Poor Billionaires, Loveless Weddings
Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. My name is Shubangi, and I am an IT consultant, and I have lived in Munich for the past 8 years, and part of the Gita community for more than a year now. And my question today is about Jeff Bezos' lavish wedding that happened a few weeks ago in Venice. Probably one of the most extravagant events recently, and the inequality where it was visible quite to extremes.
On the one hand, there was this extravaganza. On the other hand, there were many people from Venice, the locals, who were protesting for many, many issues they faced. For example, there's an explosion of tourism, the costs are rising, people are struggling to make their ends meet, and so on.
So my questions are: with all this inequality, rather rising inequality. Are we heading towards another French Revolution? And how bad does it get before it gets any better?
And the last one is: are there any immediate corrective measures that can be taken to address this?
Acharya Prashant: See, inequality is not injustice. Inequality is the very taught aim of life. Aren’t you taught to get ahead? Isn’t everybody being taught to get ahead? Please tell me. That's an inequality.
Even those who are left behind and protesting, they belong to the same class of students, the same class of the taught ones. Having the same principle, believing in the same concept that life is about getting ahead. And that is inequality. It’s just that, since it is about getting ahead of others, not everybody can get ahead. Because of all kinds of factors, most of them are random. Some of us get ahead but the fact is, everybody is running the same race.
So how can we complain against those who are ahead of us? Because we too wanted the same thing. Had they not been ahead of us, we would have been ahead of them. And that’s a big part of the grudge, isn’t it? Not that, why does inequality exist, but why am I at the wrong end of the inequality?
Everybody loves inequality. You too want inequality, but you want the favorable kind of inequality. People protest, it is because it is not their wedding that’s being celebrated there. The problem is not with the wedding. The problem is that it is not?
Listeners: Their wedding.
Acharya Prashant: Their own wedding. That’s the problem. We all belong to the same class, the same crop. And that’s the fundamental problem. The question that we don't want to address. We want to believe in the same kind of system, but being losers in that system; in that system, not existentially, we crib against the system. Are you getting it? And that is not of much avail.
You see, now you can have an Italian revolution. That's fine. You can upend the system, you can dethrone the masters. And one of the so-called losers will become the new master, and again there will be an inequality. Because that's what the animalistic system within us demands. Unless there is inequality, how will there be the hunter and the hunted? Tell me.
If there is equality between the lion and the deer, the lion will starve. And you want to be a lion, you are trained to be a lion. That's the social, familial, national, personal dream: I want to be a lion. I want to be an exploiter. I want to be the experiencer, the consumer of all goodies, which in itself means inequality.
Somebody once said that when I take off from Mumbai, one of the pleasures is looking down at the slums. It's not sufficient that I'm flying. What makes flying a little more special is the misfortune of those lying sprawled below me like insects. Inequality is such a great motivator and a pleasure giver.
You would find it funny and odd. You would expect a fellow would take pleasure in looking at something pretty and picturesque out of his window. He said, No. Whenever I fly to Mumbai or take off from there — I look out, and Dharavi is right next to the airport. That is also the pleasure the ones organizing the wedding wanted to have.
The man is not sufficient. The woman is not sufficient. The two are absolutely insufficient for each other. What forms the bulk of the pleasure is the unequal money. Otherwise, the man and the woman should be sufficient. The two of us got together. It's a very private, very personal, very intimate thing. Why should an entire town be colonized? Because that is 90% of the total pleasure, sir.
It is not about flying. It's also about gloating at the misfortune of those down there. It is not just about me and that woman. It is also about all those who will just keep peeping from behind the barricades: What's going on?
We had one such wedding in India also a few months back. Many such weddings actually. They keep happening. Do you get this?
The entire philosophy of life is badly flawed. It is about getting ahead of others. It is about looking at oneself in context of others, rather through the eyes of others.
You see, when do you call a fellow rich? Please tell me.
Questioner: When he is better off compared to the others around.
Acharya Prashant: Compared to the others, right. You go to a place like Vietnam, for example, and the similar thing used to be in Japan. You hand over Indian currency to them, and you get a large number of units of their currency. Does that make you rich? No. Why? Because others will have an even greater number of units of their currency.
