| Ideas

The Need of the Hour: Morality and Self Realization

Because of the rise of hyperconsumerism and a deterioration of social structures which previously gave us meaning at the hands of capitalism, having the means by which to find meaning is crucial.

By Mridul Paul, July 11, 2021

I was never a religious, philosophical or spiritual person since birth. To the contrary, I remember being the black sheep in my family and school, because I couldn't understand nor believe either of them when it came to these areas. I couldn't understand why we had religion, what purpose philosophy had, or why spirituality was even a thing.

After living a good 16 years of life as a very radical atheist who never bothered to give importance to either of these, though, a time came where I was desperate to find a source of light and willpower. That's when I was introduced to these topics in a meaningful sense, and it completely overturned my whole perspective and outlook on life. This is when I realized I wasn't the only one to be leading a hedonistic, vague, materialistic and individualistic life.

And I wasn't the only one to have experienced loneliness of the soul, desperate to find something truly meaningful. I wanted to find value and worth not in things, but in the world itself. I realized how wrong we are all, collectively leading to the worst path possible. It's not one man, it's most of us.

One of the crucial reasons we as a species have become lords over our planet, or more so this universe, is because of the collective intelligence and the tribal psychology of us humans. We have historically always worked for the betterment of society, each other, etc, and that has yielded us a collective growth.

Since the 20th century, though, advancements in capitalism and promotion of consumerism in the 21st century have made us all quite individualistic; this is no big secret. Ask your parents or grandparents about how they had relations with their neighbors or other people, and how much of a helpful and collective mentality they had for proof of this. Even in third world countries, which were the epitome of having a familial nature towards strangers, this seems to have declined.

In my own observation, modern people, especially Gen Z, have quite a vague outlook on things they want to achieve or value. Modern culture, and more importantly much of Western culture, has made us all look for happiness in valueless things that hold no soulful value, that will perish in no time, and that leave you craving more and more of them.

For example, most of us have made it clear in our minds that achieving that certain amount of money, or owning certain possessions like cars, expensive branded clothes, and shoes are all we need. A focus on attaining luxuries like mansions and lavish lifestyles have made us stop caring about human civilization as a whole.

This saddens me very deeply, as I am seeing all of us feeding our own greed instead of worrying about our kids and our next generations. What else can be expected from a generation that has been brainwashed to believe that having a family and kids is a headache.

Our activism remains only while the trend remains. Our care for humans, nature and society only remains while the trend remains. Most of these are products of an ignorant society and consumerism, a system that promotes individualism, that promotes people to be spenders, and that promotes people to find their worth in worthless possessions; no wonder recent studies have found that us humans have less friends than our previous generations. We are hypocrites, we are selfish, we are lost, we are desperate, we are hyper-individualistic.

Most of us, including myself in the past, thought spirituality was related to religion, or some weird practices, being alone, meditating under a tree, etc. However, spirituality can be different for many spiritualists. For some it might be simple breathing practices, it might be a mental discipline, or it might be finding value in life.

What is common between these, though, is that all of these feed the soul and the mind in a way no other thing or practice can. It calms your mind. It stops all those constant voices and doubts in your mind. It pauses everything and makes you at peace with yourself.

During COVID, many people have shifted towards spiritualism, for many of us have realized during these COVID crises that we have lost the tradition of a very crucial component of human civilization: spirituality in daily life. The discipline of thoughtfulness. The discipline of being at ease and at peace with oneself, of finding light within us, needing no other external form of validation and attention.

Modern forms of communications, like social media, have made us crave attention more and more, just another byproduct of consumerism. Social media wants us to spend more time on their platforms. This happens when the conventional form of human connection is traded for online validation from vague and worthless concepts of likes and shares. It has often been said by multiple psychologists that social media promotes attention cravings, to the point where  it even promotes narcissism.

Spirituality is what comes into play to save us from this trap. From my personal experience, a mere breathing exercise (stomach breathing) can do wonders by calming your mind to great extent. It can make you much more in control of yourself, leaving you feeling much lighter than usual. Even eating a nutritious and proper diet would be regarded as discipline under spiritualism.

