What stops the youth today? || Acharya Prashant, in conversation (2022)

Questioner (Q): I was thinking about today's generation of youth in comparison to the Upanishadic Nachiketa. Nachiketa, where he is being offered all the great materials, sensual pleasures and as you said rightly while negating them he says ‘I'll get to them later but this is what I really want.’

What is stopping the modern youth, mentally or maybe emotionally or maybe it's an external thing? What is the main thing do you think is the big blockage that is stopping him in this consumer capitalistic era from becoming a Nachiketa or even being attracted to a Nachiketa.

Acharya Prashant (AP): Fundamentally, the blockage is much the same as it was 2000 years ago or 4000 years ago. Fundamentally, it is much the same—greed, ignorance, fear, lust, envy—basic things. But what is the form it has taken in the last 100 years? The form is of an abundance of industrial goods. You see, our senses are always looking out for something because the mind is always unfilled, so, the senses are looking out to somehow gratify themselves. ‘Can I bring something to the mind that the mind would be satisfied with?’ That's the role of the senses.

Now, what the industrial revolution has done is that it has put a great abundance of objects at our possible disposal. You have to go out and buy those things and the self-interest of the production, goods, and services industry lies in more and more consumption. So, not only must goods be produced, the mind of the consumer must be modified in a way that it becomes amenable to being rather greedy for the consumption of those goods.

So you have a continuous bombardment of consumption-centric messages on your senses. And I’m not just talking about the overt advertisement, I’m talking of the very subliminal theme of this age. You look at anything or anybody, you find happiness equated with consumption. And when happiness is equated with consumption then it becomes very difficult to enquire. That is one thing.