Market Economy, Marketing & the Spiritual Marketplace

This blog examines the modern marketplace, where ideas compete for attention and the currency at stake is the human spirit. It draws from the dialog - The Persistence of Religion - between Dr Havey G. Cox and Dr Daisaku Ikeda.

Who are the parties in this modern marketplace?

• First and forement - Human beings - with their time/attention and most importantly the human spirit are at stake.

• Consumerism which may also be called the "Market Religion"

• Traditional Religions who historically have taken the lead in shaping and elevating the human spirit.

In this marketplace...

• Human Beings are inundated by messages telling us why we need that latest shiney object and how useless our existence is if we don't get it.

• Market controllers incentivize the amplification of desires to promote consumption.

• Many of these desires are not real needs but false appetites stimulated by marketing geniuses, expressly for the pursuit of profit.

• These desires are usually for things that are essentially useless past a short-lived expiration date. This is by design: planned obsolescence fuels an endless consumer pipeline.

• The sugar high associated with the fulfillment of one desire after another, robs the human spirit of values such as "simplicity and compassion that traditional religions uphold. The market does not reward compassion. It doesn’t even know about compassion."
  

A marketplace for goods and services has existed throughout human history. But only in recent times has the market place taken the shape of a religion unto itself. This 'Market Religion'...

• Has emerged as a direct result of advances in communication technologies, innovations in mass-media (and newer modalities such as streaming services and social media), rapid urbanization and globalization as well as other trends brought on through socio-economo-cultural changes.

• Stands apart as the main rival of all the traditional religions of the world.

• Is built on questionable fictions. For example, obese people are told that an advertised pill can make them slender opening the gates to romantic love and hence eternal happiness. This is outright deception

• Is based on a Commodity Culture: Here commodities are used falsely as proxies for values (such as happiness, success, love or belonging), without imparting those values in reality. The consumer culture trivializes and destroys real human values.

• Promotes unbridled greed: Market Economy and technological developments fuel insatiable desire. The inability to be satisfied amounts to “spiritual death”.

• Dr Cox recalls learning in Kyoto, Japan the phrase: ‘Know How Much is Enough’. Noteworthy in this context is the following snippet from the book:

• Ikeda:

The German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936) wrote (in Community and Society)  that vanity needs others as a mirror and that egoism needs others as tools. A fulfilled mind, not the possession of many things, is the primary condition for satisfaction and happiness.

• Cox (paraphrased):

People less swayed by the mass-media are content with little and are often extraordinarily happy.

Fortunately traditional religion can come to the rescue.

• Because human greed tends towards limitless hypertrophy, traditional religion’s role in invoking Spiritual Strength to control desires is paramount.

• It can help “control the energy of unrestrained greed and channel it towards the creation of good values”.

• Traditional spiritual values are called "values" because they are of enduring worth to human beings.

• Cox:

Escaping from the prison of ignorance (of the power and pitfalls of consumerism and Market Religion) requires a revival of spiritual power. Religious values are important to this indispensable undertaking.

• Ikeda:

The Buddha’s Legacy Teaching Sutra explains that recognizing sufficiency makes life rich, pleasant and tranquil. On the other hand, failing to know satisfaction means that even a life that seems rich is in fact impoverished and dominated by vanity and desires for material things, power and fame. A truly rich person overcomes basic egoism and controls greed, prejudice and antagonism. Such a person works hard to create a spiritual, ethical way of life aiming for the happiness of the self and of others. Buddhism calls deep-seated, uncontrollable tendencies of life and desires ignorance (avidyā). Unless we are courageous enough to reform this state of ignorance, no fundamental solutions to the problems it causes are possible, and we must remain confined in its darkness.