Economy, Insights, IT, Knowledge, Future

What is your #1 priority in life?

. Tuesday, July 14, 2009

  1. Why is wealth a bad choice for #1?
    Look at the current’s world economy. If your priority is wealth and your entire life is built around it, then it’ll be quite impossible for you to rebuild it again since you life-long goal has been increasing wealth. When you reset it back to zero, so did you life. Carlos Araya knows this best.
  2. What about family? Can my life revolve around just my family?
    On the surface, this looks like a great priority. Using family as your bearing in life is easy. After all, that’s the benchmark you starts out your life with. However, what happens when you’re given a glimpse of heaven and you realized that you’ve been living in "hell” all your life? Azharuddin Ismail falls ill after he has tasted “heaven”. or realizing that the way your dad treated you was NOT acceptable by social norm? What about the Fritzl’s Case. (Kindly note that I’m not saying you shouldn’t put family as 1st. They are equally important to me. I’m just saying that there must be MORE important things beside family being first.)
  3. What about Religion?
    All over the world, there are numerous cases of conversions from one religion to another and then back again. Next in line will be cults that ranges from mildly misleading to outright destructive. Just to be cynical, with so many religions in the world, can we have the one true god? Is your god better than mine? (Again, religion has been very important ranking as priority in life but it should not be the #1 priority in life. Think of the differences in decimal of 0.01. Hopefully this will appease those sensitive minded from flaming the site)
  4. What about having a cosmopolitan mindset and think of the world globally? Protection of environment or World peace?
    Personally, I truly admire people like Al Gore for his life-long pursuit in trying to create awareness in the global climate change and how to spearhead a movement alongside Greenpeace and TreeHugger, Richard Saul Wurman and Harry Marks for founding TED in 1984, or the Zeitgeist Movement (and the movie) by Peter Joseph. However, currently I still am not ready to share their enthusiasm in changing the world yet. Why is that so? Maybe it’s because of my selfishness. I have not enjoyed the world enough to start caring for it at the level they do. Maybe after my MBA I will.

Apart from reason #4, the number #1 priority in life ought to be the pursue of independence in life. As per Maslow’s Hierarchy, we need to fulfill our most basic needs. Our individual survival is utmost important above all else. Once this has been fulfilled, we move on to the next stage as per the pyramid below.

 

As each level of fulfillment is achieved, we become more independent in life, all the other aspect and priority listed above will automatically falls into place and it’ll become eventual. Furthermore, upon any setback, we can always take a step back and re-pursue our “independence” toward self actualization.

11 comments:

Wendy Lee said...

Indeed yes, Maslow’s theory has been popularly adopted in today’s world, but why do you (and almost everyone, I suppose) take in Maslow's theory like it's some truth? Don't anyone dare to challenge against it? Things that appear making sense don’t mean it’s the truth. Maslow’s ‘self actualisation’ theory promotes individualism..... so think about it further.

Meanwhile, I’m not sure, but perhaps a lot of people in Mr Cyril’s class had their eyes opened towards ‘world peace’ sort of ideas, which seemed noble and praiseworthy due to its unselfish nature. That kind of act is definitely is a necessity because humans ought to be stewards of the earth. However, no matter how much heart and soul one can put these noble actions into place, the works will still be futile. Sounds pessimistic, huh? I’m not saying that we shouldn’t put such unselfish desire as the #1 priority, but I just want to point out that it will just be a tiresome, endless circle.

My opinion is that none of the above has looked into the root of cause. And this also applies to the religions* of the world (* the definition of ‘religion’ is debatable – I’m not going to further put my thoughts on this here now). I know such opinion against religions will provoke many, but it sure is to me, merely another set of human choice that some will make it their #1 priority but lead most people to nowhere.

So what is the root of cause? Without knowing the root of cause, we would just be going in hopeless circles. At the end of the day, I see that the aim of the class is to learn something...... learning to care for the world society/environment sure is a good ‘something’ but what I hope to share is that there is a bigger picture to it all. And I hope that your learning point will not stop just there but go beyond to the bigger picture.

taysoonee said...

Hi Wendy,

I've moved your comments to http://sites.google.com/site/businessethicsgroup/Home/13th-July

Pass me your email address so that you may create a page for further discussion there.

Wendy Lee said...

Hey Soon Ee. My gmail is a private email and I don't wish to paste it up on public site here. Any other alternative?

Why there's no 'comment' feature in the google site?

Temporary, I'll just put my further reply below first. You can remove it later. Thanks.

taysoonee said...

Hi Wendy,

Thank you for your feedback. Again, I'll move the comment over to the googlesites mentioned above shortly.

You can join the googlesite without using Gmail account. You may use another anonymous account if that's what you feel comfortable with here --> http://1979journal.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-join-googlesites-via-invitation.html

I understand that this article may provoke some emotions. Hence, I rather it to be done there rather than here.

Thanks for your understanding.

taysoonee said...

I forgotten. You need to forward me your "anonymous" email address so that I can invite you to participate in the sites.

Wendy Lee said...

If I paste up my email add here, how can it be anonymous anymore?? Hehehe.... :-p

Can't set the class google site to have some comment feature? Then how other class members gonna comment conveniently?

Wendy Lee said...

I'm not sure how the google site works, but since you mentioned that it needs invitation, may I suggest that you put up your email in the google site group discussion page? Then ask ppl to email you their emails so that they can access for feedbacks. What do you think?

Unknown said...

Our #1 priority in life differs simply because we are human. What I find of most import will not be of import to another, even if the other person was my own twin self. Thank God I don't have a twin. It would be difficult for me to accept the fact that my twin didn't share my sentiment! Being human, we perceive things differently.

My #1 priority in life is independence. I felt awkward at first upon noticing that I was the only one in Tuesday class to choose independence as my #1 priority. But that is simply me. I will never trade my independence over anything else. I am my own master, I set my own rules and I chart my own life. (Despite the best efforts to remain independent and have full control over my life, God has other plans for me. I travel the roads less travelled....) Bumpy and winding but still ok. I begin with the end in mind.

Sounded self-centered, yeah, I admit I am very much self-centered. But I promise no harm to others.

I believe to achieve the other priorities (i.e the other 11 statements) I must put myself first. The rest will follow. I must first better myself to be a better mother to my child, a better sister to my siblings and the best of friend to my friends.

Believing in my Creator is important to me since I always travelled the road less travelled. Failure to believe in the power that creates me will drive me insane but of course I still put myself first and follow my own rules. There is no ground rules here.

Work satisfaction, wealth, power and the rest will come naturally to me with my gain of independence in my life.

- Halisah -

Hemaloshinee said...
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Hemaloshinee said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hemaloshinee said...

Im really agree about religion but onething we need to know that family is more important than religion because religion comes from family and created by god to the human beings. If no family, how you know about your religion whether you hindu, buddha or muslim. Who state us into different religion? Sure, family and our parents. Then only, we know about religion. And we learn from them. This is my point of view.

My 2nd point is job performance, job performance comes from our independence character. Once you be more independence you will decide to do by your ownself so this kind of character can increase their capability in all situation. Doesn't matter whenever they be, they still can perform very well. So, my question is from where you learn this independence character sure from your family because they are the one encourage and support your sucess. After that, you try to perform in your job."Every sucess sure someone be behind us". This is my motto.

So, i know my religion because of my family. I can perform very well in my career independelly because of my family. So, our sucess belongs to the family members.

-hema-