Friday, June 05, 2009

sathya on Inquality and human values

Whenever I used to contemplate about the “economic imbalance” in society, i.e. many are poor, whereas a few are rich, it always occurred to me that lack of Human Values is the fundamental problem. And I used the oft-quoted paradigm of “IT industry pays best than rest” to conceptualize this.

To illustrate this, let us take a case study of a super market. Let us describe the services / transactions / stakeholders in a diagram as follows (sorry about the pathetic arrows!).

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As all of us know, supermarket never manufactures things. Assume a poor farmer producing rice/ wheat / vegetables / fruits supplying for this supermarket. If the base amount he would get for producing the commodity is ‘x’, the supplier (whose job is relatively simpler than farmer) gets at least ‘3x’, and the supermarket would sell the product with an equal or more profit. And there are customers, who are ready to pay this figure!

Let us go back to diagram. People do not mind paying 2 rupees for an item, while they could get an equal / slightly low-quality item for Re. 1. Many of them buy things which they would seldom / sparingly use. And the supermarkets price the products based on these “strategies”. Thus, rich people continue to become richer.

Of course, one may argue that it is the so-called “knowledge” which makes people rich (software guys are, after all, smart!!). I have come across many of these so-called “know ledged” whose whole intention is to “Live and Let Die”. They do not hesitate to trample others for their well being. The poor, for the simple reason that they are less / illiterate, inspite of their hard work, remain poor.

A little thought would reveal that if only we practice, what Sathya Sai Baba calls, “Ceiling on Desires”, i.e. putting a stringent limit on our otherwise uncontrolled desires, having a little “discrimination” (what we really need / what we do not), and sharing of wealth (giving back to society from where we got riches), would equalize / balance the economy.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Ethics in marketing and Advertising

What Do Marketers do:

Finding what the customer wants and creating an perceived value(illusion/real) that he is getting it by buying your product is in essence marketing.

That is exactly what Marketers do to conquer potential customers mind spaces and attention keep you in their spells of perceptive value, influence decision to buy and there by makes money(more value compared to the cost)

The fundamentals: The world we see is our Perception; may not be Real.

The fundamentals to life is the urge to survive and then live, when we say somebody is full of life what we are saying is that, they are enjoying all the little pleasures of life and living in the present, having the nostalgia of the past and dreams for the future. Human life that we are so concerned is extremely short/ephemeral 60-70 years compared to the global scale of things(say life of trees, life of mountain, life of river, life of start etc..).. when the cosmos looks at us, we are like a water bubble's life compared to human life(The vedas says this).

Life itself could be a big illusion.. only thing that amazes me is our ability to phantom/understand this. Unable to understand how we are able to understand most things given time and focus.

Coming back to the point marketers are not at fault in seeking way to capture of our attention.. because it is their business to create illusion to sell things for filling up their stomachs..and feed their minds with illusions themselves.

So it is for us to be in awareness. and choose what we buy and not to succumb to the spells that these marketers create to trap us in our fundamental weakness in life Sensual pleasures and fear of uncertainity(INSURANCE- BEWARE THESE GUYS).
If people are not aware, that is not the fault of the marketer


Ideally I don't believe in artificial regulations.. honestly.. it only works to an extend.. self regulation is best form of regulation and most ideal. But we live in a practical world of Notions of ethics(personal ethics, family ethics, caste(occuption) ethics, societal ethics, Religion(path to god), ecological ethics,

Ethics are important for an apparent balanced world, if we think we want to have apparent control over it. So lets be in AWARENESS of Truth and experience the BLISS that is essence of SAT-CHIT-ANANDHA

Ps: -
MARK "APPARENT".. everything is apparent except ourselves.
MARK "Notion" All good and bad is based on our Notions which is based on our samskaras(PAST ACTIONS
)