Aparigraha the Humane Solution

Author(s): Kamla Jain
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith

Page 18

APARIGRAHA - THE HUMANE SOLUTION
Increase in the former means decrease in the latter, as the former becomes more and more abundant, the latter becomes more and more scarce. This relation of inverse variation shows that they are causally related. Thus environmental concern and the anti-consumerist drive, have something in common. Factors leading to consumerism; views of eminent thinkers:
The consumeristic-wave is a product of the post IndustrialRevolution period. With Adam Smith's views of economics and also Keynesian economic thought, western society took a marked stride towards consumerism as if this was the final goal of life. These ideas were intellectually glamorous. 'Good' meant 'happiness' or rather ‘pleasure' to these thinkers, and happiness meant only goods. Thus 'good' got translated into 'goods'. Science or rather ‘scientism' to use Krishna Chaitanya's words, and economics ran parallel and worked as likeminded brothers who equated 'good' with 'goods' while the father discipline philosophy, to be exact, ethics, of these two brother-studies looked on helplessly in horror and bewilderment, the grown up sons having a common goal would not bother to look at the experience and maturity of the grand old man.
The movement towards simplicity has never been superficial or unnecessary. It has survived all weathers and all ages for thousands of years in India. Today there seems even greater need for this because of the pompously aggressive roles played by scientism and economics. The stress of 'too much' and 'too fast' with 'too little regard for balance is putting incalculable pressure on ourselves and on the earth. It is becoming increasingly clear that the formula of good = happiness = goods is taking us to the next phase, i.e., goods =unhappiness = psychological pressure or anxiety. The alarming consequences of environmental pollution will be discussed in Chapter 2. The consequences of consumerism or of too much' are no less alarming: heart disease, blood pressure, diabetes, paralytic strokes are in most cases diseases of 'too much'. So the concept of richness in terms of goods is thus being re-examined, and new thinking is emerging in a new light where man should be understood as 'rich in proportion to the number of things he can do without'. This is in fact,