Nothing is enough

As long as humans cover the three distinct stages of goods’ acquisitions, nothing would be enough because enough would always remain too little. From acquiring ‘bandwagon goods’, which others possess, to ‘snob goods’, that others do not have, is a long journey that most of us cover through the markets of want and desire. The journey ends at what theorist Thorstein Veblen described as ‘Veblen goods’, goods that act as advertisements of wealth.

The father-son duo of Robert and Edward Skidelsky go beyond the current debate about growing inequality to ask what we need money for? Without doubt, ‘insatiability’ is making people restless, craving for novelty to ride over restlessness. It is this restlessness that the world of advertising exploits to create the ‘organised creation of dissatisfaction’. However, the Skidelskys argue if making money could be the permanent business of humanity?

It may not have been had John Maynard Keynes’s prediction that people would become rational agents once their wants have been satisfied been proved correct. The Skidelsky’s have found two blockages to the fulfilment of Keynes’s prophecy: those rising from power relationships and those rising from insatiability of wants. Both work in combination to produce an ethic of acquisitiveness, which has become the essential driver of capitalism. Unless insatiability is addressed on intellectual, moral and political grounds, it may remain tough to exit from the rat race of market-driven world of consumption and production.

Markets, the Skidelsky’s argue, were made for man and not man for the markets. Economics, as reflected in gross domestic product, ought to be impregnated with purpose if markets have to work for man. For markets to remain obedient to human needs and not greed, the world would need to invent social and economic policies which reduce the amount of work necessary to achieve the material requisites of well-being. This may not be utopian proposition if we agree that the greatest waste now confronting mankind is not one of money but of human possibilities.

The Skidelsky’s end their scholarly work, which challenges the free market fundamentalism, by quoting Keynes: ‘Once we allow ourselves to be disobedient to the test of an accountant’s profit we would have begun to change our civilisation’. And the time for such a change is overdue....Link

How much is enough?
by Robert & Edward Skidelsky
Allen Lane, London
243 pages, £ 20

Shaman in the making

Mystics they are, the shamans are known to heal emotional distress, physical challenges and mental chatter using hallucinogens. Ayahuasca, one of the most potent hallucinogen, has helped people find themselves and, in doing so, to find peace. Like most ancient cultures, the dancing snakes that pop up (in the mind) during ayahuasca ceremony have helped shamans visualize, amongst other things, the structure of DNA several centuries before Watson and Crick could actually discover it. 

Making patients see with their heart and feel with their eyes, the shamans have been able to manipulate the energy blocks in human body, which are the cause of many health issues, such that the energy flows freely again. That the shamans are charismatic is known but that one of them could be disarmingly seductive is what celebrated journalist Anna Hunt came to realize from her adventure into the wilderness of the Amazon jungle. 

As a real page turner, The Shaman in Stilettos is a story about raging passion, mysterious obsession, compelling ritual and abject surrender. How a 29-year-old compromises her love for stilettos, chocolate, cars and a fast-paced job to the slow-paced rhythm of life in the unglamorous jungles of Peru makes for exhilarating reading. In the backdrop of her passionate affair with a charming shaman, the story of Anna Hunt is packed with nuggets of extraordinary wisdom. That anger and tears are just perspectives; neither of them is right nor wrong, is one of the several nuggets. Much of human weakness emerges from the innate fears we all carry within - the fear of the unknown, fear of not being in control, and fear of facing yourself as you really are.         

The shamans neither fear nor are they frightened of dying. They know that they go to the light – to the next level. Through a gripping narrative laced with romantic interludes, Anna unfolds the secret and complex world of the shamans and their mystics. For the shamans, the snake holds the key to the knowledge of the universe. Snake is best expressed in Spanish word ‘serpiente’, ‘Ser’ means ‘human’; ‘pi’ is the basic building block of ‘life’; and ‘ente’ means ‘universe’. No wonder, every shaman has to learn to work with the snake. This and much more, The Shaman in Stilettos is entertaining, engrossing and enlightening story about the ‘making of a shaman in stilettos’....Link 

The Shaman in Stilettos

by Anna Hunt

Penguin Books, UK

454 pages, £ 8.99