Key to progress in
quality of life and development of human civilization is economy for which
probably each of us works through personal income to family income to national
economy, and finally to economy of the whole humanity. Though direct worth of a
human-being can't be based on his/her economic status, no worth survives without
economic well-being.
Economy means basically
keeping balance in income and expenditure. Each family unit of today has most
often a single source of income but with many ways of expenditure. Important
expenditure heads may be enlisted as food and health, clothing and housing, and
education and entertainment with their ideal average share of 50 : 30 : 20. Mismanagement
of human affairs has added one more head of economic exploitation through Aristocratic
politics and faked Divine terrorism. Exhibitionist tendency of humans has
further distorted how people spend their earnings. Average human-being are
forced to provide, directly or indirectly, about 30 percent of their incomes to
political and religious head. This has distorted the average share of human
expenditure heads to about 20 : 30 : 20 : 30 for food and health, clothing and
housing, education and entertainment, and charities and taxation, respectively.
Each of these heads counts in progress and development of individual to
humanity levels.
This distortion in
expenditure heads has adversely affected humanity with cost of increment in
crimes and blockade of civilization advancement. The results are noticeable
needing no keen eyes.
Politicians, administrators and religious preachers make the richest
class of people with probably no or minimal productive work while hard-working
humanity under their control has been struggling for survival.
Mismanagement of economic affairs is the worst in public domain accounts
of governance and religions leading to economic and social corrupt practices as
premium business of humanity.
About 70 percent of humans on global level suffer from one or more of
chronic diseases. This suffering goes to about 90 percent in many nations of
the World.
Crimes have been on the rise continuously since recorded history of
humanity leading to more miseries of average humanity. Moral values in humanity
haven vanishing.
Commercial considerations have penetrated to matters like health,
education, justice, etc which need be covered under public welfare for overall
development of human civilization.
Economic Classification of People
From Economics point
of view, there are broadly three ways people live by by their own will or under
compulsions.
Lavish Living
This lifestyle aims at
spending lavishly principally for three reasons -
To seek comforts, luxuries and
conveniences,
To seek high status in society,
and
To cover up for sense of
insecurity
For adopting this
lifestyle, the persons are required to earn enough to make their two ends meet for
which they keep no consideration of right or wrong practices of earning money.
Most of the persons of this lifestyle keep too busy in maintaining their
economy that they find no time for enjoying life through family and social relationships,
entertainment and recreation, and most importantly through paying attention to keeping
good health. Therefore, this lifestyle makes the person more and more miserable
as they often age with three types of problems -
Health : Most of the lavish spenders develop vices, particularly of womanizing
and alcoholism, which reflect on their respective health. The health problems
raise their heads as the persons advance in age. Since such persons do little
physical work, resilience of their bodies is often low making them more prone
to attack by diseases.
Exploitation : Lavish spenders try to purchase everything, they need even rarely, at
whatever price. All such price tags have high margins for manufacturers and
traders, leading to their high level of exploitation. When such persons are
young, their earnings are high and they don't bother for such exploitations.
But with advancement in age, their earning power dwindles with corresponding
increment in their worries about the exploitations. Moreover, for keeping their
social status high they are expected to contribute more for social purposes.
This also enhances their exploitation, hence the worries.
For their involvement
in illicit activities for more and more income, people of this class try to compensate
them psychologically through charitable acts with reliance on godly and religious
exhibitionists, making them super-rich with no productive work by themselves.
Economical Living
As far as economy and quality of life are
concerned, middle class people with limited earning out of their hard work
serve their purposes of life in optimum ways with care about what they get from
market for the prices they pay. Some of these people try to appear like the
lavish spenders in their possessions with shopping cheaper things from the
market for their low incomes with the result of accumulating third-grade
materials in their homes and worries of maintenance of these. In the process,
they get exploited. Another section of this class tries to keep a balance in
quality and prices of materials they shop, hence bargain with selection of the
best options within their limits of affordability.
Just Surviving
A third group in the
humanity with limited resources and means of living under their command keeps
on struggling for survival within their poor incomes. Most often, they rely on
inferior products hence suffer with poor health. Even good quality of medical
treatment remains out of bounds for these people. They have no entertainment
means except having sexual pleasures, hence produce large families to feed.
This makes them more poor, sick and problematic. Life expectancy and education
remain the lowest in these people.
Psychological challenges to one's Economy
First, there are necessities, then, we
create needs for conveniences and then we have wants for progress, comforts and
luxuries depending on how we perceive our needs and wants. For all these things
we focus on getting money. But we rarely seek happiness through contentment of
or satisfaction from what we already have or even set a limit for what would be
enough. Thus the craving for more of wealth goes on, but there are exceptions
to this. These exceptions are not for the reason that they don't have
necessities, needs or wants but for the reason that they have barriers in
getting inflow of money by all means for their self-imposed moral discipline,
unlike common people generally do.
Here, I would focus on why persons deny
getting rich through self-control for their own psychological barriers of
morality and ethics.
Crimes and Corruption
Government and employees and those of some
large private organizations often involve in corrupt practices for monetary
gains through misusing their official powers. Some mighty persons crush weaker
persons for monetary gains. Some others involve in thefts and other crimes for
such gains. Such persons and groups thereof economically thrive through
anti-social activities, still there are a few who won't involve in any of such
activities even if they have opportunities and living in poverty. This bar on
the self is imposed for keeping up their moral values and conscientiousness.
Thus, moral values etc become another block of economic prosperity.
Habitual Pleasure Seeking
Fermentation was originally devised for
curing skin ailments. Later, people found that the fermented beverages have
intoxicating effects which provides a sort of unusual pleasure to the drinker.
