On gold, Rolexes, & the meaning of life

I made my maiden visit to Srini & Shubha's house this past Saturday and a Pongal themed pot luck dinner was preceded by some unusually animated discussion. The topics seemed innocuous enough - purchasing fakes (watches) from China started us off and for some time the debate was about how easy or difficult it was to tell the fakes apart. A surprisingly forceful Sanjay expressed the thought that he couldn't see any reason for buying such expensive watches. My counter was that it was useless to try to see a practical or pragmatic reason behind most decisions made by human beings. I contended (& still do) that practical considerations account for a very small fraction of the rationale behind most of our choices. Sanjay and Srini were quite vehemently opposed to this claim and examples and counter-examples were thrown around. I asked Sanjay about his MR2 purchase - which to my eye is not a practical choice - but he was quite firm in his conviction that that was not the case. I had clearly touched a nerve here (perhaps he had had to defend this choice before?), so I let that subject drop and moved on to my favorite current gripe - the Indian obsession with gold jewelery.

I have never been a big fan of gold (no doubt influenced by my father's opinion on this) to the point that the only time I have actually seen all of Malini's gold jewelery is on our wedding day. Except for a couple of small pieces, we left all of it with her parents in India. A recent article about gold in the National Geographic reminded me of my distaste for the Indian obsession with gold. I was rather dismayed to learn that my home state of Kerala is in fact the epicenter of this obsession and resultant trade.

On most occasions, people just gloss over my overwrought arguments ("Oh, there goes that loud mouth again..."), but not this evening. Folks were skeptical and wondered why I found this desire for gold so troubling. (In a confusing move, Srini challenged my stand on gold with my choosing to work at Qualcomm. I am still puzzled. :-)) The question was posed, "So what's so wrong with liking/buying gold jewelery?" I was about to expound on how obvious it was when I realized that I had not thought it through. I tend to have instinctive reactions and have learned to trust my instinct, but could I now defend it?

I was able to crystallize my thoughts - its what the obsession over gold does to people that bothers me. People at every economic level spend a substantial amount of money to feed this obsession and this of course unfairly affects the people at the lower levels. So many poor families get into life long debt in trying to put together enough gold for their daughters' weddings. This is money that could be used far more effectively to raise their standard of living by investing in say, more nutritious food, better housing, education, etc. What makes this more pernicious than other society-imposed compulsions is (as the article makes clear) that the impact is beyond just the consumers. The mining and extraction of gold is done at a huge cost to people and the environment.

As human beings we are constantly searching for meaning - either explicitly or implicitly. We want to feel that our actions and choices are justified by some overarching theme or principle. I contend there is no such thing - each of us but a random jumble of wants/desires/compulsions and it is fruitless to attempt any rationalizations.

As the discussion wound down, Sanjay had an interesting thought to share. He wondered if we were affecting some essential balance in the make up of our physical environment by all the extraction of minerals and other materials. Would we at some point in the future be spending our efforts on putting back all that we have taken out? A little too Jack Handey perhaps, but still food for thought.