This ignorance about the eternity of the living being and the change of covering in the material world has played havoc in the structure of modern human society. Consequently there are many problems, multiplied by various plans of modernized man. The plans for solving the problems of society have only aggravated the troubles.
[Posted
Oct 4, 2010]Church of Money and Consumerism
You believe in democracy, and you're willing to fight and die for it. But what democracy? We're in the grip of a theocracy offering human sacrifice to the gods at Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve Bank and Central Banks
The Star (Malaysia) Oct 2, 2010
- ANDREW SHENG
Economics is a religion, not a science
Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, who broke ranks with the Washington Consensus during the Asian crisis on the irresponsibility of tightening interest rates and cutting fiscal deficits in the midst of a crisis, has just written a new book, Freefall: America, free markets, and the sinking of the world economy.
He has written the most powerful book on the current crisis – not a blow-by-blow account of what happened and whodunit – but a damnation of the crisis in economics and the crisis in morals.
“Economics had moved – more than economists would like to think – from being a scientific discipline into become free market capitalism’s biggest cheerleader.”
The mainstream economists had become so smug in their beliefs that the market was almost efficient that “it was a theological position, and it soon became clear that no piece of evidence or theoretical research would budge them away from it.”
One of my dreams is to write a film script about how Martians came to visit Earth in the year 2200, when the world is destroyed by a nuclear war.
As Martian archeologists explore the ruins, they notice that the tallest and the most important edifices left standing are the most magnificent. Deep in their basements, they find vaults made of tungsten steel that seem to protect the most sacred items.
In almost every city they find these buildings. When they manage to open the vaults, they find ashes of paper that could have been records of something important.
They think these are religious documents. Then, they discover some small coins, objects for which the Martians have no use. In each coin, they finally decipher the words: In God we Trust.
The Martians conclude that in the last days of Earth, there flourished an important religion that worshipped a god called Money, and these temples were called banks. They did not find traces of the priests, who were called economists. go to video
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Mistakenly accepting the material body as one's self, the conditioned soul is busy from morning till night searching for food, shelter, protection and sex, and in the struggle to obtain all these bodily necessities he develops love, friendship and society (social position) with similarly bewildered conditioned souls like himself. These three relationships are the platform from which he shows off his acquired material WEALTH, WOMAN and PRESTIGE. In this way the material existence is just like the atmosphere of a mental institution in which every inmate imagines himself to be someone or something he is not. Thus he is a madman. more
Animals with Two Legs
purport, Srimad-Bhagavatam 2.3.18
The materialistic man of the modern age will argue that life, or part of it, is never meant for discussion of theosophical or theological arguments. Life is meant for the maximum duration of existence for eating, drinking, sexual intercourse, making merry and enjoying life. The modern man wants to live forever by the advancement of material science, and there are many foolish theories for prolonging life to the maximum duration. But the Srimad-Bhagavatam affirms that life is not meant for so-called economic development or advancement of materialistic science for the hedonistic philosophy of eating, mating, drinking and merrymaking. Life is solely meant for tapasya, for purifying existence so that one may enter into eternal life just after the end of the human form of life.
The materialists want to prolong life as much as possible because they have no information of the next life. They want to get the maximum comforts in this present life because they think conclusively that there is no life after death.
This ignorance about the eternity of the living being and the change of covering in the material world has played havoc in the structure of modern human society. Consequently there are many problems, multiplied by various plans of modernized man. The plans for solving the problems of society have only aggravated the troubles. Even if it is possible to prolong life more than one hundred years, advancement of human civilization does not necessarily follow. The Bhagavatam says that certain trees live for hundreds and thousands of years. At Vrindavana there is a tamarind tree (the place is known as Imlitala) which is said to have existed since the time of Lord Krishna. In the Calcutta Botanical Garden there is a banyan tree said to be older than five hundred years, and there are many such trees all over the world. Svami Shankaracharya lived only thirty-two years, and Lord Chaitanya lived forty-eight years. Does it mean that the prolonged lives of the abovementioned trees are more important than Shankara or Chaitanya? Prolonged life without spiritual value is not very important. One may doubt that trees have life because they do not breathe. But modern scientists like Bose have already proved that there is life in plants, so breathing is no sign of actual life. The Bhagavatam says that the bellows of the blacksmith breathes very soundly, but that does not mean that the bellows has life. The materialist will argue that life in the tree and life in the man cannot be compared because the tree cannot enjoy life by eating palatable dishes or by enjoying sexual intercourse. In reply to this, the Bhagavatam asks whether other animals like the dogs and hogs, living in the same village with human beings, do not eat and enjoy sexual life. The specific utterance of Srimad-Bhagavatam in regard to "other animals" means that persons who are simply engaged in planning a better type of animal life consisting of eating, breathing and mating are also animals in the shape of human beings. A society of such polished animals cannot benefit suffering humanity, for an animal can easily harm another animal but rarely do good.
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