They
‘give’, don’t care to ‘get’
The
major problem the majority of humans mostly incurably suffer from is economic,
precisely financial weakness. It affects their day to day life and living,
deprives them of their physical and mental well being and lowers their social
credibility and status. The economically strong minority who rules the roost
looks down upon them with much pity and less compassion -- the latter being
more palpably evident among the weaker majority. For the strong, compassion is
a thing to show off.
The
only symptom of financial weakness is lack of purchasing power. From daily
bread to cremation / burial paraphernalia, everything has to be purchased. Good,
nourishing food, decent and durable clothes, comfortable house, right and
meaningful education, fool-proof medical facility and travelling for gathering
knowledge, enriching the mind and widening the vision are to be bought. So, to
fit into the bill, you need money.
Money
has to be earned either by a man himself or by others on his behalf and because
it is a matter of ‘behalf’, the money earned, therefore, is also ‘halved’, so
to say. The sharing is between a non-performing few and a performing mass. Let
us presume the shares are 50-50 and the beneficiary- ratio 5:95.
Now,
going back to performer and non-performer question, the latter also performs
with its capital or money input. I put money into a project and you work and
produce for me. In other words I purchase your labor. It is done on my terms.
You don’t have much say about deciding what price I pay for your labor. Why?
Because money is more powerful than labor. The powerful always dictates the
terms. It is a fundamental rule of life
as conceived and developed by the cleverer, cunning, crafty section and
practiced since millennia.
Well,
but in the first place, where did I get the money from for investing into an
activity where money is the labor’s principal counterpart? Either I earned it
or amassed it. As for earning, I have eight hours a day to work. How much can
one earn in eight hours? The answer would vary. However, going by a general
assumption let’s say I earn Rs.500. This is multiplied by 95 (labor) when I am
in the role of an investor of money or the amassing mechanism. Now, it is an
axiom that I cannot amass without depriving others.
There
are many ways to amass. I may be or my forefathers may have been frauds; robbers
; burglars never to be caught; racketeers or
smugglers; may have won a lottery; owning vast land by means far from fair and so on a so forth. I have somehow, through
these or some other way amassed money ending up as a wealthy man. I am a
criminal in the first place. For, ‘every wealth has a crime behind it’. Who
would deny that all empires were built and strengthened by perpetrating crime
against humanity? Maybe today’s empires are in a different garb but their modus
operandi is same as the empires of the past. Deprivation was at the root of all
wealth then. So it is now.
‘Jiska
lathi, uska bhains’ (He who has a stick, owns the buffalo) is the law of
nature. Some humans rationalized it and gave the buffalo to those without stick.
They set the example that even though ‘might is right’ is the nature’s law, it
can be, and should be modified for the benefit of humanity. The concept of
‘humanity’ was brought about and developed by them. However, those rational mighty
were a minority. They are still the minority.
Once
upon a time, the life-standard used to be determined by the mentality to
‘give’. Now the standard is measured by the capability to ‘get’. Prosperity of
an individual, a community or a country is popularly measured by the number of
skyscrapers piercing the blue, the limousines raping the roads, the super-speciality
hospitals and the medicos; proliferation
of entertainment media sincerely engaged in transforming the most desirable
uncovering in private into extremely detestable denuding in public…it’s
tiresome to add on more instances of ‘never leave a chance to grab-and-consume’.
The
good news, however, is, there are minds, however miniscule they may be,
generating and spreading the vibes that are aimed at enriching the life’s
interior over exterior. It’s not that the exterior is ignored. The suggestion is to remove unnecessary stress
on shine alone. It’s like a boy being encouraged to study his school curricula
first and then polish his shoes! The vibes are for arranging the priorities
time-opportunity-coherence wise, not discarding any of them. The vibes are for
seeking durability in this non-durable world, for augmenting temperance against
intemperance, to draw a longer line parallel to the shorter without erasing it.
Artists,
Writers, Poets, Scientists never assumed the powerful’s role nor wielded the strong
money-bludgeon over the weaker. They are hardly known to be amassing money or
believing in 5-95 proportion. They did never believe in becoming rich in the
commonly understood sense but with a virtual missionary zeal helped the globe
to be richer. They made the world move from one gain to a higher gain and yet
higher gain by the sheer power of their positive imagination and endless
pursuit of excellence of creative, imperishable human faculties. Amassing had
never been nor is their cup of tea. They live to be on the giving side. At
times they may be forced by compelling circumstances to be at the receiving end
but they hardly take any time to turn about and push their giving mission
forward…and forward.