Richness is not about what you have. Richness is about what you have with respect to others. That's the whole philosophy.
Your entire definition of the self comes from the world, from society and other miscellaneous places — religion, family, tradition. They give you your definition, and hence you have to proceed with respect to them, all your life. Had your identity been independent of the world, then you wouldn't have needed to get ahead of the world or to prove a thing or two to the world all the time. No.
But anything that 'you are', it has been implanted into you that 'you are' with respect to the world, the other. The world determines who you are. So now if you always have one eye or sometimes both the eyes on the world, how is that a surprise?
Okay, you are a rich man because you have loads of money here. Let's say the entire stockpile is accumulated here, right? This does not make me rich. Please understand, what makes me rich is the fact that you honor this currency. So you make me rich, not my money.
Suppose I have all my cash deposited here. But all of you here refuse to acknowledge this currency. Am I rich anymore? So my money does not make me rich. You make me rich. I am nobody on my own. Hence, I'll have to prove things to the world all the time and be afraid all the time of the world, and be aggressive and cunning.
It's such a lovely thing, the beggar makes the rich man rich.
I am a rich man. And I've cornered away most of the wealth, as is happening in the world today. We very well know how much wealth lies hoarded with the top 1 percentile of the world — the wealthiest persons. We know that, right?
So I'm the rich man, and let's say all of you here are beggars. The beggars have made me rich. Not just in the sense that I have taken away your money, but in the sense that I'm rich only as long as you honor this money. Suppose you get together and say that this currency will no longer be honored. You remember the demonetization in India, something like that — all of you get together and say, "We are no longer acknowledging this currency."
Am I rich anymore?
So the beggars make the rich man rich, and then the rich man has to be both afraid of and violent towards the beggars. Because even if they are beggars, they can still strip away his richness.
What an irony!
The beggars decide whether the rich man will remain rich. There is no internal richness. There is nothing here (Pointing towards the inner self).
"Maybe get ahead. Be a go-getter. Be a high achiever." Whatever these phrases mean, they always mean something in context of the world. These popular idioms — these toxic ones. What they carry within them is a lot of slavery and dependence. You can never be beyond the framework. So you're always afraid. Even if you are rich, you are rich within the framework. So you're always afraid because the framework is not yours.
Real richness, real love, is never a thing within the framework. The framework is a very whimsical thing. The rich man can be turned into a pauper overnight. The man on the footpath can become a billionaire overnight. So the billionaire is always afraid of the beggar.
Had the richness been a thing of the inside, then the rich man wouldn't have been afraid. Since richness, real richness lies within, hence it cannot be taken away. Then there is no fear. But the rich man knows very well that the beggar is still a competitor. No? Till the last breath the competition remains. One second it will take to turn the scales, and hence the competition has to be mercilessly subdued every day.
Because the game is never over. Yes, you got ahead, but the others are still in hot pursuit. So you have to keep killing them all the time, as you kill in a game. Right? Let's say in football or hockey, even if you are leading by a few goals, you still keep the pressure on, right? You don't say, "Now I have won," because you have never really won till the last whistle.
In some sense, you're always afraid. The game can still be lost. So the opposition has to be continuously dominated. Even if you are the richest man in the world, the opposition consisting of the rest of the world has to be continuously dominated. What kind of richness is this? So fearful.
And you would see the relationship between this and the climate catastrophe. Not just because you had several dozen private jets flowing in for the wedding — no, not that alone. This barbaric need to get ahead. Doesn't it lie at the core of the climate crisis? Please tell me. You can almost visualize everybody trying to get ahead on his car, burning away energy and emitting carbon. That's what the climate crisis is. I need to be ahead of you. That's carbon emission.
Look at the carbon footprint of those who are deemed successful and those who are deemed unsuccessful, and you will find a ratio of 10:1, 100:1, 10,000:1. Success is about, you know, beating the other down. Even in the way we live, this violence is not always visible, but please see that it is always there. Even if it is not visible or apparent, it is always there.