Finding connection to the universe, loving all living beings, and finding meaning in life all come under spirituality. This has to be one of the most important parts of modern human life to stay sane and save ourselves from what is about to come expectedly unexpected.

I can’t lie, I consider myself agnostic and having weak faith, but I sincerely believe religion plays a very crucial part in human society. This is coming from an ex-radical atheist. Now this is obviously a very controversial and debatable topic, but I believe religion creates another form of tribalism. Moreso, it imposes certain societal rules and regulations which give us an even better form of discipline.

Religion directly or indirectly affects culture and tradition, from a global level to a small nuclear level, such as the familial level. For example: waking up early, doing your prayers, bathing on time, maintaining cleanliness, maintaining family relations, not using ill language, and not having illicit sexual relations which have been been found to cause worse mental health outcomes. These things are what we call culture and tradition.

We outside of the West often blame them for imposing its neoliberal and modern culture on whole world. One of my friends, however, corrects them saying that, “it's not the western culture, it's the absence of culture in the west that is spreading in every continent”. Religion here comes into an important play to re-establish culture with obvious reforms in it.

The newer generations have completely started to deny religion, and it's a serious issue in the big picture. Religion imposes restrictions, giving up on religion removes these restrictions. But people aren't ready to take responsibility for this freedom of no restriction. It's like a dog being “freed” from its owner and sent to survive on its own, with no direction. In that same way, leaving religion as a society is like abandoning ourselves from discipline that most of us can’t impose on ourselves individually.

Philosophy has been a favorite topic for many people during times of distress. Philosophy, in my eyes, is the nectar of wisdom given to us by our ancestors which has been refined with each generation. It is a knowledge worth thousands and thousands of years used to survive any situation.

My personal favorite school of philosophy has always been stoicism because I personally relate to its practicality a lot. Philosophy is that medicine which cures the worst situations we might find ourselves in. It gives us strength and mindset to overcome what may have been suffered by generations before us. Philosophy is what breaks the human will, remolds it, reshapes it, and makes us reemerge into a better and better version of ourselves each day.

A mere reading one new philosophical quote will change your life. I highly recommend everyone to read philosophy for at least five to ten minutes a day and embody it. You will find your true strength, your hidden capabilities, an optimistic mindset, and many more traits doing so. It's even more crucial for our generation considering how desperately lost we are.

I personally blame capitalism and western culture for the decline of all these 3 topics mentioned above. Capitalism, along with globalism, is what produced consumerism. Consumerism is what has destroyed the minimalist lifestyle. The destruction of a simple lifestyle, in turn, is what has led to the rise of companies that exploit their workers, and exploit the psychology of consumers to sell their products to the masses.

Capitalism is what has created the American Dream of achieving things that may satisfy your body for some time and collecting possessions you never actually needed, and it has never justified the mental chaos, isolation, and self-alienation it causes. I also blame high usage of addictive substances to be one of the core reasons for the destruction of human will in our society.

Many of the most notable byproducts of capitalism, such as processed foods which destroy our body like McDonalds, aren't new to us at all. We’ve been talking about their ill effect on health ever since their emergence. Capitalism without morals simply does not care about human civilization, but rather cares only about profits.

Capitalism and morals are like oxymoron’s to each other. Capitalism has led to money hungry politicians instead of power hungry or welfare type politicians in our society, which creates a scarcity in leaders that want a collective growth of human society instead of selfish growth of filling up their own pockets.

Corporations and governments have started to have fights over dominance, which is not at all a good sign. Governments all around the globe need to reassert their authority and create multiple reforms to curb the ill practices of capitalism. This won't happen any time soon, though, unless a leader of the people, by the people, for the people, rises up and doesn't care about his own welfare over people’s welfare.

Socially and politically, I firmly believe we are expecting a civil war of ideologies in future. A clash is imminent. Most of us can simply be not a part of this war by improving ourselves, helping each other out, not focusing on vague things that don't matter to us or our loved ones, and not surrendering to wrong mindsets and wrong practices.

We must be better people than most people, for the sake of our future generations. We can do this by reconnecting to our traditional values and culture which make us human, and by the establishment of common sense, discipline and love for each other. 

Mridul Paul is an author and frequent contributor for Young Patriots Magazine.