In my previous article last Saturday,, I wrote about healthy competition and unhealthy competition.听The former recognizes the value of each person in terms of what values they can contribute to others and to society.听The latter is an ego-based pursuit that is based on casting aside the competitors (and every one else).
In today鈥檚 materialistic world, this has manifested in some extremely harmful behaviours.听听These behaviours have somehow become entrenched in our individual, social, cultural, organizational and national conscience.听How did this come about?听听And what can be done to bring it under control and mitigate it?
There seem to be two root causes which shape our harmful behaviour in our social, cultural, organizational and national expressions 鈥� one, our inability to distinguish between听need听and听want; and two, the diminishment of the incorporation of听spiritualand听moralvalues in our lives.
These have so deeply infiltrated into our conscious and subconscious mind from a very young age, that they have become part of our every day normal life.听听And it does not matter what socio-economic strata of society we come from.听听Sometimes we are under the misconception that only a small segment of society actually practices unhealthy competition 鈥� those who have climbed to the top of the corporate ladder, or have become wealthy through devious means, or have become political leaders by stoking fear and hatred.听听In reality, every one of us is under the grips of these two enormous negative influences.
Our inability to distinguish between need and want is influenced from a very young age through constant bombardment from media and extremely clever marketing/sales.听听The latter is fairly easy to understand; who hasn鈥檛 heard of the phrase 鈥渢he most successful genius of a salesman is one who can sell a comb to a bald man鈥�?听听If this seems outdated, just look at how many products are being marketed today that claim to make you younger, healthier, wealthier, happier, more successful, etc. etc.听And look at the enormous amount of money being spent by ordinary people that actually believe in these marketing and sales ploys 鈥� even the outlandish ones.
What role does the media play?听听Just notice what and who is glorified by the media.听听Notice the extremely high proportion of trivial material, sometimes cloaked as 鈥渋nformation鈥�, that is propagated through the media.
We can take an active role in addressing both root causes to mitigate our harmful behaviour.听We can start paying attention to what we buy, what we consume, what we discard after very little use.听听Then we can reduce our wasteful behaviour which is actually a display of our desire to have 鈥渕ore than what others have鈥�.
Bringing spiritual and moral values into our lives requires a little more effort.听听With the global move away from religious societies and towards secular societies, the learning of spiritual and moral values also has been diminishing.听听The unfortunate past oppressiveness of religions has created a backlash which has over-reached and created this situation with a vacuous moral environment.
Not only do we individuals need a strong revival of incorporating moral and spiritual values into our lives, but also a concerted effort to ensure that the same revival is applied to communities, and demanded of political and corporate leaders and influencers.
We had many visionary leaders in the twentieth century and earlier, but this new twenty-first century era seems to be devoid of such charismatic and influential leaders that can bring about great positive changes in our societal, cultural, organizational, political and national behaviours.
Let us hope and pray for such a leadership.
But at the same time, let us make every effort individually and collectively to keeping our spiritual and moral standards high, and pass on the same to the generations to come.听听Only then can we have some hope that truly disastrous future outcomes such as catastrophic effects of climate change, unthinkable global financial meltdowns, mutual annihilation attempts by nations with inflexible ideologies, violent social upheavals caused by extreme concentration of wealth and property in a few hands (this is happening already in many places around the globe), or the demise of nature and a large percentage of animal and plant species, can be avoided.
Let us start today.听Let us start now.听听For there is not even a moment to lose in this monumental challenge and effort.
Suresh Basrur听practises the Hindu faith, participates in inter-faith activities in Victoria, and speaks to audiences about Hindu religion, philosophy and practices.
You can read more articles on our interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking,
Photo by听听on听
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