if one is making something to sell, one needs to know if there would be a demand for it. most people buy things of use. things like food, home, clothing; household goods like beds, furniture; cookware; and in the urbanized living, the time killing devices like tv, radio, and cell phone. then, the people with more money buy books, fashion-wise current cut of dresses and high or low heel shoes; join spas, gyms, and yoga centers; frequent visits to fancy restaurants and pubs; go to distant vacation lands; those with no one to talk to buy by-the-hour rate time of professional counselors and so on.

and of course, for the aristocrats there would be the concerts, arts and antique shows, and auctions. for the resourceful and adventurous there is the guided climb to the mount everest, and now, with a commercial space enterprise, a trip up into the deep space, and even a trip to a planet-like moon. it is a life in the american dream. richer the home, the more museum-like the interior.

things mentioned thus far is only a very sketchy description of what is sold and bought, enabling both the provider and connoisseur to earn to live and spend what is earned. much of these exchanges of goods and services are what one learns from schooling.

schooling also enables the educated to listen to and see the commercial ads. the advancement in the commercials is the product of the advertisement psychology that induces the notion of lack, and therefore going after the advertised item. schools, too, play upon this lack of knowledge for knowledge sake, and offer courses that begin with early childhood education, to the beyond death ideas.

there is, what is called 'the world's oldest profession', the prostitution, which is only as old as the notion of classes, the rich and poor. for, the socio-economically independent women do not need to sell sex to survive, much the same as men living in a classless society do not need to have anything more or less than any other human being as means to create a self image, powerful or benign. satan and sage are both the facades of the self image wearing which the insecure person feels safe as powerful person or saint.

the self image has no physical body. so it does not exist physically, but only in thought, in mind -- mind, mind as noun, not as verb. having no body to do anything, it creates maya, the illusion -- the custom, culture, religious, social, economical and political concepts. then, the knowledge, that one does not need the use of one's physical limbs and organs to build castles in the air, as one sees that the works of infants and physically invalid people are done by others, with the power of equation, such person then makes other people to work for them.

both sages and tyrants make people labour to enter the ideological dream world. every new religion, every new political or economical system is thus formed, and not being based on nature of things, none has succeeded in delivering the promised land. after a lifelong service to the illusionary god mother teresa doubted whether god and jesus were real; after talking and writing for sixty years krishnamurti is reported to have said; ''nobody got it''. this 'it' not being a matter of fact, and only an idea of how life should be lived without the promoter self oneself trying it out, cannot but fail.

all the social, religious and political leaders have lived in comfort not available to those who were led. the exceptions to this divide in saying from doing it were the buddha, who renounced the riches and begged for food; and gandhi lived a simple life in ashram, but his ashram was funded by the rich. gandhi, who adopted the loin cloth of the poor indians, and spun his own clothing. but it was more a political statement than the poverty. he was terribly cold in his loin cloth during his visit to england, and admitted so. but the prince of england, pictured above during his visit to india with his family, did not dare even to loosen his tie and unbutton his jacket in response to his bodily needs. his princess wife was perhaps only conventionally embarrassed, but otherwise, like gandhi, she, too, would have felt physically comfortable in the breeze lifting her skirts.

the three piece suit and tie is the 'business suit' for those who cannot discard discomfort for the fear that they would be mistaken for the ordinary people. like actors they cannot survive outside of the pins and stripes and all the insignias that define their individual self images. and the detailed descriptions of every role player is scripted. not just the actors, but the audience, too, cannot recognize them as their leaders devoid of their defined outlook. like actors, the audience, too, is formed of the scripted images of the followers who are raised to be led. if the leaders equate the sedentary life with the happiness, their followers negate the ability to see things for and by themselves.

leaders and led are not created by birth. it is the creation of the upbringing process from very young age, when they are dependent upon others. by nature, a healthy child strives to be able to make independent moves. but the formal education process was invented to cultivate the lifelong dependency in trying to live in programmed way, so that the leadership is deemed necessary in every walk of life.

in the economy oriented living, a self image is a form of advertising, a walking billboard, promoting a person's job related identity. in the modern world, from a nation's president to a janitor, anybody who is earning a living as somebody acquires an image matching a description up to the minute detail. in the military and police force, the number of stripes and pins depict the ranks. observe a tiny little flag pin of the u.s. president's lapel. catholic clergy and pope and the zen monks, too, have their uniforms and symbols depicting their status. even the athletes and the yoga practitioners wear attires specific to their membership groups. the judo dress and the colour of the waistband has nothing to do with the wrestling skill, except that that was the ordinary work dress of the japanese monks. but outside of the country of the origin the dress, and even the indian and japanese names carry some weight. mother mira of pondicheri ashram was a french lady, baba ramdas an american.

the known exceptions to the non uniformed persons who led a revolutionary change were gandhi and buddha. buddha begged for one piece of discarded cloth from each of the 15 households he begged food, and sewed the pieces together. gandhi spun yarn for his own loin cloth. were gandhi introduced to the buddha's perceptions, it is likely, that he, too, would have adopted the discarded fabric for his identifying with the poor indians. but when following the buddha without the buddhi, the awakening, all those who become monks now, wear the statuesque buddhist robe, which is made of the brand new bolt of fabric, cut into 15 pieces sewn together on machine, and then to make it symbolically old, smeared in ink in tiny dot.

it was the viet cong peasant fighting the americans, dressed in their native dress, who showed the american g.i.s how utterly useless was the u.s. military uniform on the actual battle ground. the westerners dress up for the formal dinner, while the traditional indians remove their jackets and sash, etc., to sit down to eat in the physically most comfortable way.

emily dickinson expressed it this way:

i’m nobody! who are you?
are you – nobody – too?
then there’s a pair of us!
don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

how dreary – to be – somebody!
how public – like a frog –
to tell one’s name – the livelong june –
to an admiring bog!