Why excessive consumerism is the cause of many worries
There is an increasingly pronounced trend towards branding anything that elders advise or tell, as "old fashioned". The young, who have access to resources and English medium education, and thus jobs as well, that give them take home salaries of over thirty thousand rupees, are going the wrong way, with every single passing day.
This is mostly seen in the excessive consumerism, that is there for all to see. For example, there is a trend towards eating the most "fashionable" foods. Even for breakfast, it is not uncommon to find children as young as four or five, demand only noodles.
Unfortunately, noodles is not at healthy and the preservatives that are added to increase the shelf life of noodles, are said to cause obesity, and even blood cancer. There is an increasing trend to adapt to this food and the parents -- both of whom are employed -- happily give it to their children to save time, and to pamper them.
The KFC revolution has been already well documented. A new generation of chicken eaters has now grown to unmanageable proportions and the only rich people are the doctors who treat the sick patients, after eating this kind of food.
The spicy food that goes into preparing a whole lot of non-vegetarian dishes are said to cause a huge variety of ailments and, in the absence of proper exercise, the young are prone to heart attack than ever before. The tension in their lives is the result of eighteen hour work days, that is now becoming the common norm, even in the manufacturing sector.
The urge to achieve success, the urge to make it big and the urge to earn money is now more pronounced than ever before. If the husband and wife take home a salary in excess of fifty thousand, the first thing they do, is to buy a flat or apartment in the suburbs, where the quality of life is not all that good. For instance, the children need to travel at least eight kilometers to study in good schools. The husband works far away in the city, and so does the wife.
Then starts all the trouble. The children do not get to see the parents for most of the evening, and the domestic servants or old parents of the father or mother, chip in with whatever they can. However, the environmental influences teach the children too many things, and consumerism happens as a matter of compulsion.
The young have no time to spend with the children even on week-ends, which are spent mostly sleeping, or working on the computer. The children learn all the latest computers, the laptops and the cell phones. They get used to the most modern technology. The parents think that their children are "street smart" and fall into a familiar trap of announcing to the world, that they are part of the rat race. However, all this is not always good.
It is one thing to be updated, but it is another to stick to values of hard work, dedication, commitment and respect for elders. Today's children, who are less than ten years old, are unfortunately, not in the race of learning these values, and this is a trend that has affected children, even in the tier two and tier three towns.
The villages are thus far, by and large, unaffected by consumerism, but the villagers now know about Pepsi and Coca Cola more than they know about their local soft drinks and about the hugely natural coconut water. Even those from the smallest of villages know about whatsapp.
It is stupid to argue that the knowledge of each of these things is per se, bad. However, what is bad is that the children are losing touch with reality and the excessive spending is eating into everything that is good about human nature.
Take the increasing rates of divorce, for example. Both the husband and wife do not agree, mainly because they have only money in their minds, and their relationship has a common bond -- money.
However, one cannot buy everything with money. One can never buy a peaceful sleep, or peace of mind. These things come with training and meditation.
Unfortunately, even religious practices or faith in God or meditation and such like, are becoming a thing of the past -- though not completely.
The result? Those who practice some kind of "art of living" and all that stuff laugh all the way to the bank.
The precise point is that art of living is all too present even within our families, if only we were to stop and think. The spirit of collaboration, the spirit of give and take, the spirit of mutual respect that marked the way people lived just twenty or thirty years ago, is now becoming a thing of the past, and excessive consumerism is the root cause of this development.
Let us take another example. The tendency to show off, to celebrate marriages in a very grand manner, is driving the middle classes like mad. It is not uncommon to find the "marriage halls" rented for as high as three hundred thousand rupees a day, in the metros like Chennai or Bangalore. Across communities, if one takes an accurate account of the expenditure in each of such marriages, the answer would be, that it is not less than twenty five hundred thousand rupees or even thirty hundred thousand rupees. The food expenses for just two days, add up to not less than six hundred thousand rupees, for just pure vegetarian food.
Relationships have becoming commercial, or becoming commercial. Money has become a very important obsession of all, including the already filthy rich people. The kind of consumerism that is now practiced, one is afraid, is now striking at the root of all that is good about human nature.
In particular, we should be ever vigilant at not allowing the existing permissive attitudes among children and teenagers, eat into the formation of values. The way the people of India, in the cities are reacting to this dangerous state of affairs, is very silly and totally unhealthy.
Children should never be pampered with gifts of all kinds. They should be made to compulsorily maintain good relationships with neighbors, with their cousins and there should be occasions when the entire families of brothers and sisters get together -- at least thrice in a year. Otherwise, we will be losing the cultural supremacy that has actually held the Indian families together, and this is exactly we feel proud about the "Indian way" of live. Let us not lose this at all.
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