Are We Creating a Society Built on Selling?

Society is changing.

There was a time when the meaning of “selling” was different. To sell something meant giving or taking money for a product or service. Simple and honest trade.

Today, selling is no longer just a corner of our life, it is our life.

We are not just selling goods, we are selling ourselves. Our time. Our thoughts. Our attention. Our body. Our emotions. Our spirit. Our relationships. Even our children.

Everywhere you look, someone is pitching, branding, performing, or packaging.

People are selling products. People are selling courses. People are selling their bodies for survival or validation.

Children who once lived in the safe and unseen corners of family life, they are now exposed to social media. Because their parents are becoming greedy and selfish and ready to sell their childhood.

Mothers film their toddlers crying, blabbering, walking, or falling. Why? Because they call it “content” and post it on social media platforms as “reels” or “shorts”.

Relationships have become a joke now instead of sacred connections.

They are exposing and selling everything from their dating moments to proposing to marriage events.

Couples are eager to show you how they care for each other. How they love each other. How they hug. How they kiss. How they sleep. How they romance on their beds. Everything is packaged as content for couple reels.

Some even show what sexual positions they try (with clothes on). Just remove the legal and social boundaries and restrictions, and then they would show you without clothes too. Like some couples are already doing it on OnlyFans accounts.

Even grief and pain aren’t spared. They are filtering it. Narrating it with full of emotions. And then they upload it for likes, shares, and subscriptions.

There is a quiet desperation underneath all this. People just not only want to earn but want to be seen as well. They fear that they will disappear in a world that equates visibility with value.

We are losing ourselves trying to please the crowd and performing for the herd. We are conforming to whatever sells best.

It’s no longer a society that sells. It’s a society built on selling.

What Do the Great Thinkers Say?

The moment you become a commodity, you are no more a human being. And the whole society is trying to reduce everybody into a commodity. — Osho

Osho saw this disease early, the disease of comparison, branding, and competition. He warned that the more we try to be marketable—the further we drift from our soul. According to him, this endless selling was not success—it was a deep spiritual poverty.

Nietzsche saw the danger of herd mentality long before algorithms existed.

He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.

People forget the simple truth. The truth is that when we do not know who we are, we allow society to decide it for us. We let the market tell us our value. We become products in someone else’s shop window.

Nietzsche saw the modern human as dangerously close to becoming a hollow performer. A performer who is not living but advertising his/her life.

What does Acharya Prashant say?

The restless mind is the ideal customer. And the market knows how to feed that restlessness.

When our mind is restless, we always look for something new. The next thing to do. The next thing to buy. The next goal to achieve. We become the perfect customer.

We are easy to sell to because we are never fully satisfied. We always search for something—that can fix our boredom, loneliness, fear, or emptiness.

Jiddu Krishnamurti also warned:

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

Krishnamurti said it right. Just because we fit into society, or just because we seem normal according to society’s standards, it doesn’t mean we are actually healthy, wise, or right.

If the society itself is unhealthy. If it is filled with wrong values, shallow goals, or selfish behaviors. Then adjusting to it is not a sign of our strength. It is a sign that we have accepted sickness as normal.

Why Are We So Desperate to Sell?

Today, we are selling but there is a deep emptiness inside us.

We are so desperate to sell because:

• We want to be seen. Deep down, everyone wants to feel noticed. People are afraid of becoming invisible or forgotten. That’s why we love the attention we get on selling a product, a story, or even our personality. And attention feels like proof that we matter.
• We want to feel valued. The definition of self-worth has changed today. It depends on how much we can sell. How many people follow us on social media. And how much we can earn. Therefore, we have started believing that if we are not marketable, we are not valuable.
• We want to belong. We are social beings. So when we see that everyone around us is selling something in one way or another, we feel pressured to do the same. We fear if we don’t join in, we will miss something. We think will be forgotten or we will be left behind.
• We are hungry for approval. Every like, every comment, every sale feels like a little piece of love. We take it as a little nod from the world that is saying to us, “You are good enough.” We start to depend on that approval instead of building a strong sense of self from within.
• We believe survival depends on it. In many ways, it is true. To earn a living today, we have to sell more than ever before—not just products, but our skills, our knowledge, and even our emotions. Selling becomes tied to survival itself.

In simple words, we sell because we are searching for love, recognition, and security in a world that often only notices those who shout the loudest.

So, What Do We Do?

We don’t have to fight this madness by screaming or blaming others. Our real rebellion should be quiet.

It happens when we refuse to sell everything. It happens when we don’t get influenced by society. It happens when we keep some parts of our life private—away from public eyes, away from the market.

We must understand that it is our duty to keep our deepest feelings safe. We should avoid sharing every joy or heartbreak we have. Stop turning them into a post, video, or product.

It is our duty to protect our children. So let them live and grow naturally. We won’t achieve anything positive by putting their lives on display or attention.

Our relationships and private moments are not for sale. So share only what is necessary among friends and family, not everything about it. We shouldn’t sound greedy, desperate, or selfish.

We should hold our pain with dignity. We should avoid turning our wounds into performances for sympathy or clicks. It will not heal us, it will scar us in the long run.

In simple terms, we save the most precious parts of our lives from being sold.

Our life should be about:

• Creating something because they matter to us, not because they will get us likes or money.
• Sharing moments because we genuinely want to connect, not because we want to build a personal brand.
• Living life fully without always needing an audience.

Because if we keep selling every sacred thing, then one day, we won’t have anything sacred left.

A society that puts a price tag on everything will eventually lose its heart, its meaning, and its soul.

And that’s the real danger we must protect ourselves—and our future—from.