Are we to become One Dimentional ?

Of all commodities that humans trade in ,money alone holds promise of enriching beyond its worth, both the giver and the taker. It may not seem obvious but even in alms giving it is true ; besides being salvational , alms-given is a step taken on the highway to heavenly paradise.

 In the Middle Ages western sovereigns lent money and resources to intrepid mercantilist sea-farers for a share in profits to be made from new sources of spices and trade routes. The sovereigns ended up with treasuries overflowing with unimagined amounts of gold. The adventurers, in turn, got more than money , their private colonies in far off lands, the biggies being the British,East India Co, and the Dutch, Vereeniging Oostindische Compagnie, VOC . That was centuries years ago. 

Nearer to our times and nearer home , not too long ago our netas spent money patronising ‘musclemen’ to capture booths , intimidate electors to vote for their overlords, and forcibly stamp ballot papers. It all ended up with the musclemen starting to stamp ballots for themselves to enter the august portals of Lok Sabha and state assemblies.  

Meanwhile, the turn of the millennium has seen an unprecedented upsurge in aggregation of corporations into fewer business houses creating behemoths that straddle large swathe of human existence and increasingly dictate their choices. Today, American Presidents don’t,  figuratively speaking, get elected until business houses pour money into their campaign funds used to seduce voters. And have profited immensely in the process ; for instance, Donald Trump just rewarded them with enviable tax cuts . We too have our financial conglomerates with tremendous financial clout donating anonymously into party funds, a process further smoothened and enshrouded by electoral 

bonds. And getting their quid pro quo. 

With this huge ‘money muscle’, will 21st century see financial moguls doing what the other muscle men did to our electoral system - use their money to elect themselves, not proxies ? History would not invest this apprehension with fancifulness , that is for sure. It would ,however, be legitimate to ask , what’s wierd about it ? 

I feel, the governing spirit would change - from welfare to mercenary or mercantilism, a return to Protestant ethics of thrift and profit. Increasingly, moguls are building a system where more needs are created that only they satisfy, and subtly create conditions that disparage or even deny other non-monetary intangible needs - the need for togetherness, the motherly touch of home cooked food. I can go on and on. And yet the point would need further elaboration but this isn’t the space to do so.

A rule by moguls runs a real risk of transforming humans into a one-dimensional man- one fed on a congery of choices for satiation of needs, having uniform outlook,tastes and needs for entertainment, all endemic within a stultifying system created by capitalist behemoths. One that Herbert Marcuse posited in 1962, a good read on lib.com.