Spirituality

or lack of it ?

Recently, I was invited to attend an online session with a corporate spiritual guru. To my mind that’s being oxymoron. How, you may ask ?

Fundamentally corporate organization is an entity dedicated to pursuit of profit.

If its business is selling commodity, it earns profits by selling more at lower costs. Costs are kept lower by paying less for the raw material & labor. Prices of raw material is kept low by sourcing it unethically, paying less to the producers, exploiting natural resources, especially in a 3rd world country, long labor hours, partnering with corrupt rulers, avoiding taxes or all of it .

At the other spectrum if it is a “niche” segment, a technology or an area there are only few players - they increase their margins by selling at premium . One of the means this is done by surge pricing, that is charging you more, when you are in need, as a customer. Creating artificial scarcity by hoarding or by ambush marketing. Monopolizing the market by burning cash, till your competitor can no longer afford to sell & then artificially increasing the prices.

For technology companies they don’t charge you, applications such as emails, chat are free. Tonnes of photos & video content is available either at no cost or at minimal price. In return you as a hyper-user spend hours from your daily life watching cool tips & tricks, food recipes & motivational speeches. This process also involves exposing you to advertisements, hyperlinks encouraging you to buy shoes, sandals or clothes that you never had any need of.

Ultimately you become a product, spending your money that is hard earned & time that will never return.

Lust & hatred is sold as free speech. Women are exploited, sold into slavery, violently thrashed & forced to smile while having sex with a stranger. Toy shops & performance enhancement drugs are then sold to keep up with the hyper-reality of pleasure & stamina - that is created by a mix of intoxication & a mirage of imagery. Actors live unfulfilled lives on drugs & die of incurable diseases .

Videos produced are then sold to men & women to satisfy accentuated sexual urge. Licentiousness becomes a norm, when the urge remains unsatisfied.

Hateful tweets, posts & videos are surreptitiously forwarded, concocting a emotional mix of fear & anxiety. Content exploiting irrational behavior starts trending. As misinformation masquerading as news becomes viral, reputations are besmirched, people get lynched, houses are burned & holy texts desecrated. While everything is happening, you & I are constantly surveilled by face recognition cameras & geo-location trackers . Should need be voice mails & smart phones are hacked.

As a user one follows a celebrity, a marketer, an influencer. Unsuspecting user is hooked to the phone living in a virtual reality, however equally disconnected is he, with his immediate reality. Influencer gets paid by the post, while followers drool over celebrity couples with alacrity .

In all, corporatism festers greed. Worth of men is in their ability to consume. Gluttony & lust are favored .

This brings us back to our original question what is spirituality?

Spirituality to my mind is one-on-one relationship with God. I can’t imagine being spiritual without belief in God. By way of marketing religion for worldly success, it fuels the already raging fire of materialism, sucks out spirituality - the essence of religion .

photocredits #unsplash