Can there be an inner richness? And can you be inwardly rich without being inwardly free of the world?
And what can all your external riches give you if you are inwardly still dominated by frameworks that somebody put into your head? You are rich but within the framework. And the framework came from somebody else. So you're still a slave, maybe a rich slave — and rich only within the framework.
I'm not saying the poor ones are any better. They are poor slaves. You have rich slaves, you have poor slaves. But where is freedom?
More the internal hollowness, the internal insecurity, the more the need to ostentate.
The more the urge to demonstrate that you have actually raced ahead. The deeper the lovelessness, the more lavish the wedding is. Think of the various ways in which everybody uses money to compensate for the real thing.
A father won't give daughter the right kind of education. He withheld funds. So he sends her off with a load of dowry. Love was missing. So dowry is present. Had you really loved her, you would have spent that money on her education. But when it came to education, you said, "No, no, no. You go to some random college in the village or in the town. Just somehow get a degree and get married off." And when it came to the wedding, an entire truckload of things were dispatched with her.
See how money is being used to compensate for lovelessness.
I read somewhere and it was a very general kind of article: “How do you know your partner is cheating on you?”— the kind of random spicy pieces that mediocre news websites publish and the article was targeted at women. So, one of the telltale signs, they said, 'If your husband suddenly starts bringing you expensive gifts, that's a sign he might be now involved somewhere else.'
All of a sudden, he has started bringing you jewelry for no reason, or lingerie, or whatever for no reason — an expensive stuff. This is a sign that he is now cheating. It's funny. It's a cosmic joke. The extent to which man goes just to defend the inner hollow, just to protect the inner slavery.
Somebody becomes the world's richest man. Somebody becomes the world's most powerful man.
Hitler, you know he was trying to be an artist. He went to Vienna, and then he became the world's most powerful dictator — ahead of Stalin, actually. He was rejected both times from there. He used to sketch, and I suppose paint or something. Figure out.
He was a young man, wanted to enroll in some arts course and the university rejected him not once but twice. And then he said, "I’ll make up for it. This entire world is unjust, not just this university. Because the world is unjust, "I'll dismantle everything." He could have been some kind of a semi-decent artist, you know — sign boards or something, flower pots. That was his calling. Or the rear of trucks in India. That was the only little thing that the fellow wanted. Let me do this.
Then see the extent to which he went to compensate. Everybody. Somebody will become the richest, the most powerful, something something. Somebody ran a confectionary shop. It didn't go well. So he said, "Okay, I'll show you what I can do." So he became the biggest bully in the district. All that he wanted was that, you know, some sweets that he makes, people buy them and give him some money, some appreciation. But nobody came to his sweet stalls. So he became the muscle man of the area.
The problem is, you'd still not be content. You'd still be as miserable within, as hollow as you always were. You can burn as much money as you want. You can splurge and demonstrate to the entire universe. It won't help. The eyes would still keep begging: "See, I demonstrated so much. Can you give me a little? Yeah, nod of acceptance, please. One nod of acceptance."
The rich man is begging to the beggars: "See, I displayed so much wealth. Please be impressed. Won't you? Please, little. You know, micro, nano, some teeny-weeny approval from anybody."
Go for the real thing.
Inequality, that is not the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is the framework itself. A framework in which you cannot be successful without being ahead of the world. That's the framework. The framework says your success will always be with respect to others, which means if you are ahead of others, then you are successful. So your success, in that sense, is defined by your location with respect to others.
The framework is the problem. Real success is when you drop the framework, you kick it away, you transcend it. That's real success.
My success is mine alone. Independent of the world. It doesn't depend on the worldly currency. It doesn't depend on worldly sanction. It doesn't depend on worldly approval or remembrance. My success is a totally independent thing — mine alone. My self-worth, my self-respect do not come from others. I do not have a reflected consciousness. I do not look at myself in the eyes of others. I am a mirror to myself. I don't require others to describe me. Yes, you are welcome to give me feedback, but you're not welcome to give me identities.
Questioner: Thank you, Acharya Ji.
