Fountain of bullshit...

I came across an article today about an example of how the interface between capitalist theory unfettered and human values is like watch repair with playdoh screwdriver.

Montblanc, the overpriced pens aka 'status' symbols have just brought out an engraved pen made from gold and silver with an engraving of Mahatma Gandhi (of all people) on the nib! It is apparently on sale in India at 1.1 million rupees ($29,000 AU, or 14,400 quid)

It's hard to imagine a more inappropriate person's monika to slap on this pen than Gandhi. This is the fella after all that, even at his most powerful, insisted on cleaning the latrines just like other lowly people had to. Everything that he stood for was honest and simple. He gave new meaning to the word altruism.

Montblanc apparently 'donated' a hundred thousand euros to build a shelter for rescued child labourers... so they apparently are allowed to produce an abomination like this! (Has anyone realised that a donation is a non purchase type of thing?) Is it right that a person who gave of himself without expectation of reward should be sold out like this? Why are Montblanc allowed to behave in this grotesquely capitalist manner with the memory of an icon of anti capitalist action just because it is blindly understood (and not questioned) that they must have some recompense for their 'donation'? ("I know there is a contradiction between the man they are commemorating and the product they are commemorating him with, but you can't expect a company like Montblanc to come out with a cheap thing" Tusha Gandhi - Grandson of Gandhi)

Er... why not? A real commemoration of the man would be to donate money with no strings attached because it was the right thing to do. Paradoxically, they have produced something that whilst it is expensive in monetary terms, gives new shallowness to the term 'cheap'.

They have utterly missed the point of his life, his sufferings and tribulations. HOW can they have thought that this was appropriate? It's as if the board of directors, probably all MBA's have thought;

'hmmn India's doing good... must be a few millionaires there by now, and we've been selling quite a few pens. What do we know about India? Well we know they have Bollywood, all night raves, they answer all our calls to the bank, and er wasn't there a bloke that used to wander round in a loin cloth that they liked? What was he called? Gandy... Klause says that his birthday is the 2nd of Oct and is a national holiday. We could bring out a pen with his head on it cos they don't go for the British monarch any more do they. OK sort that out someone .... now next item on the agenda... sales in China.

I bet no one at Montblanc read anything about him at all. They should be called Montblank to 'commemorate' the contents of the marketing department's head cavities that normally contain brains.

But should we really be shocked? I mean this is symptomatic of the system that we use to govern our lives. This is what you get when all human values are boiled down to what the economists call WTP (willing to pay). How do you place an economic value on something like dignity?