THE FAILURE OF THE MATERIALIST LIFE
LIFE AS OPEN TABS AND PENDING UPDATES
In human society, there are different types of people with distinct worldviews, shaped by their education, culture, and values. The concept of a supreme creator of the universe is not always accepted; often it is rejected with indifference or rebellion, like when you ignore a long WhatsApp message while rushing to work.
Being a millennial is living with twenty tabs open in your mind, five active chats in your heart, and a pending internal system update that you always postpone because “it’s not urgent.” Deep down, you know something is wrong, like when your phone overheats and you ignore it until it shuts down, losing everything you hadn’t backed up.
We grew up believing life was a video game with clear achievements: study, work, earn money, travel enough for Instagram photos, buy the right things, post stories that gain validation, and when you reach the highest level, unlock automatic happiness, like a renewable premium subscription. Spoiler: it never came.
Permanent dark circles arrived, exhaustion that even coffee can’t fix, functional anxiety that allows you to meet deadlines while crumbling inside, and the feeling of being busy all the time but only alive in moments, as if life were running in demo mode where progress is visible but not felt.
MODERN MATERIALISM IN DISGUISE
Modern materialism no longer wears a suit or flaunts mansions; now it lives in your feed, disguised as productivity, speaking in the language of goals, measured in metrics, filtered with minimalist aesthetics, and hidden in motivational phrases that sound deep but quickly tire:
“Sleep when you’re rich.” “If you stop, you lose.” “Make every second of your life count.”
Today, we don’t worship idols. We worship results.
We don’t always reject God in anger; often we just leave Him on “seen,” like that long message we promised to read later but ended up buried under memes, emails, tasks, and existential cat reels.
The Vedas, written thousands of years ago when there was no WiFi but human confusion existed, say something that sounds dangerously relevant today: humans are not the body, the mind, the thoughts, possessions, or titles, but the conscious soul, observing all these things like a silent user behind the screen.
Or simply put: you are not your profile picture, bank account, resume, age, productivity, or even your worst mistake at 3 a.m. Yet we live as if we were.
SPIRITUAL IGNORANCE: THE MISTAKE OF EXISTENCE
According to the Vedas, this confusion is not accidental. It is called spiritual ignorance, which does not mean stupidity, but forgetting who you really are—like when you accidentally delete an important file and keep using the computer without realizing what’s missing.
From this ignorance, we believe that:
The “self” is the body
Meaning lies in what is seen
Security is in what is accumulated
Happiness is an emotion to buy, display, and defend
We buy things to feel something. We work to avoid feeling useless. We scroll to avoid listening to silence.
We distract ourselves to avoid asking why, even though we have so much technology, comfort, and options, something inside still feels incomplete, like a perfect playlist playing in disconnected headphones.
Amazon delivers in 24 hours. Netflix streams in 5 seconds. TikTok in a blink. But the soul does not work with express delivery, seasonal discounts, or premium subscriptions.
ETERNAL SOUL VS TEMPORARY THINGS
The Vedas explain that the soul, by nature, is eternal, conscious, and complete, like an internal battery that needs no plug.
The problem is trying to feed something eternal with temporary things: like trying to update an infinite system with files that expire, or watering a plant with a screenshot of rain.
The modern materialist thinks life is a poorly designed app that just needs more updates, money, trips, experiences, degrees, validation, noise, and stimuli, not noticing that the problem is not the software version but forgetting who the user is.
This is how someone becomes rich in things but poor in inner peace, successful on LinkedIn but empty at night, admired publicly but confused privately, free in theory and enslaved in practice.
KRISHNA’S TEACHINGS IN THE BHAGAVAD-GITA
The Vedas describe this slavery with one precise word: karma—not as punishment, but as the law that:
Every material desire creates another desire
Every brief satisfaction generates new lack
Every external achievement increases the fear of losing it
When God or Supreme Consciousness disappears from the center, something else takes its place: the demanding ego, the pressing fear, the exhausting comparison, the never-sleeping social pressure, and the silent terror of being left behind while everyone seems to be “achieving things.”
The Bhagavad-gita (9.12) says:
"Those who think I do not exist and speak against Me are attracted by materialistic and atheistic criteria. In this deplorable condition, their hopes of liberation from material existence, their actions, and cultivation of knowledge are inevitably bound to fail."
The ego is only a temporary interface, a useful avatar to move through the world, but dangerous when it believes it is the main player.
THE SOUL SEEKS MEANING, NOT OBJECTS
The soul does not seek accumulation; it seeks remembrance.
It does not crave applause, it craves connection. It does not desire control, it desires belonging to something greater than its anxiety.
The Vedas propose something radical in our performance-obsessed era: devotion, a loving reconnection with God, not as rigid religion, but as a living relationship with the source of consciousness, like reconnecting your device to its original cloud.
Believing in God is not about becoming outdated or turning off your brain; it is recovering the forgotten password of your own identity, something no university teaches or productivity tutorial shows.
It is not about escaping the world, but using it without losing yourself: having things without letting them own you, working without becoming a machine, enjoying without turning pleasure into anesthesia.
YOGA: THE CONNECTION THAT NEVER FAILS
The Vedas also speak of yoga, not just as physical postures, but as union between soul and God—a system that allows the user to remember who they are while interacting with the world.
True yoga is not an Instagram filter, but the ability to stay connected to the eternal while your feed keeps moving.
The true failure of the materialist is not having things, but having bet everything on them.
The mistake is not seeking comfort, but believing comfort can replace meaning.
The problem is not money, but having asked it to do the work only spiritual consciousness can do.
THE TRUE REBELLION
Perhaps true rebellion is not denying God, but seeking Him again in a world that sells everything except silence, depth, purpose, and direction.
Today you can change job, city, partner, phone, or ideology with two clicks, but you cannot escape the question that appears when the lights go out and nothing is running in the background:
"Is this all?"
The Vedas answer calmly: no, this is not all; this is just the interface.
At the end, you can have the newest phone, the highest salary, the full calendar, the nice apartment, the fit body, and active accounts on all platforms, yet still feel something essential is in airplane mode, without signal, waiting for a connection that the market cannot provide.
DIGITAL EPILOGUE
Beloved navigators of social media and spiritual dimensions, once again we have explored an important aspect of human life: the challenge is not to deny God, but to include Him in our life project and purpose.
May the undeserved and constant grace of the Great Cosmic Designer deliver the order you have placed in the spiritual Amazon of life and evolution. See you at the next evolutionary intersection.