Modern society acknowledges only two gods, life and practical reason organized under the name of science. Its main ideals are the physical good and vitalistic well-being of the individual and the community, the entire satisfaction of the desire for bodily health, long life, comfort, luxury, wealth, amusement, recreation, a constant and tireless expenditure of the mind and the dynamic life-force in remunerative work and production, creations and conquests of various kinds, discovery, commercial victory, travel, adventure, the full possession and utilization of the earth. The best system of governance and economic production is that which leads to the greatest fulfillment of these ideals. On this score, today democracy and capitalism have come to be almost universally acknowledged as the systems best suited for modern mankind. However, as should have been expected, the naked and unabashed pursuit of capitalism during the past two decades after the collapse of communism in Russia has been increasingly leading humanity towards an ever higher and higher level of a new kind of barbarism – the barbarism of the economic man – which is proving dangerous not only for the existence of the Capitalistic economic system but even for the very existence of the human race.
“This economic barbarism is essentially that of the vital man who mistakes the vital being for the self and accepts its satisfaction as the first aim of life. The characteristic of Life is desire and the instinct of possession. Just as the physical barbarian makes the excellence of the body and the development of physical force, health and prowess his standard and aim, so the vitalistic or economic barbarian makes the satisfaction of wants and desires and the accumulation of possessions his standard and aim. His ideal man is not the cultured or noble or thoughtful or moral or religious, but the successful man. To arrive, to succeed, to produce, to accumulate, to possess is his existence. The accumulation of wealth and more wealth, the adding of possessions to possessions, opulence, show, pleasure, a cumbrous inartistic luxury, a plethora of conveniences, life devoid of beauty and nobility, religion vulgarised or coldly formalised, politics and government turned into a trade and profession, enjoyment itself made a business, this is commercialism. To the natural unredeemed economic man beauty is a thing otiose or a nuisance, art and poetry a frivolity or an ostentation and a means of advertisement. His idea of civilisation is comfort, his idea of morals social respectability, his idea of politics the encouragement of industry, the opening of markets, exploitation and trade following the flag, his idea of religion at best a pietistic formalism or the satisfaction of certain vitalistic emotions. He values education for its utility in fitting a man for success in a competitive or, it may be, a socialised industrial existence, science for the useful inventions and knowledge, the comforts, conveniences, machinery of production with which it arms him, its power for organisation, regulation, stimulus to production. The opulent plutocrat and the successful mammoth capitalist and organiser of industry are the supermen of the commercial age and the true, if often occult rulers of its society.
The essential barbarism of all this is its pursuit of vital success, satisfaction, productiveness, accumulation, possession, enjoyment, comfort, convenience for their own sake. The vital part of the being is an element in the integral human existence as much as the physical part; it has its place but must not exceed its place. A full and well-appointed life is desirable for man living in society, but on condition that it is also a true and beautiful life. Neither the life nor the body exist for their own sake, but as vehicle and instrument of a good higher than their own. They must be subordinated to the superior needs of the mental being, chastened and purified by a greater law of truth, good and beauty before they can take their proper place in the integrality of human perfection. Therefore in a commercial age with its ideal, vulgar and barbarous, of success, vitalistic satisfaction, productiveness and possession the soul of man may linger a while for certain gains and experiences, but cannot permanently rest. If it persisted too long, Life would become clogged and perish of its own plethora or burst in its straining to a gross expansion. Like the too massive Titan it will collapse by its own mass, mole ruet sua.”(CWSA 25: 79-81)
“The West has made the growth of the intellectual, emotional, vital and material being of man its ideal, but it has left aside the greater possibilities of his spiritual existence. Its highest standards are ideals of progress, of liberty, equality and fraternity, of reason and science, of efficiency of all kinds, of a better political, social and economical state, of the unity and earthly happiness of the race. These are great endeavours, but experiment after experiment has shown that they cannot be realised in their truth by the power of the idea and the sentiment alone: their real truth and practice can only be founded in the spirit. The West has put its faith in its science and machinery and it is being destroyed by its science and crushed under its mechanical burden. It has not understood that a spiritual change is necessary for the accomplishment of its ideals.” (CWSA 13: 509-10)
As elucidated by Sri Aurobindo, the West has been pursuing the path leading to Mammon and during the past few decades, Asia also seems to have joined it whole-heartedly. As a result, the whole human race has become afflicted with the short-sighted spirit of utilitarianism. In the words of the mother, “For the last hundred years or so mankind has been suffering from a disease which seems to be spreading more and more and which has reached a climax in our times; it is what we may call “utilitarianism”. People and things, circumstances and activities seem to be viewed and appreciated exclusively from this angle. Nothing has any value unless it is useful. Certainly something that is useful is better than something that is not. But first we must agree on what we describe as useful – useful to whom, to what, for what?
