This morning i drank a can of red bull and started writing with a pen and a paper. I began to write about my own version of economics, or resource allocation. As i write on paper, i begin to realise that everything just ends with needs. Products, Jobs and all these numbers are just by-products of need fulfilling. I also realise that the problem with today’s society may be that we don’t realise that the highest fulfillment for self and for whole is fulfilling the needs of the whole.
A person has needs for food, and for health and for freedom and expression. These are pretty much fulfilled. But the needs that come after these basic needs are fulfilled are where people go wrong. People are often chasing for approval from others to fix their emotional needs, instead of helping others fulfill their basic needs. So this cycle of wanting to satisfy the ego, while inciting other people’s ego is really crazy. And is a mad race towards nothing. Where the need for superiority, respect, approval is, is where the lack of love and appreciation is present. A person who feels loved and appreciated is an end to themselves, they live simply and spread more love around. However, a place where love is a scarcity, you see people who don’t know how to love, which is how you increase the supply of love, trying their best to get the closest thing they can get to love (because there is no love) which are attention, respect, and others’ fear. Yes, all these are distorted versions of love. So the cure to materialism and status seeking isn’t better products or even achievements, but more love and appreciation for others.
After the need for food, health and freedom has been fulfilled. A person has free reign over his time to do anything he wants. And if he is loved and appreciated, he ought to focus on loving other people and fulfilling their needs in return. It is only when the higher needs of people are fulfilled, that people really are happy. Right now people can compete to have nicer cars than their friends, nicer houses than their friends, but all these while they are satisfying the ego which needs to feel superior over others. The society cannot advance when people are satisfying wrong needs, such as the needs of the ego.
In a perfect society, people would love each other and live in harmony and resources are shared and allocate perfectly to those who need it. However, this requires that the supply of love is high. If not, constant destructive competition would still be going on for the limited supply of approval. I guess what i am trying to say is people should be fulfilling the needs of people in developing countries who have no food to eat, no clean environment, no medication. Education will be the priority as long as it is not for status seeking, but seeking knowledge to do good for the community.
The way we can begin doing that is by including the poor people into the market place. If people have jobs and are able to fulfill the needs of the people with excess money, the money will go to the poor. And with nothing changed, the needs of the poor will be fulfilled. Of course, this will result in people with less and less money to spend in developed countries, but it is only natural because the purpose to help the poor come before the need to fulfill a person’s other needs. Besides helping others brings joy to people, and the joy of helping others should begin to be the main incentive that drive human activity. So the incentive provided by luxury cars, houses, achievement should be replaced by the satisfaction of achievement for helping the world become a better place for everyone.
However, it might not be true that people are uncaring, a lot of people just have fallen into the habit of self-fulfilment because they don’t know how else to fill this need. People have to be shown that helping others, volunteering to help the needy will make them more fulfilled than continue their other habits of self-fulfillment.
