Why do we exist if not to purchase

One of the biggest changes that has occurred in recent years is in the desire to have fun.

When I was young, "fun" was something you had on a weekend, with your family, usually incorporating food, and preceded by dressing up in your best clothes. It was always, always, always, accompanied by a mini lecture by your mother on your expected behaviour that mentioned "the neighbours and what they may think". At its wildest - it incorporated a trip out with friends to the ice-cream vendor on Defence Colony flyover to watch the trains go by, or a trip to the coffee bar at a nearby hotel.

Now - "fun" is a much more serious business. There are fun clothes, fun holidays, fun music, fun radio, fun drinks, fun accessories, and loads of activities that are designated fun things to do, for fun people. Now we have whole industries geared to providing "fun".

Speaking to my students, I am aware that their ambition in life is to have "fun"! They often complain the school is boring, it's "no fun", or on the rare occasion - Yay! Let's study Victorian melodrama - sounds like fun! It's the F word again.

I thought back to when I was that age and it seemed that back then, my peers were focused on joining the IAS/IFS, or the armed forces, accountants, engineers, lawyers and I considered joining the convent for two whole weeks! Nobody thought having fun was even a life option. 

I mentioned it to my husband. "It's your age dear," he said, not even looking up from the "fun" section of his internet searches. Undeterred, I got to thinking about the purpose of life. I mean, "What are we here for?" I reached for a book to read the philosophers of yesteryear. 

What a morbid, fun-deprived lot! Cyril Connelly was not much help. He wrote: "Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turn before we have learnt to walk." What an unhappy (and lost) little chap. Mind you, Connelly's getting lost may explain why Samuel Butler thought that "life is one long process of getting tired." I was beginning to realise how he must have felt.

For long hours, I pondered the meaning of existence. What great purpose is there? None of the explanations of the past seemed relevant to the modern age, but then, they have always sought theological, philosophical answers. Postmodern society, I thought, demanded more sociological, psychological, less esoteric explanations. I decided that I must seek a socio-economic explanation! - Whatever that was!

Ensconced in my bedroom, (after looking up socio-economic on Google), I contemplated the possibilities. I was sure that progress was the key, and that the purpose of life was something that was embodied in actions universal within modern society. Something that all of us did, and that we did even when there wasn't a rational compelling need or reason.

I considered that we were here simply to procreate but decided against it since, in the modern world, the tendency, increasingly, is to have fewer, or no children. It couldn't be simply to work, because historically fewer and fewer people work, and most of those that do, work less hard and for shorter hours than the generations that have gone before.

It was then that I became inspired. I realised we are not here to have fun, or to work, or have babies, or to contemplate, or to simply eat and drink. 

We are here to participate in the fastest growing, most universal activity of the present age.

Everywhere in our society we are exhorted to do it. Twenty-four hours a day, 15 to 20 times an hour, our televisions send out messages for us to do it. Our streets are lined with messages designed to make us do it. Our newspapers and magazines owe their existence to their ability to get us to do it. Our radios blare out how cool it is for us to do it. Everywhere we go, we find messages trying to persuade us to do it! 

All post-modern human activity is geared to this greater activity. When there is a birth, we do it. At times of marriage, we do it. Every day of our lives, we do it. It is incorporated into all of our social life, and all our activities! We do it when we have no need to do it. We do it to make ourselves feel better when we are upset. We do it as therapy for being in a stressful job or a bad relationship. Women do it more than men but increasingly, men do it. Everyone does it ad nauseam. 

Instead of houses for our homeless, we build massive buildings for it. Instead of providing building for our sick and poor, we spend billions of crores exhorting people to do it. Instead of providing education for all our children - we do it. We buy cars, get on buses, use the Metro, and travel to massive centres in far off towns and cities built specifically for it. Our children hangout watching others do it, and almost all of them think that it is a really fun thing to do. And now comes the biggest breakthrough - we don't have to travel anywhere to do it, we can do it from our homes, in our beds, with our so called smartphones.

The purpose of life as we define it by our actions is both sad and obvious.

WE ARE HERE TO SHOP!