When people talk of unlocking of the value in things, in the earth, in our homes, in the air, in our mind, they are speaking of monetisation or encashing of the demand for things, for our behaviour, rather performance, or for our attitude. We drill out coal from the earth, and thereby unlock the value in the earth. We shed our shyness, err gown, and striptease, thus monetising our attitude. We lug out our grandfather’s cot to the urban marketplace, among the wowing glitterati, and we would have encashed the admired ethnicity in the stupid rot. We arrive before the chief does and leave later, work or no work, and our behaviour converts into money. Smart folks in remote mountains offer the ’ crisp air ‘ and are surprised by the greenbacks it rains.
The speed of this ’ unlocking ‘ juggernaut, as it is, would knock you senseless, wherever in the world you might be. Guess what the smart ones in business would do with the discovery of this endurance enhancing pill for males. Sure, they would commercialise it. It’s burning rubber that would choke us all. First, it would have to be on the grandest scale … volume enough to inundate the market, because anything less is non viable in view of opportunity costs. So too is delay ; it has got to be done in the shortest span of time.
No, the rush wouldn’ t be because of a fad or obsession for super efficiency. It would be because of the huge expense base these grand and speeding corporates have from before, on which a mountain more would have piled on account of research over the years, cost of capital invested, production costs proportionate to the bulk of scale, and massive marketing and promotion expenses before income flows in.
What for ? For a pill to enable men to push on a little longer in bed ? Because it spells profit for the company and its owners ? Hundreds of millions in money, tens of thousands of employees, years of application and occupation of media resources, space and voice, to orienting people values globally to carnal needs that serve no public good ?
Apart from serving to establish such misplaced and warped priorities in public arena world wide, likely social and ethical problems arise when money bags buy their stiffness and strut about like confident studs, rich in psychological capital compared to those who cannot afford the astronomically priced pill. What does one announce in public space to promote such inequity, and how, without triggering a social collapse ? What happens with our women, some privileged with abundant sexual gratification while others deficient look upon their men with shame, criticism, moan or protest ? How do these two females, rather class of women, watch the same advertisement for the miracle pill without reflecting upon this deeply meaningful difference in their sexual well being ? And, the men, some with new found power and the despondent rest ?
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The placebo has been a cause for intense rivalry for a long time now between the big allopathy pharma mainstream and alternate medical systems, especially in respect of antidepressants, one of the most prescribed medications globally. Double blind studies have revealed a relatively small difference, 18 to 25 %, between manufactured ‘ drugs ‘ and dummy pills, not all of the differential effect positively attributable to the former. A provocative headline in the Washington Post, in 2002, said it all : Against Depression, a Sugar Pill Is Hard to Beat !
The fact is : antidepressants like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft work. And so do sugar pills. Thank God, for the poor of the world. The fierce opposition from the mainstream lobbyists is understandable. But why should our governments be partial to them ?
Suddenly, the debate is no longer about people interests and welfare, the likes of us. It is about this nexus that big money has established globally between the rich and the powerful, leaving commoners high and dry !
In this debate, the real spotlight is on mind versus matter, the psychology of physical well being.
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