Mother and Child

The first world, the imperialist, capitalist countries have planted seeds of poverty in the third world. If the first world does not exist, the third world’s poverty would not exist. It is true that we too have and had a great deal of feudal structure in our society, which is one cause of our poverty; but large scale economic poverty is imposed on us by the capitalist system. The money oriented first world exploits us, and their proletariat, showing dreams of consumerism. They maintain the world’s capitalist structure by portraying materialism as the source of human happiness.

We Nepalese did not know of the outside world until 1950’s, until when the country came out of the Rana rule. We lived our lives without industrial consumerism and made everything we needed ourselves, in our small rural based societies. When capitalism struck us, it showed us a mirage of fake happiness induced by buying things; destroying our age old house-based industries. We started buying everything from ready-made cloth to Coke-cola. In order to sustain this lifestyle, we are and were forced into the money making life.

The money making life is not necessarily a happy life. I have seen, and been to the first world; especially Japan, where people are certainly living in stressful conditions. As the money oriented life starts growing in a society, people start living in nuclear-families. People are cut out from their relations to other people.

Why do we see so many smiles on the faces of the people of rural Nepal although it is so poor? Material wealth has noting to do with the most basic need of human beings—contentment; thus proving capitalism wrong, where human happiness is compared to material wealth.

MG
Kathmandu