For, more and more, the races who consider themselves civilised describe as useful whatever can attract, procure or produce money. Everything is judged and evaluated from a monetary angle. That is what I call utilitarianism. And this disease is highly contagious, for even children are not immune to it.
At an age when they should be dreaming of beauty, greatness and perfection, dreams that may be too sublime for ordinary common sense, but which are nevertheless far superior to this dull good sense, children now dream of money and worry about how to earn it.
So when they think of their studies, they think above all about what can be useful to them, so that later on when they grow up they can earn a lot of money.
And the thing that becomes most important for them is to prepare themselves to pass examinations with success, for with diplomas, certificates and titles they will be able to find good positions and earn a lot of money.
For them study has no other purpose, no other interest.
To learn for the sake of knowledge, to study in order to know the secrets of Nature and life, to educate oneself in order to grow in consciousness, to discipline oneself in order to become master of oneself, to overcome one’s weaknesses, incapacities and ignorance, to prepare oneself to advance in life towards a goal that is nobler and vaster, more generous and more true… they hardly give it a thought and consider it all very utopian. The only thing that matters is to be practical, to prepare themselves and learn how to earn money.” (CWM 12: 353-54)
Even though we have crossed the mark of seven billion on this small planet, there may be enough to meet everyone’s need but certainly not enough for even one man’s greed – then what to say about the greed of the modern organized industry. Actually what modern economic barbarism dignifies by the name of industry is nothing more than an organized selfishness, cruelty and greed which has been ruthlessly exploiting – practically unabated – not only the elements, the flora and fauna but also humans in general, not excluding even those connected with it and directly or indirectly instruments of its plunder – employees, customers, final consumers, suppliers, etc. All are exploited with unvarying ruthlessness in spirit which is modified in practice only by way of a careful weighing of the possibilities of losses arising from possible unfavorable reactions – punitive (legal) or defensive or offensive – from people or groups adversely affected by its activities. This kind of exploitation has lately reached such alarming proportions that even Nature is troubled and conveying her anguish by way of an unusual increase in natural disasters and the possibility of an ecological disaster threatening the very existence of the human race. Even the human masses seem to be coming out of their usual wide-eyed wonder at the doings of these great beasts and are becoming conscious of the mortal damage that is being done if the recent spontaneous eruptions around the world against corruption in public life and the conduct of big business are any indication.
If human beings are ever going to truly come out of the repeated rounds of wasted efforts, emotions, untold suffering and useless strivings, they must first realize that the working of things in this universe is such that all works from within without and that nothing can really manifest unless it is already within. Therefore, what they (human beings) are within that alone they shall enjoy outside. It can never be otherwise. In the words of Sri Aurobindo, “This erring race of human beings dreams always of perfecting their environment by the machinery of government and society; but it is only by the perfection of the soul within that the outer environment can be perfected. What thou art within, that outside thee thou shalt enjoy; no machinery can rescue thee from the law of thy being.”(CWSA 12: 468) He further declares, “A perfected human world cannot be created by men or composed of men who are themselves imperfect. Even if all our actions are scrupulously regulated by education or law or social or political machinery, what will be achieved is a regulated pattern of minds, a fabricated pattern of lives, a cultivated pattern of conduct; but a conformity of this kind cannot change, cannot re-create the man within, it cannot carve or cut out a perfect soul or a perfect thinking man or a perfect or growing living being. For soul and mind and life are powers of being and can grow but cannot be cut out or made; an outer process or formation can assist or can express soul and mind and life but cannot create or develop it. One can indeed help the being to grow, not by an attempt at manufacture, but by throwing on it stimulating influences or by lending to it one’s forces of soul or mind or life; but even so the growth must still come from within it, determining from there what shall be made of these influences and forces, and not from outside. This is the first truth that our creative zeal and aspiration have to learn, otherwise all our human endeavour is foredoomed to turn in a futile circle and can end only in a success that is a specious failure.”(CWSA 22: 1058-59)
The above is the message that we have to learn to put deeply in our heart so that we may never forget it – as we often do – in our creative zeal. Thus most of our problems can be traced to our selfish attitude towards others. Ervin Laszlo writes in his book, The Inner Limits of Mankind: “There are hardly any world problems that cannot be traced back to human agency and which could not be overcome by appropriate changes in human behaviour. The root cause even of physical and ecological problems are the inner constraints on our vision and values… We contemplate changing almost anything on this earth but ourselves.”
