• How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seems to me all the uses of this world! – Hamlet
• By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property... the landscape is deformed – Thoreau
• They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing
  – Merchant of Venice
• So our Lord God commonly gives riches to those gross asses to whom He vouchsafes nothing else – Martin Luther
• The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts – Darwin

It is a truism that life is the most complex matter to understand, harder still to get at its inner reason, so the ultimate frontier, much the same way as it is difficult to imagine the last frontier of our material world. How big is ‘big’ when scientists set out to describe universe’s shape or depth or dimension?

Beyond innocent conjecture and bland theory, they know little. When that is so with materials which we can touch and see with our technologically advanced senses, what shall one say of spirit which is really the innermost sinew of life, the compounded complex of life that is! At once ethereal, intangible, only perceivable with mind’s finer eye.

Humans have from time immemorial pursued these subtlest of matters but only a handful of those, really. The mainstream has always flowed along lesser conventional ways. So has market ever been the corner stone of all human societies everywhere on earth.

Naturally, humans have their needs, basic material needs fulfilling which is sine qua non of all extraneous living. Society evolves so, people joining hands in dividing labor in producing and distributing materials needed for existence. While need drives the dynamic, it is market that controls the system and structure. To that extent it is a ‘moral’ force; correct, right and promoting of life.

However, as society evolved, became more and more complex with the flow of technology into its
works, and too corrupted as is the practice with human affairs generally, market took disproportionately larger chunk of the societal attention pie till, under capitalism, it overtook society entirely and obliterated its other more important functions much like poisonous ivy which obliterates all structure over which it proliferates.

One such very significant function was the upkeep and nourishment of human spirit, for, men and women are not ‘animals’ in that strict sense. True, they share with animals basic biological functions like surviving, reproducing, eating and of course defending and developing. What though sets them apart is a duality; one, humans have extraordinary intelligence faculty far in excess of that owned by animals in jungle, two, they have additionally the anthropological gear to put this intelligence to use which sees knowledge turned into technology. Yet most of all, humans possess a remarkably developed spirit, an analytical tool of a unique kind available in the laboratory of human mind only.

We have to learn to appreciate the finer distinctions among senses, mind, intelligence which derives from senses-brain interaction, spirit or as termed by Indians, soul and couple of categories more which stand above these faculties.

This is deeply profound knowledge produced in India, attainable by all humans if they sought it.

Market though comes to stand in the way of that ennobling search.

Market is a very powerful tool in the hands of leading citizens in a capital ruled society. Normally, if left to itself, it is a quasi sovereign mechanism that regulates social functions. Its most beautiful rule is one simple and straight, namely demand and supply determine price.

It works independent of human mediation. It is like mathematics, those equations which also work independent of humans’ mediation. Humans came on the scene much later. Nature has existed all along; earth itself, as scientists estimate, some four billion plus years old. The point is mathematics has all along been in works. It is not that humans made two plus two is four. Entire nature is but manifestation of refined mathematical order. Just think of symmetries of forms!

Yet humans take credit for making mathematics!

Much the same way they have tried to make market which is, unlike mathematics, not that exact a science. Its life blood, demand and supply, is not a matter of immutable numbers. It is a matter, among other things, of – now, that is the key term- manipulation by humans

Of course demand and supply stand on legs of numbers as given in materials produced and demanded and supplied. But humans use their will, quite willfully, guided by their smart sense of profiteering which in turn is a consequence of another faculty eigen to humans: greed powered desire, desire to accumulate wealth at the cost of other humans’ share of it creating in the process an artificial artifact termed by economic scientists as surplus value.

These matters are rooted in spirit, how human spirit is constituted, for good as for bad, somewhat like a double edged blade. Since market went manipulated all the time, it never let the good uplifting aspect of human existence- the spirit- come to the fore. In fact, it suppressed it with its force of arms.

There is a wonderful work by the thoughtful Indian filmmaker V Shantaram by the name Do Ankhen Bara Hath. In this film, the protagonist chisels by the dint of his ‘spiritual technology’ a band of hard cooked criminals into decent civilized men. The experiment is a resounding success but for ‘market’ intervention; the manipulator upsets the philosopher’s cart and by his devious use of ‘market law’ turns the whole enterprise sour. So bad, so immoral is market in its hideous working.

