Conscious Consumption: a Sensible Mode of Life
Question: People buy a new mobile phone every three months because someone else also got a new mobile phone. Is consumerism driven by paranoia?
Sadhguru: Whether it is consumerism or something else, any kind of “ism” will lead to a certain mindlessness. Mindless consumerism is definitely not towards human wellbeing. Consumption (archaic name for pulmonary tuberculosis) used to be a disease, you know? Even now, it is a kind of ailment. That is, we do not do what is needed in our lives; we do what is expected by others. The people who expect things out of you do not know a thing about their own lives. If you live to fulfil their expectations, obviously your life will go off the track. So I feel the advertising industry should focus on creating conscious consumption rather than mindless consumerism.
Mindlessness means just simply doing something. Once mindlessness sets in, society will go in cycles, not really getting anywhere. There will be nothing profound in that society. Everything will become profane. Right now, we are rapidly going in that direction. India used to be a culture where every aspect of life had a deeper rooting and meaning. Even simple things—how to sit, how to stand, how to eat—always had a deeper connotation. Because of this, no matter what kind of rigors the outside situations offered us in the form of invasions, famines, or whatever else, the spirit of India lived on undisturbed.
If you take away this deeper rooting in human beings and make them live out of a mall, they will get shattered easily. Until about 20 years ago, the number of people who were psychologically deranged in this country was extremely low. You could say the number was low because proper records were not kept, which is a fact, but still, for so many hundreds of millions of people, the number of those who were psychologically deranged was extremely small because of this deeper rooting, that every simple thing had a deeper meaning and a deeper possibility. If you look at the percentage of the U.S. population who are on antidepressants, it is not a healthy society, which in many ways is a result of mindless consumerism.
It is very important that human societies function out of their intelligence, not just out of external tendencies that come and go. That we are pushing the majority of society into this kind of a mode clearly shows we are not interested in the well-being of human beings—we just want to sell something at any cost. And above all, if the over 7 billion people on the planet consume at the same level as an average American citizen, statistics say, we will need almost four and a half planets. But we only have half a planet left! This means you have to keep half of the world population in abject poverty so that others can go on a consumerism binge.
This does not mean you should not enjoy your life, or that you should not have things. Everyone should have what they need. But digging up the planet just for the sake of satisfying someone else’s opinion is simply mindless. I am not trying to render an ecological message. My concern is about human beings. This is like the proverbial story of a man cutting the branch that he is sitting on. If he succeeds, he will fall.
Nowadays you see that many of the most successful people have really tense and agitated faces. It is mindless consumerism that leads to suffering.
| Named one of India’s 50 most influential people, Sadhguru speaks before millions annually around the globe, including to prominent leadership forums such as the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, TED, and the World Peace Congress. From groundbreaking yoga programs to projects for rural communities and the environment, Sadhguru’s Isha Foundation (www.IshaFoundation.org) serves as a thriving model for human empowerment, which is reflected in the Foundation’s special consultative status with the UN. |
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