I am in a quandary. How can I justify switching on a light bulb?
This isn't the question that the philosophers in the past had had to face. But before you can ponder upon it, let's just consider what all goes into lighting the bulb. The task itself doesn't consume many calories or rattle brains.
The process of reaching out and pressing a button produces a reaction wherin electrons are hurtled headlong into the filament of the bulb, where they get excited and climb up an energy shell in their atomic structure. These electrons are being pushed by another reaction taking further off in a generation unit somewhere where coal is burnt and the heat used to drive a turbine which excites a magnet which propels these electrons.
Further back, the coal is taken out of mines by digging out earth and the vegetation that lay above it. The process of turning on the bulb represents just the last stage in the process which spans from the absorption of energy by the organism that was turned into coal and the eventual liberation of it through our light bulb.
By turning on the light, we are taking part in the process wherein the forests are cleared, earth is dug up and the smoke released. If we can't see it happening in front of our eyes, we don't see the process as it is. We see only the part of it which we accept.
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The chicken that you eat, ultimately comes from the bird that once lived. You can't deny that. You don't care about the feelings of the bird, it's dreams, aspirations and happiness. You don't because all you've ever seen is the animated bird that wants you to eat it. The advertisement, who's role is to remove the guilt of the wrong being done in the process and give to you the final product as a gift, which you are made to think you deserve.
The mobiles in our hands in this manner constitutes several trees that stood over the land that must have been dug to pull the minerals that are essential in its hardware, the earth that must've been violated, the animals that must've been driven out and the insects that must've been killed. If we had the perspective to see all of this simaltaneously,we wouldn't have been able to carry on with our lives for very long.
The point is we don't even consider the norms that have been set in the society. It's a slavery that we have accepted.
Freedom
The concept of freedom is a complex one. It isn't the mere freedom from the overt controls of others. A person might be in chains for a revolutionary cause and yet be more free than any of the 'free' men slaving under an oppressive regime.
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The mind, determines how free you get to be. The modern man has submitted his mind. Literally bowed without being able to realise that it has done so. The cleverness underlying the consumerist culture is making the consumer think that he is the king, while in reality the tiny threads of enslavement emanate from every and each one of the product that he uses.
THE SIMPLE TRUTH
What did I just Blabber in the paragraph above? The simple truth.
Imagine the phone. We were alright without the smart phone. Infact the marginal productivity that it does add is decimated by the amount of time wasted by us on its several distractionary features. We continally have to spend time updating, recharging, searching for apps and n other things. We are on a lookout for newer models, for newest features, fawning over every new stripe of metal added to the plasticky screen.
EVEN if you were a slave bought by a 17th century english baron, you wouldn't have spent this much of time and attention for your master. True, we do it out of our own self will. But then, how much of our self will is our own?
The action of a DRUG ADDICT who conciously makes a decision to consume a drug isn't an action of free will. He cannot, EVEN if he wants to, get clear of his habit. The habit drives him to not only consume more of the drug, but also to find new ways to finance his 'habit'. The habit has extended its tentacle into every sphere of his life, moulding him, his actions and ultimately him in the apparent process of serving him. Clever.
CLEVERER still is how we fall prey to advertisements subtle messages in films and the peer pressures of social media. We emulate others, without analysing how or why we do it. IF the hero on the screen smokes, we automatically integrate the action as being cool in our inner self.
NO one has to tell us that the sleek puffing of the cig is a cool thing to do. Since we too want to do the cool thing, we too buy the cig and get hooked. The society has absorbed many such assumptions. These are passed on and adapted. Its like PASSING on the chains on our individual thought process and extending it to the entire humanity. Every one is forced to think along the same lines.
THE globalised world has set its standards of happiness, deteremined by products. You cannot be happy if you don't have a certain product. That is happiness in so many advertisements, movies, shows and what not..... and finally you start to beleive. Happiness is using old spice deodrant, happiness is using apple computer, riding lamborghini..... what not.
