Our Future: Consumerism or Humanism

Twentieth Century world got poised on two poles, one of the market and the other of planned economic. These, with some variations, became the role mode for many countries. In 1990 with the implosion of the Soviet Union and accelerated marketisation of its economy, the world was left precariously balanced on a single pole. The unipolar market economies have now arrived at the stage of “Armament Protected Consumerism”. And this is being promoted worldwide through globalization. Consumerist globalisation is launching developing nations on the G.D.P. rececourse of ‘welfare through gambling’. And once on this course, it is difficult to retract. The promoters of the system take all. A few winners become a part of the system; while the rest-victims of these policies slide further into deprivation. These policies, also come with a packet of armament to enable pliable leaderships to protect themselves from the rising anger of the deprived people and for the protection and promotion of the hegemons interests. The media is propagating images of a wonderful life of freedom and the consumerist Utopia that is coming into being. That is for those who can find a place in the system. The elites and the youth are being hypnotized by these illusions, more so in comparison with parallel images of starvation, death, genocide, war, refugee camps and terrorism. They are losing their sensitivities to high culture of aesthetics, literature and spirituality and are being systematically drawn into the lowest forms of culture where shopping is becoming the highest form of cultural expression. Over the last thirty years, the author with credentials in many areas of human activity-as an industrial manager and entrepreneur, energy scientist, technologist and futurist has delved deeply into our present state and the shifting paradigm; and its consequences for the human future. He has a special message for those living in a consumerist dream-world in India and indeed in the world at large-to have a good look at the present sorry state of their role models. Nations which forsake the path of their own continuity and psychic stability in search of the illusions of others with all forms of violence always came to grief. This is a lesson of history which we can ignore at our greatest peril.