The recent tragedy in Goa, where 25 people lost their lives in a nightclub fire, serves as a haunting reminder of how far we’ve strayed from meaningful celebrations. This incident isn’t just about safety failures-it’s a mirror reflecting our society’s blind rush toward consumption and excitement at any cost. The irony cuts deep: most victims were staff members, people who paid the ultimate price for others’ pursuit of entertainment. This raises an uncomfortable question: Have our celebrations become death traps of unconsciousness?
The Death of Conscious Celebration
Every marriage procession, New Year’s Eve party, religious festival, and even national celebration now follows the same script: deafening music, mindless consumption, and complete disregard for those around us. Whether it’s an ambulance stuck behind a wedding baraat or traffic paralyzed by roadside revelry, we remain indifferent-until we become the victims ourselves.
This pattern isn’t coincidental. We’ve systematically replaced conscious celebration with noise and intoxication because silence frightens us. When the music stops and the crowd disperses, we’re left alone with ourselves-and that’s terrifying for those who’ve never looked inward.
Why Excitement Has Become Our Biggest Intoxication
“Excitement is the biggest intoxication,” and during its grip, even sensible people perform foolish acts they’d never consider in consciousness. This isn’t just philosophical observation-it’s the reality we witnessed in Goa and continue to see at every crowded event where safety norms are abandoned for the sake of “fun.”
We don’t know ourselves. We don’t understand what our inner self truly wants. So we create artificial atmospheres-loud, bright, overwhelming-to distract ourselves from the core emptiness within. Every celebration becomes an escape mechanism, a temporary band-aid on permanent wounds we refuse to acknowledge.
Silence asks questions. Silence demands introspection. Silence hurts when you’ve been running from yourself for years. So we drown it out with bass-heavy music and mind-numbing consumption, creating a cycle that only deepens our disconnection.
The Advertisement Machine Fueling Blind Consumption
The capitalism around us hasn’t created this problem accidentally-it’s by design. Every social media scroll, news channel, sports broadcast, and newspaper page is saturated with advertisements encouraging one message: consume more, and you’ll find happiness.
But does more consumption actually satisfy us? Perhaps momentarily. Then the hunger returns, stronger and more demanding. We need bigger celebrations, louder music, more extravagant parties-each time raising the bar higher because the previous thrill no longer suffices.
Why do you think social media platforms are free? Why do streaming services cost less than a coffee? Because capitalists aren’t investing billions in content and infrastructure out of concern for your loneliness or knowledge. They’re capturing your mindspace, ensuring you never sit peacefully in silence long enough to question the system.
They understand something crucial: if people discovered themselves and observed what’s happening around them, they’d start asking uncomfortable questions. Questions that threaten profit margins and expose exploitation. So it’s in their interest to keep us perpetually distracted, always consuming, never reflecting.
We’re not consumers in this equation-we’re prey. Every conscious celebration that happens without excessive consumption represents lost revenue for someone. Every moment of genuine connection that doesn’t require purchasing anything threatens the system.
The Illusion of Aspiration and Limited Resources
We treat excessive consumers as role models. We want their lifestyles, their parties, their consumption patterns. But here’s the question nobody asks: if everyone on Earth consumed like the wealthy 1%, would our planet survive?
Earth has limited resources. The lifestyle you admire isn’t scalable to 8 billion people. The conscious celebration of life that traditional cultures practiced for millennia knew this intuitively-they understood balance, restraint, and community over consumption.
The 99% Knowledge Problem
Here’s a paradox: the person with 1% knowledge and the person with 99% knowledge often make the same mistakes. Why? Because that missing 1% creates doubt, fear, and lack of confidence. When shaken, we close our eyes and follow the crowd blindly, just like everyone else.
It’s like driving recklessly-you might survive 99 times, but that one instance can cost you everything. This isn’t hypothetical; it’s exactly what happened in Goa. It’s what happens every day in our blind pursuit of excitement without consciousness.
Climate Crisis: The Ultimate Price of Unconscious Living
We’re living through extreme climate change. Cities choke under 700+ AQI. Yet we continue consuming mindlessly, thinking “it’s not my concern.” The ultimate irony? Those who contribute least to the crisis-animals, sea creatures, poor communities, and the middle class—will suffer first and most.
No matter your wealth or savings, you have nowhere to call home except Earth. Every unconscious celebration that burns fossil fuels, every loud party that disturbs ecosystems, every mindless consumption pattern-they all contribute to making our only home uninhabitable.
Reclaiming Conscious Celebration
The path forward isn’t about eliminating joy or celebration-it’s about conscious celebration. Can we gather without deafening music? Can we mark special occasions without blind consumption? Can we find excitement in connection, creativity, and consciousness rather than intoxication and noise?
Traditional festivals were conscious celebrations. They connected communities, honored nature, and brought meaning without destroying peace or environment. We’ve inherited these traditions but stripped them of consciousness, keeping only the shell while filling it with commercial noise.
Every conscious celebration we choose over mindless consumption is an act of resistance. Every time we prioritize silence over noise, connection over consumption, we reclaim a piece of our humanity and our planet’s future.
Taking Personal Responsibility
Speaking up matters. Your choices matter. The questions you ask matter. When you choose conscious celebration, you inspire others. When you prioritize peace over noise, you create space for others to do the same.
The time for unconscious living has passed. The Goa tragedy, the climate crisis, the breakdown of community-these aren’t isolated incidents. They’re symptoms of a society that’s forgotten how to celebrate life consciously.
We can’t change the system overnight, but we can change ourselves today. We can choose conscious celebration over blind consumption. We can ask questions instead of following crowds. We can create joy without destroying peace or planet.
The choice is ours. But we must choose now, before that missing 1% of consciousness costs us the 100% we have left.
For more Read Consumption, Contentment, and Climate Crisis by Acharya Prashant.