Each of these products represent a part of the mother earth cut out brutally out of her breasts. The cars that we ride in with the petrol extracted from polluting drills, built with the iron which had been lying in the pristine jungles, with the coal who's extraction destroyed an entire ecosystem.
LIVES
EVERY PRODUCT that you use has cost some lives. It would squirt blood if the metaphor could be translated into reality. It would also squirt the chains with which it has enslaved your mind into accepting that product as the barometer of your success and happiness.
HUMAN mind cherishes and values object with the social criterion over all else. We like gold because everyone wants it. A tulip mania occurred breifly in Netherland in 17th century. Everyone wanted a tulip, because everyone wanted it.
OUR present mania has gone on for a long long time. Industrialisation created the inevitable need for a way to sell the overproduced products without regard to needs. Terms like Nationalism, patriotism, duty were used to force people to accept the order. Workers had to leave pristine natural setting and work in dirty factories because their "NATION" required it.
ALL of the nations used the same SLOGAN, the incessant chorus of enimity with other nation. We had to work for that imaginary idea of nation, to preserve it, to help it grow. Every dissent was crushed by a machinery of law. Armies sprouted to ensure that the "NATION" functioned.
What is this "NATION"? A naiton is a society united by a delusion abou tits ancestory and a common hatred of its neighbours. It is an idea exploited by the powerful classes to maintain its control. It is a perverse exploitation of the majority of the people, in which the people themselves let themselves being raped by the industrialists, politicians, bureaucrats and what not.
WHAT CAN we do.... ?
Take the red pill (previous post).
What the f**k are we doing? Destroying everything for the things we don't need. Hypnotised by the ads... we are killing the animals, environment.. and our own souls......
I don't know what the right way is.
But this isn't it.
We are digging our own graves with the kind of society we have.
We have to pause and look at the branch beneath us that we are senselessly chopping off with an ever evolving technology.
Do you know the way? Because I am in a quandary, if you get what I am saying....................
This isn't the question that the philosophers in the past had had to face. But before you can ponder upon it, let's just consider what all goes into lighting the bulb. The task itself doesn't consume many calories or rattle brains.
The process of reaching out and pressing a button produces a reaction wherin electrons are hurtled headlong into the filament of the bulb, where they get excited and climb up an energy shell in their atomic structure. These electrons are being pushed by another reaction taking further off in a generation unit somewhere where coal is burnt and the heat used to drive a turbine which excites a magnet which propels these electrons.
Further back, the coal is taken out of mines by digging out earth and the vegetation that lay above it. The process of turning on the bulb represents just the last stage in the process which spans from the absorption of energy by the organism that was turned into coal and the eventual liberation of it through our light bulb.
By turning on the light, we are taking part in the process wherein the forests are cleared, earth is dug up and the smoke released. If we can't see it happening in front of our eyes, we don't see the process as it is. We see only the part of it which we accept.
The chicken that you eat, ultimately comes from the bird that once lived. You can't deny that. You don't care about the feelings of the bird, it's dreams, aspirations and happiness. You don't because all you've ever seen is the animated bird that wants you to eat it. The advertisement, who's role is to remove the guilt of the wrong being done in the process and give to you the final product as a gift, which you are made to think you deserve.
The mobiles in our hands in this manner constitutes several trees that stood over the land that must have been dug to pull the minerals that are essential in its hardware, the earth that must've been violated, the animals that must've been driven out and the insects that must've been killed. If we had the perspective to see all of this simaltaneously,we wouldn't have been able to carry on with our lives for very long.
The point is we don't even consider the norms that have been set in the society. It's a slavery that we have accepted.
Freedom
The concept of freedom is a complex one. It isn't the mere freedom from the overt controls of others. A person might be in chains for a revolutionary cause and yet be more free than any of the 'free' men slaving under an oppressive regime.
