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Once upon a time there lived a beautiful young woman anda handsome young man. They were very poor, but as they were deeply in love, they wanted to get married. The young people’s parents shook their heads. ‘You can’t get married yet,’ they said. ‘Wait till you get a good job with good prospects.’ So the young people waited until they found good jobs with good prospects and they were able to get married. They were still poor, of course. They didn’t have a house to live in or any furniture, but that didn’t matter. The young man had a good job with good prospects, so large organizations lent him the money he needed to buy a house, some furniture, all the latest electrical appliances and a car. The couple lived happily ever after paying off debts for the rest of their lives. And so ends another modern romantic fable.
We live in a materialistic society and are trained from our earliest years to be acquisitive. Our possessions, ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ are clearly labeled from early childhood. When we grow old enough to earn a living, it does not surprise us to discover that success is measured in terms of the money you earn. We spend the whole of our lives keeping up with our neighbors, the Joneses. If we buy a new television set, Johnes is bound to buy a bigger and better one. If we buy a new car, we can be sure that Jones will go one better and get two new cars: one for his wife and one for himself. The most amusing thing about this game is that the Joneses and all the neighhours who are struggling frantically to keep up with them are spending borrowed money kindly provided, at suitable rate of interest, of course, by friendly banks, insurance companies, etc.
It is not only in affluent societies that people are obsessed with the idea of making more money. Consumer goods are desirable everywhere and modern industry deliberately sets out to create new markets. Gone are the day when industrial goods were made to last forever. The wheels of industry must be kept turning. ‘Built-in obsolescence’ provides the means: goods are made to be discarded. Cars get tinnier and tinnier. You no sooner acquire this year’s model than you are thinking about its replacement.
This materialistic outlook has seriously influenced education. Fewer and fewer young people these days acquire knowledge only for its own sake. Every course of studies must lead somewhere: i.e. to a bigger wage packet. The demand for skilled personnel far exceeds the supply and big companies compete with each other to recruit students before they have completed their studies. Tempting salaries and ‘fringe benefits’ are offered to them. Recruiting tactics of this kind have led to the ‘brain drain’, the process by which highly skilled people offer their services to the highest bidder. The wealthier nations deprive their poorer neighbours of their most able citizens. While Mammon is worshipped as never before, the rich get richer and the poor, poorer.