In the Indian conception of man, man is a soul flowering (manifesting?) in mind, life and body – a conscious manifestation in terrestrial nature of the truth of the spiritual being. We commit a gross error when we confuse our outer person (mask) with this our true self and most of our problems – individual and collective – may be traced to this gross error. For example, in the present intellectual age most deliberations on problems concerning individual and collectivities are focused on how to utilize all the resources and outer living creatures (including human beings) for one’s (the surface self’s) best advantage. Such a habit of thinking and the spirit of approaching others is responsible for much selfishness, insensitiveness and cruelty in our lives. We must first discover and then learn to take our stand on our real Self where we are inseparably one with all. Until this is done we can never really solve any of our problems but only convert them into a different set of problems. In the words of Sri Aurobindo,”… the radical defect of all our systems is their deficient development of just that which society has most neglected, the spiritual element, the soul in man which is his true being. Even to have a healthy body, a strong vitality and an active and clarified mind and a field for their action and enjoyment, carries man no more than a certain distance; afterwards he flags and tires for want of a real self-finding, a satisfying aim for his action and progress. These three things do not make the sum of a complete manhood; they are means to an ulterior end and cannot be made for ever an aim in themselves. Add a rich emotional life governed by a well-ordered ethical standard, and still there is the savour of something left out, some supreme good which these things mean, but do not in themselves arrive at, do not discover till they go beyond themselves. Add a religious system and a widespread spirit of belief and piety, and still you have not found the means of social salvation. All these things human society has developed, but none of them has saved it from disillusionment, weariness and decay. The ancient intellectual cultures of Europe ended in disruptive doubt and sceptical impotence, the pieties of Asia in stagnation and decline. Modern society has discovered a new principle of survival, progress, but the aim of that progress it has never discovered, —unless the aim is always more knowledge, more equipment, convenience and comfort, more enjoyment, a greater and still greater complexity of the social economy, a more and more cumbrously opulent life. But these things must lead in the end where the old led, for they are only the same thing on a larger scale; they lead in a circle, that is to say, nowhere: they do not escape from the cycle of birth, growth, decay and death, they do not really find the secret of self-prolongation by constant self-renewal which is the principle of immortality, but only seem for a moment to find it by the illusion of a series of experiments each of which ends in disappointment. That so far has been the nature of modern progress. Only in its new turn inwards, towards a greater subjectivity now only beginning, is there a better hope; for by that turning it may discover that the real truth of man is to be found in his soul.”
The upshot of all this is that we have been trying to solve our problems from a centre of focus other that the one to which they belong. This insolubility of our problems is a grace in disguise because humanity in its present state, especially in its surface physical nature, is very crude and will not make the necessary effort for self-discovery in any other way. “Wherefore God hammers so fiercely at his world, tramples and kneads it like dough, casts it so often into the blood-bath and the red hell-heat of the furnace? Because humanity in the mass is still a hard, crude and vile ore which will not otherwise be smelted and shaped: as is his material, so is his method. Let it help to transmute itself into nobler and purer metal, his ways with it will be gentler and sweeter, much loftier and fairer its uses.
Wherefore he selected or made such a material, when he had all infinite possibility to choose from? Because of his divine Idea which saw before it not only beauty and sweetness and purity, but also force and will and greatness. Despise not force, nor hate it for the ugliness of some of its faces, nor think that love only is God. All perfect perfection must have something in it of the stuff of the hero and even of the Titan. But the greatest force is born out of the greatest difficulty.” (CWSA 13: 210)
“The future of the earth depends on a change of consciousness.
The only hope for the future is in a change of man’s consciousness and the change is bound to come.
But it is left to men to decide if they will collaborate for this change or if it will have to be enforced upon them by the power of crashing circumstances.
So, wake up and collaborate!
Blessings.” (CWM 15: 66)