The mind, determines how free you get to be. The modern man has submitted his mind. Literally bowed without being able to realise that it has done so. The cleverness underlying the consumerist culture is making the consumer think that he is the king, while in reality the tiny threads of enslavement emanate from every and each one of the product that he uses.
THE SIMPLE TRUTH
What did I just Blabber in the paragraph above? The simple truth.
Imagine the phone. We were alright without the smart phone. Infact the marginal productivity that it does add is decimated by the amount of time wasted by us on its several distractionary features. We continally have to spend time updating, recharging, searching for apps and n other things. We are on a lookout for newer models, for newest features, fawning over every new stripe of metal added to the plasticky screen.
EVEN if you were a slave bought by a 17th century english baron, you wouldn't have spent this much of time and attention for your master. True, we do it out of our own self will. But then, how much of our self will is our own?
The action of a DRUG ADDICT who conciously makes a decision to consume a drug isn't an action of free will. He cannot, EVEN if he wants to, get clear of his habit. The habit drives him to not only consume more of the drug, but also to find new ways to finance his 'habit'. The habit has extended its tentacle into every sphere of his life, moulding him, his actions and ultimately him in the apparent process of serving him. Clever.
CLEVERER still is how we fall prey to advertisements subtle messages in films and the peer pressures of social media. We emulate others, without analysing how or why we do it. IF the hero on the screen smokes, we automatically integrate the action as being cool in our inner self.
NO one has to tell us that the sleek puffing of the cig is a cool thing to do. Since we too want to do the cool thing, we too buy the cig and get hooked. The society has absorbed many such assumptions. These are passed on and adapted. Its like PASSING on the chains on our individual thought process and extending it to the entire humanity. Every one is forced to think along the same lines.
THE globalised world has set its standards of happiness, deteremined by products. You cannot be happy if you don't have a certain product. That is happiness in so many advertisements, movies, shows and what not..... and finally you start to beleive. Happiness is using old spice deodrant, happiness is using apple computer, riding lamborghini..... what not.
Each of these products represent a part of the mother earth cut out brutally out of her breasts. The cars that we ride in with the petrol extracted from polluting drills, built with the iron which had been lying in the pristine jungles, with the coal who's extraction destroyed an entire ecosystem.
LIVES
EVERY PRODUCT that you use has cost some lives. It would squirt blood if the metaphor could be translated into reality. It would also squirt the chains with which it has enslaved your mind into accepting that product as the barometer of your success and happiness.
HUMAN mind cherishes and values object with the social criterion over all else. We like gold because everyone wants it. A tulip mania occurred breifly in Netherland in 17th century. Everyone wanted a tulip, because everyone wanted it.
OUR present mania has gone on for a long long time. Industrialisation created the inevitable need for a way to sell the overproduced products without regard to needs. Terms like Nationalism, patriotism, duty were used to force people to accept the order. Workers had to leave pristine natural setting and work in dirty factories because their "NATION" required it.
ALL of the nations used the same SLOGAN, the incessant chorus of enimity with other nation. We had to work for that imaginary idea of nation, to preserve it, to help it grow. Every dissent was crushed by a machinery of law. Armies sprouted to ensure that the "NATION" functioned.
What is this "NATION"? A naiton is a society united by a delusion abou tits ancestory and a common hatred of its neighbours. It is an idea exploited by the powerful classes to maintain its control. It is a perverse exploitation of the majority of the people, in which the people themselves let themselves being raped by the industrialists, politicians, bureaucrats and what not.
WHAT CAN we do.... ?
Take the red pill (previous post).
What the f**k are we doing? Destroying everything for the things we don't need. Hypnotised by the ads... we are killing the animals, environment.. and our own souls......
I don't know what the right way is.
But this isn't it.
We are digging our own graves with the kind of society we have.
We have to pause and look at the branch beneath us that we are senselessly chopping off with an ever evolving technology.
Do you know the way? Because I am in a quandary, if you get what I am saying....................
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