So we have through human history the steady rise and development of market sphinx, never a fall. In our time it has come to be laisser faire.

Laisser faire itself says it all.

Manipulation has free hand, no holds barred. Resultantly, humans are held subservient to market, not the other way around, the right way according to which market should be just another tool to serve humans’ ‘basic material’ need while they engaged themselves, on a higher niveau of living, with real purpose and genuine goals of life.

Wisdom says, eat to live. Manipulated market orders, you! Live to eat!

Market allows that cardinal wise principle of existence no breath. Actually, it itself breathes so heavy as to scotch the other of any oxygen at all. It suffocates the good one to premature death, always!

Market develops its own moral, philosophy, theory on wrong and right, its jurisprudence, law, crime and punishment. It ultimately morphs into state! State, as we know, is the antithesis of citizen freedom to live life in accordance with natural principles.

History gives us myriad example of that. State is also tyranny of its apparatchiks upon its citizenry. For the sake of brevity I shall restrict the view to recent history

Two World Wars, a Cold War, a Nuclear War which should become the 4th World War, it seems sooner than later, Holocausts, Colonialism, Imperialism, Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, capitalist communism as currently underway in China are some of the outstanding colors of this horrid creature market. The mind shudders at the thought of calculating price in terms of human lives wasted and bloodied just to feed this monster that is manipulated market. MNCs are a telling example of globalized manipulation, a speculation more than born out by facts; oil price, food shortage, inflation, scarcity amid abundance, man made mass poverty etc etc. thanks to manipulation galore!

That is the reason why I call market immoral.

There must be other ways to run human society.

We are blessed with intelligence. It is up to us, our philosophers, to make use of this intelligence and essay other ways to live, those that fulfill the nature’s inner purpose.

If humanity is interested in peace and happiness as its real exalted goals, there is no other option but to go in for that different line of progress.

Materialism drenched market run society has had a long enough run thus far. Its experiment has run over the centuries. Results are no secret either. If this immoral market form is to continue as hitherto, unchallenged, it reflects very poorly on humans, and renders them no better than animals, actually far worse, for, animals certainly know to strictly keep to norms of demand and supply within their biomes even as they hunt around. Naturally, they are spared the guile of manipulation. They are innocent.

Humans are not innocent. They are cold blooded schemers, calculative, intriguers, manipulators; even make use of statistics to present lies as truth. They must account for their Karma and face retribution. They are seen to do so all the time anyways.

I wonder how those humans that suffer under market rule over them accept to live with an immoral market. And what keeps them from devising a better system of social organization. They can anytime learn from ants, free of cost!

There are even better ways to live than those of ants and bees.

Well! Mars can wait. First find these out. A true and correct market moral!

That is humanity’s real challenge, not going to moons and Mars and collecting like kids marbles of those rocks and stones.

How have lunar rocks or Mars ice helped humanity attain happiness?

Discovery and invention is good, better still is discovery and invention done in the mills of minds.

I can cite here an authoritative word and dare any scientist, especially those at NASA, to challenge it.

Says Lord Krishna

Guna Guneshu Vartant!

A clear enough line on matter and its properties.

Whether you go to Mars or outer solar systems, matter is matter, atoms and electrons, negative positive electric charge, poles, polar moments, everything that matter is capable of manifesting naturally in line with planetary conditions within our solar system.

What is the big deal in space research as long as humans on earth live in man made hells as of state tyranny?

Since antiquity humanity has known that water is source of energy, besides convertible energy.

Market is not matter.

It is a rule, an arrangement of human making, a monster behind which lurks human spirit which, again as revealed by Lord Krishna, is of three kinds, sattav, rajas, tamas.

Furthermore, the rajas kind to which order market can be assigned, results in unhappiness as the main harvest.

Who can deny that our human world, as managed by manipulative markets, is quintessentially manifestation of unhappiness?

Human beings are no commodities either!

Na! What do you say? Market experts! Still light years away from true civilization if there were those in antiquity who actually lived true civilization, have left behind wondrous cultural relics!

To name just the one, besides a market ruled by Dharma: Ram Rajya!     

September 28, 2008

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