The Economy of Permanence: A Quest for a Social Order Based on Non-violence (स्थायी अर्थतन्त्र)

Economy of Permanence
pride for such a purpose, and wives urging their husbands to risk themselves on
the battle-fields. It is natural for a mother to take pride in the fact that her son
has been trained to murder other innocent sons on a mass scale and get killed
himself in the effort? Can a loving wife contemplate the sacrifice of her
beloved on the altar of International Robbery? Yet, these results have been
obtained by infusing into the minds of the people a scale of false values, which
treacherously enforces them to use their freewill to stray into paths of violence
and destruction, which in their normal lucid thinking they would naturally flee
from.
To make such a perversion possible violence has been glorified. Murder in retail
is visited by capital punishment. But murder in wholesale of innocent young
promising lives is rewarded by national honour being accorded to the doers of
such dastardly deeds, by the conferment of titles, by erecting monuments in
their memory in holy places of worship such as the Westminster Abbey or St.
Paul's Cathedral. Is there not something radically wrong in a system which has
to resort to such devious ways to maintain itself? The public is rendered sense-
less by having its finer feelings benumbed by this topsy turvy order. The
complex standard of living, we considered in the previous chapter, is helpful in
that it leaves the people no time to contemplate the situation in calmness. It
keeps them self-satisfled and complacent, leaving those in power to pursue
their ends unhampered.
The modus operandi is simplicity itself. We saw that as ordained by nature man
works only to satisfy himself. So his wants are the direct stimuli for him to put
forth the effort. Increase his wants and the greater will be his effort. Here is
the raison d'etre of the advocacy of a created multiplicity of wants, in other
words, of the so-called 'raising' of his material standard of living or making it
complex, which we noticed functioned like a nose-string to a bullock. It curbs
man's will restricting his freedom of movement and action and directs him into
the ways desired by the one who holds the reins. The one who is under such a
lead is soon bereft of his reasoning faculties and follows unquestioningly.
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