and that is not your philosophy. I pity the fact that that philosophy has been drilled

02:50 into you by somebody else and you do not even know that. I look at my own batch. Some of

02:59 the most ordinary and mediocre fellows from my batch are today somehow the most successful

03:08 in monetary terms. It happens. You just incidentally have to be at the right place at the right

03:18 time and fortune can smile on you. That's quite possible. And by fortune I mean the

03:24 material kind of fortune, money etc. And the kind of respect and attention these people

03:31 command is terrible, absolutely terrible. You have no measure to assess the worth of

03:41 a person except by his material acquisitions and that's something you have been taught.

03:50 Also that's something that's found anyway in animals biologically. Don't animals love

03:57 to acquire? But they acquire only to the extent of their biological need. Have you not seen

04:04 ants carrying little sugar crystals? Yes? So even animals want to acquire but not so

04:12 much. The acquisitiveness that we see in human beings today is a result almost of a plant

04:24 conspiracy. Here they are young and catch them young, indoctrinate them in having more

04:41 and more material possessions. So that's the first part we are talking of suicides here.

04:49 About everybody can have all the material possessions and the nature of material is

04:56 such that it never comes to an end irrespective of how much you have, having even more is

05:03 possible. So the restlessness that we are born with remains as it is. You keep running

05:12 after material. You never have enough material irrespective of how successful you are. You

05:19 never have enough of it and so you remain restless. We are talking of suicides. See

05:23 the connection. You have been told that you will come to peace and rest by having a lot

05:29 of material and material is something you can never have enough of. So you keep running

05:36 all your life and still remain restless. See the relationship with suicide. The second

05:44 factor. There is indeed a place where fulfillment is possible. That place is within us and true

05:56 self-knowledge was something that used to lead people to that place. But there has been

06:05 a rush of cults in the last 50 to 100 years all over the world. The first thing that the

06:14 cult leaders have emphatically propagated is that there is no need to read the old religious

06:23 books. They keep saying we do not read any books. I have not read, being a guru, I have

06:29 not read any book and you too need not read any book. Just listen to what I am saying.

06:35 Do not read the old books. The result is that people have been totally alienated from all

06:48 that which was valuable in the ancient wisdom and instead they have been given some bogus

06:54 kind of religion. Most people today, if I talk of Hindus, let's say, they do not follow

07:00 Hinduism. They might say they are Hindus but they are actually following some cult or the

07:06 other. It's just that the cult leaders are not honest enough and brave enough to simply

07:13 declare that they have started a new religion of their own because if they do that, there

07:17 will be problem. So they don't say it's a new religion, they just say no, no, no. But

07:23 the fact is they have taken people totally away from core spirituality and core spirituality

07:30 was something that could possibly give the peace every man is looking for since his birth.

07:37 What happens when you take people away from core spirituality? The only possibility of

07:42 getting peace and rest is aborted. See the relationship with suicide. These two things

07:49 are working hand in hand. A pop philosophy that tells you that your measure is proportional

08:01 to what you have. That the respect that you deserve does not depend on who you are. It

08:08 depends on what you have. So that's one thing and the second thing is demise of real spirituality.

08:22 It's gone, finished. Instead all kinds of little shops in the religious marketplace

08:35 have mushroomed. These two factors have combined and the result is a lot of neurosis. People

08:41 don't just suddenly commit suicide. First of all they are neurotic. First of all there

08:47 is terrible mental angst. One does not just go and jump into a well. One first of all

08:53 passes through a terrible period of suffering and that's when he decides it's better to

08:58 end life so that the suffering can come to an end. And you must see who is responsible

09:05 for this. The industrial production ethic and false religion. Forced consumption and

09:14 false religion. You don't just consume. Mind you, you are being forced to consume. You

09:23 are being told if you do not consume you are a lesser man. The more you consume the bigger

09:29 you are. Right? Why is USA the greatest country? Because it consumes the most of everything.

09:38 Electricity USA, coal USA, steel USA. You name it. The per capita consumption in the

09:48 USA is the highest. Therefore the USA is the big apple. So that's forced consumption being

09:55 wrought upon you. And the second thing is false religion. False religion that has actively

10:05 dominated true spirituality. False religion that is actively trying to finish off true

10:12 spirituality. These two things.

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