With this concept in progress, fermented drinks have become sources of
intoxication, hence, pleasures ruining economy of a huge number of persons on
the globe becoming habitual of intoxication. Then, people devised many other
ways of intoxication which dipped more persons into intoxication and economic
wreckage.
Similarly, many other bad habits of seeking
pleasure, such as going to prostitutes for sexual pleasures, etc ruin economy
of a great number of persons who don't consider consequences of such short-term
pleasures.
Fatalists
Indian society was taught by a poet named
malook Das in the following words -
iaNh djs u pkdjh] ikgqu djs uk dkeA nkl eywdk dg
x;s lcds nkrk jkeAA
This means that birds etc don't work still
survive. So the poet's advice is that the God looks after all. Hence, no need
to work. Though all people might not have read the advice, but most of the
religious-oriented persons believe in working of fate that pre-decides future
of everyone. With this concept in mind, such persons keep on looking for
comforts and conveniences of life without working hard for these. This keeps
the poor people poor forever.
Gambling is a game in which a bidder is
promised a bounty against investment of a small amount of money, provided
his/her fate is favourable. With this hope, the gamblers keep on putting at
stake whatever they have and lose everything they had, thus ruining themselves.
Charities and Donations
I like to go on my pleasure or research
tours like a hermit with minimum luggage, mostly a few books, notebook, pen,
pencil, some dry foods like roasted grams, a mat, a sheet of cloth, and one
spare dress etc all kept in a shoulder bag. Hairs on my head are generally long
and many times, my beard, too, grow long for no-shaving on the way. If the
place I visit is a pilgrimage, people mistake me for a beggar like many others
on such places, and donate things to me without my asking. In such a case,
firstly I refuse to accept but if I fail to convince the donor, I handover the
materials so received to somebody else needing or looking for such things. My
consideration on this is that I don't live on charities but depend on my work
only.
Once, after a free meal at a religious
place in high mountains (called Bhandara in India), I began washing used
utensils there to work for the food I had taken. The organizers of the Bhandara
requested me not to do that but I didn't relent. Later, a person came to me and
told me that I was snatching means of his livelihood there by washing the
utensils which was the work assigned to him. I got his point and stopped the
work. After that I refuse to accept free meals in such Bhandaras.
So many of us have such inhibitions in
their minds which put them in trouble or inconveniences of economy at odd
places, while many others with no such inhibitions and making such things as
means of their livelihoods enjoy riches after some begging. Here I would be dealing with such inhibitions
affecting one's economy.
The most powerful community of India at all
times is habitual of living on charities and donations without any hitch
through generations, while many other communities and persons hate living on
such aids from others. The governments often promote in poor people living on
their aids, and most of the persons are eager to listed as poor to get the
benefits. Still, there are some who are averse to such assistances for keeping
up their social status and self-esteem. Thus, consideration of self-esteem in
getting something for others is the first challenge to economy of some persons.
Charities, donations and welfare schemes
work as deterrent to one's economy in reverse way too. People dependent on
these don't like to work hard for survival or progress thinking that they will
get something from others for survival. Thus, these social parasites block
their own way of hard-working for progress.
Status Complex
Most of the persons don't like to do mean
jobs like sweeping, domestic help, etc for their consciousness of their social
status thinking what others in their society would think of them. Some such
persons go far from their native places for taking up such petty jobs without
telling the truth to their close social contacts. In both of these practices,
persons' economies are adversely affected.
Persons in India celebrate marriages and
even death of veterans of their families through feasting others to keep their
social status high in others' eyes, even after borrowing money for such
celebrations. Thus, status complex is another block on economic progress.
Some persons involve themselves in
charitable activities just for being appreciated by others though their
personal economy may not afford a charitable act. They just compete or imitate
those who can afford, and thus ruin their economies.
Perfectionism
Many persons choose to do their jobs
perfectly even losing sight of practicability or economics of the task
performance. In the process, they ruin their economy. Although doing a job
perfectly is not a bad idea in itself, but all aspects of a performance must be
looked into during execution. All tasks don't need perfection for economic and
many other reasons. Not only this, even in a task needing near-perfection, some
components may not be as important as others, and the performer must pay
his/her attention in accordance to the importance of different components of
the task.
Economically Worthy Human
Money serves very important purpose of happy survival of an
individual. But if a person goes beyond psychological barriers to economy outlined
above, a small quantity of regular income proves sufficient in providing
happiness of living. Important points in this regard are worth mentioning here.
Properly selected food items,
and their quantities and quality can keep a person healthy with longevity and resilience
needing no medical services.
Adequate protection from
climatic extremities through clothing and shelter is a necessity of modern
human life. Due to current scientific knowledge of humanity, these facilities
may be so designed so as to become no economic burden. For example, a home may
provide all the necessary comforts of life without provisions of artificial
illumination and temperature control.
After informal education from
parents, children need formal institutionalized education which contributes to
national worth, hence need be freely and uniformly arranged by the government
from public taxation. This would improve on national worth without burdening
individuals economically.
With cultivation and
promotion of social discipline in society, all defense, crime control and
justice machinery of the government may become redundant or reduced to
minimal. This would lead to a society free from exploitation improving upon
economy of every individual.
Religious faith must be
limited to individual life, hence its public display must be prohibited. This
would save people from psychological and economic exploitation by religious
preachers.
Involvement of government in
individual's life must be limited to management of common resources, with
minimal taxation on people saving them from working for serving lavish
politicians and administrators.
Above-said are hypothetical provisions which are
beyond materialization in near future, hence should not be waited for by
individuals for leading a happy life. But every individual must review his/her
own lifestyle to remold it closest to the ideal situation in light of the above-said
clauses, and make him/herself happier and a worthy human-being.
