It is by that act of giving that family, friendship, mutual assistance and solidarity can exist

Jean-Yves Lung Auroville January 2007

Each time we give our time and work instead of selling it, we interrupt the heating system or slow it down. And it doesn’t mean that nothing has been produced or consumed, it means only that it has not been egoistically done so. And this is why it doesn’t count. We have to remember the basic assumption of Adam Smith who created the capitalist model of the invisible hand of the market resolving spontaneously our egoistic activities into a collective harmony: by pursuing egoistic aims, people tend to specialize into what they do best, thus creating a diversified economy of complementary activities, and unknowingly contributing to the general good. That was the good news of the century: “Yes, your egoism can make a difference!” Kama is the only dharma and even the only moksha, the only thing to be released (mukta) in man. Here is the rajasic component of Dana: “Don’t give, take! Bargain!”.

This theory has been very seriously accepted as a realistic model in the West (and that means now everywhere) but from the point of view of Indian psychology, it would be unthinkable, except in some obscurity of the mind and soul, dreamed maybe by the slayers of the soul âtmahanah, as the Upanishad says, to build up such a fallacious theory, so contrary to all the established facts of life and consciousness.

But when we look closer, we find that the capacity of giving without counterpart is what makes possible the development of economy: it is by that act of giving that family, friendship, mutual assistance and solidarity can exist. These things are the very fabric of society, the accumulated wealth of previous ages and, as the French economist Pierre Latouche has underlined, they often repair the damages done by the commercial and public economy in the name of development, which has been destroying the social links between human beings and the very sense of human life. In fact, the commercial economy can be seen as a parasite growing on this first substratum of human civilisation (created by older ages of dharma), and sucking it for its own growth...

So the aim of life has to be reconsidered and refounded, so to say, with a new kind of social contract: men are not in society to be predators of the earth and of each others but to grow together and learn and progress in consciousness and in capacity to manifest it...[by Debashish on Sat 27 Jan 2007 04:28 AM PST Permanent Link]