Globalization of Valentine's Day: A triumph of capitalism

Penetration of the celebration of Valentine's Day across many cultures in the world is something that capitalism can cherish. With the global expansion of capitalism in the fastest ever speed, especially after the fall of USSR and liberalization in China, globalization of Euro-America centric culture is happening in further greater pace. I would like to analyze how Valentine's Day has turned to be a mere event to secure larger consumption for the bigger corporations and how local and indigenous cultures are threatened.
Our way of celebrating love:
The mass media, especially Television and internet-based New Media and Social Media have helped this phenomenon of Valentine's Day penetrate across many cultures. I am sure each culture has a respect for love and tradition of celebrating love in their own ways. For example, Nepalis have a festival called Basanta Panchami which falls at the start of the Spring season. This day is supposed to welcome the lovely Spring season and therefore should ignite romance and love among the people. However, hardly anybody knows about this tradition. 

Similarly, I have seen Bangali people also welcome the Spring season by celebrating Pohila Falgun on mid-February. But all of them are overwhelmingly overtaken by the imported Valentine's Day. This can also be termed as homogenization of cultures.

Commodification of Love:
The other feature of celebrating such a day is utter commodification. Through different means including media, this cruel system is penetrating all the walks of life with the evil consumerist culture. As in many of our festivals, the market has tapped in and now everything is market - rose, chocolates, gifts and down to condoms. 

The market has immensely benefited and the social values are ever challenged - the family disintegrating, social relationships threatened, pure love commercialized, an informed individual changed into a passive consumer and so many evil things happening with this day. Even the market wants couples to separate so that each Valentine's day, the individuals could be with new Valentines and the market could maximize the profit.

Depoliticization of masses:
The remarkable consequence of Valentine's Day is the depoliticization of the masses. In these days of busy life, people get very less time to look at their life and surroundings critically. Besides, the capitalist system wants that we, consumers, should not be involved in thinking; we should just be buying things and consuming them. This has happened with Valentine's Day too. Nobody is questioning if giving a rose on that day is the best way to propose a girl/boy or to express love to the partners. Nobody questions if imported rose can be replaced with other flowers easily available in the local market. People just do as the media tell them.

The way we lived our life has immensely changed even as compared to a decade ago. Yes, it has. Some of my friends think to be privileged by the availability of choices in the market. But has it really changed our lives? Are we happy with the choices? No. Certainly not. Somebody at the helm of a multinational company or firm is happy, exploiting all people and concentrating all resources of the world in single hands. To be bale to utilize these 'many' choices, we want more and indulge ourselves in the vicious cycle of work-consume-work-consume. The capitalist system wants that we work all our life and continue consuming; thinking is strictly prohibited.

Therefore, there are many more consequences of such seemingly minor cultural event. Homogenization of cultures, commodification and depoliticization of masses are some of the starkest results. To stop the current moving so fast, it is high time critical academia taught the new generation about this evil system. We cannot let all evil things happen in whatever pretexts.