Commercialism & Consumerism

Commercialism and Consumerism are the two materialistic and psychological aspects which have brought in the technical evolution which are providing comfortable and easy life to the mankind. There cannot be second opinion about this fact. At the same time we cannot have second opinion about the fact that commercialism and consumerism are the aspects where all the problems of ourselves and our world are enrooted, if we really see commercialism and consumerism at certain deeper level.

Commercialism is due to the greed of mankind and consumerism is due to lack of understanding of desire. Both are the illness of this world, if an undue importance is given to them. Due to uncontrollable greed, commercialism already started destroying the resources of this earth and psychology of human beings. Due to uncontrollable desire, consumerism encourages the destruction of the resources of earth without even realizing the need for preserving the resources or preserve the condition so that the resources sustain themselves and hence sustain life forms in this earth for billions of years to come, till the time we have our sun with enough mass to keep the earth with in its gravitational field.

And as an escape we, the components of commercialism and consumerism, often make some noise about environment. As usual, we never pay attention to what we talk about environment and hence fail to follow the statements or noise we ourselves make. As it is an escape from this threatening problem just for the time being, we never bother to take responsibility of our being part of commercialism and consumerism. We just show our fingers to others and refuse to take responsibility and hence refuse to take actions on this threatening problem. Acting on the problems of commercialism and consumerism does not mean that to remove it completely from the world. We cannot do that because, without them we cannot enjoy the comforts what we have now. We are also not bothered to understand the facts of commercialism and consumerism and hence do not know how to handle these giants of destruction, without losing the comforts of life. It is possible if and only if a radical change takes place within us – the originator of both these giants and understands its facts.

Due to this lack of understanding, commercialism decides the psychology of consumers which is exactly opposite to what is supposed to be happening. Due to lack of understanding of the consumers about their need, the commercialism infuses need for the consumers by altering the psychology of consumer and creates lust and desire within the consumer. Once the lust and desire goes deep into the mind of consumer, he goes for the need so created by lust and desire rather than the real need or passion. The consumer is so conditioned by the commercialism, the lust and desire is seen as need and passion of the consumer and a concept of consumerism take shape there to protect the conflicts within the consumer with respect to desire and need.

In most of the cases, we are taking part in both commercialism and consumerism. We are being part of the commercialism on our profession and takes part in consumerism when we caught between lust and desire. On the other hand we are in a real trap. Unless a real change takes place within us, we cannot get out of this trap. The change will takes place by itself, if we really pay attention to our lust and desire and understand these two elements. How do we know that what we are having is a lust and desire or need/passion? This is a real problem; because the commercialism with its continuous effort of psychological conditioning of consumers makes us, the consumers, to believe what we are having is need or passion. This can be understandable, if we pay enough attention to the need/passion/desire/lust of us. The attention brings in a clear understanding of these facts, and if it is mere desire or lust, the attention itself gets away the desire and lust. We need not put in any effort to control the desire and lust other than paying sufficient attention to the conditioning so infused into us by commercialism. The mere attention on it is sufficient to eliminate the undue lust and desire.

Once the consumer changes within him/her self to pay real attention to the commercialism and the factors with in consumers which makes the consumers as slaves of commercialism, there is no other way for commercialism to state the real factors rather than arousing the lust and desire of consumer by attacking the psychology of consumer. This to happen, the consumer has to bring in necessary changes within themselves so that they will be capable of looking into the factors. Once the consumer gets freedom from commercialism, they will be free from the psychological attack of commercialism to get what they really need for their comfortable and passionate life. Once this happen, we will really know the priorities of our needs and hence this knowing will start correcting the disorders of the society by itself. On the other hand we have to just clear off our disorders, and the societies disorders will be cleared off by itself.