We are the products not the consumers. We are grown like a crop in a farm’s annual produce where the focus is on whether it fits the market requirements and sells profitably but not on the health and nourishment of the crop. No doubt, there is no single party to take the blame but when the market is blindly driven on the basis of “how to maximize profits” at the expense of providing a better and healthier output. A simple one line Wikipedia definition tells us the purpose of agriculture, “… a process of cultivation for sustaining and enhancing human life.”
So what we end up getting is not sustainable and life enhancing produce but impeding and aggravating substance. This happens when there is a huge gap between business and what science knows. Influence and gains takes precedence over credibility and value. Main motive is displaced from a meaningful purpose to a meaningless chase for possessions.
The same process is replicated in our life. We are trained to chase after money, biggest life decisions are influenced by the monetary value attached to the choices at hand. All this is promised to provide a better future. But does it? Does striving for material possessions secure the future, our future? Well it hardly does, but it does provide a cocoon to shelter ourselves from the mishaps and the so termed misfortunes. Owning a bigger house and an expensive car only helps this much when the most important things are ignored. We will still be travelling the same roads, breathing the same air but only this time contributing more to the environmental issues.
Does it secure our future then? Or does driving in an expensive car, residing in a posh flat, living a royal life makes us truly feel good about ourselves? Are they even achievements? Is that the definition of success? In the end, will we be still be free of regret or just blinded by ignorance? Are we that shallow? We are brought up as kids, educated, trained so that we can have a better future and every action that follows is a move to ensure a better future isn’t it?
So, will everyone chasing their own individual paths, achieving their own misplaced dreams, help us safeguard the future of humanity, as a species, as a group of equals? Or are we so easily satisfied that only ensuring our time here is spent lavishly is enough and the world around us is not our concern.
