image source courtesy:
https://walldecalidea.blogspot.com/2019/07/malcolm-x-wall-decal.html
https://sarasotainstitute.global/the-consumer-in-the-age-of-coronavirus/ a thought-provoking piece by the management guru dr philip kotler.
i shared this with my fraternity and rightly it elicited wide responses.
been mulling over it. the following thoughts emanate..
before going further, one other intuitive contra view to this whole derivation of dr. kotler would be that the humanity, as soon as covid subsides and fades from our collective mind, will rush headlong back to their earlier ways.., as if this were a dream, a hiatus.
coming back to dr. kotler’s thoughts.
while his classification of consumer types could/would emerge, they would be those that are/were already in that demographic, psychographic higher-maslowian strata.
those below are likely to go back to their earlier trajectory.
as we all know well, the global economy is sustained only by the human *desire* - not *needs*
thus the matter is actually deeper and philosophical and singular - is the post-covid human being going to have no, or less, desires than before?
as the scriptures astutely personify, desire is the satan at work - and as we all know, and all religious texts also aver - satan is ceaselessly at work with us..
the reason my mind went to draw this persona here, is by the fact that the ways of desire (satan) are, oh, so subtle and so endlessly variegated..
for instance, those that would embrace ‘minimalism’ are not free from desire. they have a *new* desire - minimal.
and there are, will be *products and services* for that.
on another tack, many of kotler’s consumer types in his article are sophisticates - and thus are a minority.
of the 7.7 billion humanity on earth, majority are still in the basic needs levels - but with an important difference.
though they do not have the monies for it, they now have the *desires* for the higher order living and its endless, alluring appurtenances - no thanks to the relentless exposure and onslaught of those (western) lifestyles through the ‘idiot-box’ in their drawing rooms for about 30 years now, and lately the relentless barrage through digital media.
thus they are incensed of mind for all the goodies not yet tasted or experienced even once - hungry for them.
so I see the first world corporations will shift and focus more and more on these - those in the lower strata, and those second and third world mouths and purses - which are and will continue to be more and more numerous - to sell the candies and goodies, and keep the engine chugging, and their cash registers jingling, along for another two, three or so decades.
post which however some reckoning has to happen, because of this grave thing - the widening gap - the rich becoming much richer - that are few - and the rest - the many - remaining where they are if not lower.
the much reviled thomas piketty’s theses are very pertinent to recall here.
so the one speculation that is ever relevant - is if/when will there be a social protestation for this (dis)order to be revised.
a sequential thought to that would be what social:societal models will possibly emerge from the first world, from the speculations of dr kotler’s piece.., and what would they be in the second and the third worlds (both geographic that is horizontal, and demographic that is vertical within each society).
on yet another tack - also sociological - now that our own societies have lost our own life-models and are becoming a poor imitation of americanism, due to their having lost their own native theosophical cores in the last 30 years due to their transmission break-downs at the present and immediate past parent generations - who became illiterate in their native languages and thus of all the contents of their native cultural depositories, literature - whose vacuum has been filled by the global flow of americanism in all sociological aspects during the same period by the pervasive flow of all things american, through the ever-expanding channels of exposure…..?
when you think further on this, inevitably, eventually, you come to a realisation that this is the next global *colonisation* by *viral* invasion underway - this time purely an *economic* onslaught that is the most potent and the most inexorable of all weapons, as a minute’s thinking would show - after the well recorded previous ones of yore.
as indians, then, what awaits us?
to quote some relevant, deep, thoughts from a cousin of mine,
quote: (italics mine)
Dropping all pretence, there are only two ways for us:
1) Free trade agreement with US - open access markets and labour and personal freedoms ($ for souls),
OR <--- not "and"
2) Dharmic rebuilding of the country, including resettlement of profiled individuals into communities across the country, along with science and technology at an individual "craftsman level"…
Do one or the other, but not both. Given our customary sodhappal (tamil colloquial word roughly meaning, bungling) we will do bit of both and end up with "tandoori upma".
An exchange of materials from lower down the periodic table is inevitable at some point... hence the Dharmic spread out before that... can't go after every community spread out….
Remember this is how we withstood Barbaric Invasions 2.0.
B.I 1.0 - Yavanas and Hunas
B.I 2.0 - Turkics + Mongols
B.I 3.0 - Western invasions
B.I 4.0 - 1+2 repeated (coming ahead*)
(*my insert)
At the time of 2.0, India was dominated at ruling levels by Buddhism and Jainism. While Hinduism was being decentralised by Bhakti saints - Alwars, Nayanmars in people's languages.
The T boys came and wiped out the kings and razed Nalanda. But couldn't go to each village…
unquote.
as you will doubtless see immediately, B.I. 3.0 was able to do that - go into every village too, by cleverly riding on the backs of the local rulers now made subservient - again by feeding and leveraging the same guileful *desires* of these chieftains..
and the most potent and unstoppable one is the 4.0 to come - or already coming as i write - one of the west+mongols - this time through the ubiquitous and *viral* (here pun intended!) access of technologies and economic might combined, that makes it virtually impossible to stop..
so, for you and me, the indians, what does it all mean, portend? what should you and me be doing..?? that is fodder, muse, for a future post…
as i wind down this one, it strikes me that as a teacher at graduate level, and just as a parent or simply as an elder in the society, it is my/our job is to teach our kids not only on how to make wealth, but also to orient them as full human beings - to be able to live in fulfilment, contentment and tranquillity - in the immensely more complex, globalised reality that is surely coming, sooner than we think...
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