[vedic-culture] The Tyranny of Money

[Guest guest]

The following is an article written by Jeremy Seabrook, for the Third World

Network Features, an independent news service from Penang, Malaysia. Our

Vedic-Culture egroup is primarily dedicated to subjects pertaining to Vedic

culture and history. However,this information is applicable because India, the

cradle of Vedic civilization is one of the prime targets of the Market Economy's

Tyranny of Money. It is important that we understand the fact that most of

India's current problems have been artificially imposed upon her.I also believe,

it is important to, not only, always be aware of the current state of World

affairs, but to understand the dynamics behind them. As the sayings go,

“Knowledge is Power,” and “The Truth Shall Set Us Free.” Vrin Parker

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THE TYRANNY OF MONEY

“Absolute poverty has declined from 70% in 1960 to almost 30% today,” says a

TV advertisement for CARE. But there is a problem with most definitions of

poverty. It is common for humanitarians to cite the fact that there are one

billion people in the world who live on less than a dollar a day. This fact is

sited as proof of unspeakable deprivations.

 

But life with zero income does not have to be degrading, if people can

provide all their own needs for themselves. On the other hand, an income of

$25,000 may be called poverty when all needs must be purchased, and the sum is

insufficient for the purpose.

 

To recreate poverty in the image of the West—as a monetary sum, the absence

of which means you are poor—is perhaps the most effective way of setting the

whole world on the same developmental path, for it means that the norms of the

market economy are being universalized. Once the measures of wealth and poverty

that depend on money have been accepted, the poor are condemned to an eternity

of poverty.

 

In the market economy, people must learn how to be poor. What social

reformers are really saying, when they cite people living on less than a dollar

a day, is that they were excluded from the market economy. The idea that this,

in and of itself, is an index of poverty is the profound untruth that lies

beneath all money-dominated statistics and measurements of poverty.

 

Another way of looking at those who have not yet entered the market economy

is to say they remain free and independent of market provided needs and

commodities. So when it is declared that there is a 40% reduction in the number

of absolute poor, what they are really saying is that there has been 40%

reduction in the number of people living, surviving and existing comfortably

outside the market system. This has created unnecessary confusion. This is the

real scandal. All those still living outside the market economy give the lie to

the totalizing thrust of globalization and the imperatives of conforming to one

particular way of answering need. (In other words, self sufficient people and

communities expose the falsity of the Market Economy. This is one of the primary

reasons groups like the Native Americans were hunted and decimated to near

extinction.VP)

 

There is a word for this. It is Tyranny. The struggle to establish the

uncontested dominance of the world market has been the true locus of attack

upon, not only the poor of the Earth, but all those whose way of life is to

reproach the market economy. The struggle has been a kind of low-intensity

warfare. Its battle cry has been “development.” Its weaponry has been money, its

foot soldiers the high consuming middle class that has emerged in virtually

every country.

 

At the same time, a distinctly more aggressive war has been carried on

against those people who still occupy forests, coastal environments, subsistence

farms, and river-banks and whose resources-minerals, metals, timber, fish

water-must be surrendered to the market. In the name of “bringing these people

into the 20th century,” they have been systematically dispossessed and violently

removed from ancestral lands. In India, in the 50 years since independence, 25

million people have been displaced for infrastructual or so-called developmental

projects.

 

The market offers instruction in being poor. First, it removes from

individuals and groups of people the capacity to provide for their own needs and

the needs of others, and it creates dependency. Second, the market teaches about

what we do not have. Through self –reliance we learn what we need, and that is

surprisingly little; through the market we learn what we might get. In that

sense, the market serves the growing self-consciousness of an industrialized

humanity that must now understand that all the familiar artifacts and goods of

traditional culture are actually junk, and that everything that is produced

elsewhere is of superior value, set by its monetary price. In this way,

inferiorization, subordination, and dependency are the principal gifts of the

market economy to self-reliance.

By destroying our natural self-reliance, through the tyranny of money, the

market economy has set all of humanity in a sad and circular dance. A chase of

perpetual keeping up with an abstraction, the limitlessness of human desire and

cravings, and they have taught that wisdom lies in recognizing the impossibility

of pursuing it.” Jeremy Seabrook

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I will close this message with a quote from Mohandas K. Gandhi, that sums it up

perfectly, “There is enough in this world for mankind’s needs, but not for

mankind’s greed.” Namaste, Vrin Parker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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