The world is changing faster than the pace needed to catch up with that change. From the ambition of making lives better and the world a better place, most of the corporates have reached a place where they are just trying to outnumber their competitors. In this effort, the organizations are doing innovations and coming out with so called creative ideas that are not being verified for how they will impact the society in the long run. The number of ideas that need to be generated to continuously outnumber the competition is a loop, the organizations are always on the run and the consumers of those ideas and always in a trap.
While growing up in India, we are taught to consume only as much we would need for survival. Now this simple rule makes a country less wasteful and leads to a healthier earth. Today, all we are doing is consuming, not because we need a specific thing, but because we have been fed by some seller that we won’t get it cheaper anywhere. This is hazardous for economy, people and the planet. The organizations are not thinking, because they want people to be compulsive buyers, the people are not thinking because they do not have the ability to think to refrain.
How would you feel when you meet a small child who is depressed about not having enough likes and subscribers on their Youtube channel? Can we believe that we are nurturing a whole generation of that kind of children? Parents are busy creating accounts for their children on social media because someone else’s children have accounts. So, instead of playing creatively children are busy looking into other people’s lives and learning how to compare. Everybody thinks that he/she is a great artist without even realizing the time, effort and discipline it takes to be an artist. Eventually this is also leading to mediocrity being accepted, short lived learning and even shorter success.
So, in an effort to make larger and richer organizations, I won’t say greater, we are not only hurting out planet but also our next generation. Who is challenging this? Nobody, because we are either on the side of the seller or the consumer, being busy following the herd. While watching the documentary “Social Dilemma” I was thinking why the word “Dilemma”. Are we not sure of the fact that we need reverse innovation? Are we not sure that we need to learn are art of refraining from acquiring or being a part of everything? Are we not sure that our lives can run without so much technology, let us leave the technology for the banks and institutions?
Whenever there are discussions on how technology is hampering our lives, we tend to blame the organizations that are building on them. What about us? What about people who go and buy all that is our there? What about parents who do not tell their children that they do not need to be on Instagram?
I totally believe that if organizations are responsible for what is coming forth, we are equally responsible for making these organizations successful. I also believe that if ambitious people have given us new things, it is also the ambitious people who have knowingly or unknowingly created a hazardous world. These ambitious people are in big numbers and on both the sides of the business. It is a collective responsibility of the society to slow down, validate ideas and products for social impact before they come into the market and sometimes discard the product or idea even if it has hot the market and is found detrimental in any form. We need to remember that the consumers guide the market and the organizations into building new products. Let us start guiding them in the ethical and healthier direction.
There is a need to come together as a society, and there is a need to do it urgently.
