Wealth and affluence allow us to treat symptoms rather than deal with the causes that create the symptoms. A case in point: When I was living in the USA, obesity was becoming a pandemic there. Yet many persons were unwilling to use the term, obesity, and deal with overeating that caused it. Two mental disorders such as anorexia nervosa (refusal to keep a minimal body weight due to a distorted body image) and bulimia nervosa (binge eating and vomiting to keep desired body weight) are eating disorders. Many persons who suffer from extreme overweight these days have bariatric surgery, a surgical procedure that started around 1965, and that typically reduces the size of the stomach so that persons cannot eat as much as they used to. The modern medicine in the west devotes enormous resources to cater to various life-styles that are often destructive. It also routinely performs unnecessary, expensive laboratory tests to maintain expensive machines and to avoid frivolous litigation. Bariatric surgery is not common in India. But instances of overeating and gorging are not uncommon especially among the affluent in India.
Satyannasti paro Dharmah (There is no religion or law that is higher than truth or reality) and Satyameva Jayate (Truth alone wins) come from the Hindu scriptures. Truth alone can set us free according to the New Testament of the Bible. Religions are becoming more and more irrelevant in that they do not practice what they preach, and they do not clearly focus on what really matters to people. Gandhi is relevant because in our age he put into practice truth understood as God and Ahimsa (non-violence) understood as perfect love, and modeled life for us as a spiritual person. In a world drifting aimlessly, truth and ahimsa (non-injury to humans and animals) alone can put humanity on the right course.
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