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Vol. XXII, No. 2
85 Thus according to him while bodily pleasure endures only as long as there is physical simulation and the individual still longs for additional pleasure and deeper satisfaction, the feeling of bliss corresponding to the value of the holy or the sacred grants a deeper and enduring satisfaction ultimately minimizing his material needs to the bare minimun. The Indian tradition is essentially homo heirarchicus in this sense and is fairly represented by the four-fold goals of life called the Purusharthas, viz., Artha, Kam, Dharma and Moksha.
With the challenges of the post-modern era of this industrial civilization, the emergent realities of social life are highly illusive and the old traditional models and paradigms still cling to the same absolute utilitarianistic notions of the Welfare-Warfare which fail to explain them adequately or to offer a suitable alternative model of social development. Any functional, dialectical or humanistic approach which does not recognize the essential transcendental nature of man or bis existence as a human being in totality, to my mind, will not be able to comprehend man, his actions and plights in sufficient measure.
As a result of the implacable Cartesian approach which was mainly responsible for separating man from his mythico-spiritual dimension and setting him on the voyage to modernity the hicrarchical order between the vita contemplativa and the vita-activa has been reversed and the entire society, as Hannah Arendt? observes, "has been reduced to the society of labourers" and consumers.
In fact the growth of consumerism as a dominant value and style of life in post-modern society bas reversed the order of traditional economics from the determinism of "supply" to the determinism of "demand.” As Daniel Bell8 argues, due to the growing hyper-specialization and knowledge boom in the field of science and technology, there is a basic "shift in the axis of economics from supply to demand."
The result of this demand geeting freed from the earlier supply constraints has given rise to a new adoration of technology as Kalpa. taru (the mythical wish fulfilling tree), and a novel dimension to the old economic barbarism charactcrized by the phrase "cowboy eco.
enneth Bouldingo has suggested the replacement of this economic model of development by a more closed-ended "space man" economy which views this planet more realistically as a spaceship with limited "reservoirs" both for resource extraction and pollution deposits. E.F. Shumacher 10 has also suggested the humanization of economics and the replacement of its gigantic consumerism by such
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