Getting past the greed is something I wanted for quite some time. My quest for the best is gone now. But that does not mean I just satisfice. But the cost of achieving best becomes more costly when compared to its benefits sometimes. The need for achieving the best may be lost in that case. Do I need the hottest person on earth as my partner? Do I want to make maximum money anyone can make on earth? Do I need to be the best at a particular trait? People might remember me for a longer time if I do. But do I need that? Won’t my life be awesome with such fantasies coming true? It certainly will. But come to think of the purpose then. Why do I need a very desirable partner, lot of wealth? For living a good life something lesser than best may do! But by this I don’t advocate mediocrity. How is that? An individual may try to define its individuality and mediocrity is opposite of that. But how do we define individuality is what matters. Do I consider my choices made out passionately with that much thinking? If making money is my goal I must be passionate about it. How good I am at it is all that matters. But acknowledgement at certain level achieves that? Founder of Flipkart proved his skill of entrepreneurship already. Does he need to be Warren Buffet 2.0 to prove to he himself further, depend on him? People really don’t evaluate if you can make Flipkart beat Apple or Google. Your shareholders care about their own money growing, not about your ambition. It is only the Flipkart founder who needs to evaluate and make that choice. Behind that choice it is important for him to remember why he found Flipkart and also important are his other desires. He would have gone for satisficing if he just wanted a venture which runs for given number of years or made a particular amount of money at a particular rate. But again why he decided such a measure he should be aware of that. Yes, reasoning own intentions for setting such goals won’t stop with just one level.
The purpose of human life and meaning of action has been a long thought of and well debated question. To the one who did not think of what he really wanted in life and never knew how his goals and choices changed accepting mediocrity is easy. But he does not care much about it. Society, religion and conformity to peer pressure ensure that most of the population isn’t bothered about living such a life. Their goals are socially defined and give them immense pride in achieving those. They thus live a good life with ups and downs based on outcomes of such goals achieved just like those who define their own path with lesser conformity to the regular. But there are people who try to define themselves differently not based how others acknowledge their individuality but they themselves do. They set their own goals, consider their passions and decide on their choices. Again human beings are social creatures who cannot be isolated completely even on their own. But again we have our own individual knowledge acting as intuition and what is taught to us as tuition. Over time our intuition is enriched with tuition too. And our interpretation of tuition is also based on our intuition and intention. Hence those who set their own path as I am mentioning in this essay confirm less to societal and other such institutional expectations. But following your intuition may not always mean that you need to defer from such expectations. I just wanted to show that even though I argue for individualism here, it is not absolute. Even a hermit befriends with nature and his surroundings including the animals, plants and inanimate objects. Emotion does it to us. Human beings are not closed thermodynamic system to go to chaos according to second law. We are open systems and hence we form complex patterns in our action and thinking.
Going back to our earlier discussion, knowing what our passions are difficult to define. But the quest to define our individuality to ourselves makes the process of defining our goals easier. Making most amount of money in such case will be a difficult goal if reasoned well. Because after making certain amount of money my expected lifestyle of drinking Dom or Moet frequently may very well be satisfied. But why I set such a goal is just known to me. If it was just Dom then just buying Dom should have been the goal and the desire for Dom is personal one. But will a person make more money to just make more money? Surrendering to institutional pressure make any person less individual and less human. I say less human because then we could have replaced such a person could be replaced with an algorithm based robot if one could be made. Again this leads us to ask if the person always has one goal in life. People have multiple goals for sure, just that they prioritize. When the priorities change, depends on the purpose of our goals being achieved. This is not satisficing because it is not that you settled for less when you could have it more optimized, instead you settled for less than what others expected to be the best for you. Yes I can go further to make the goal of achieving the best sound pathetic when taking the example of China achieving the growth it has. Yes now you will question my definition of best. But who defines best? Is it China or the individuals there or just you or me?
Greed is not good according to several religions and other institutions at least the way I learnt it in my childhood. But once I grew up, it is advocated that greed is good and I am not just repeating the line from movie Wall Street here. You know that since your parents want you to have a good lifestyle and so do your partners. But a good lifestyle is defined either by the unfulfilled desires or just peer pressure. Why the broker on wall-street, a banker, an entrepreneur or a manager needs to make a lot of money? It is definitely not the desire to serve society or shareholders. It is to make money for self which happens to be dependent on how much money we make for others. And the purpose for making a lot of money may simply be vacation from lifestyle disease inducing job at a virgin island. In a country like India such question may be asked to politicians/ bureaucrats and other corrupters who make crores of money but do not get to use it much. In a third world country people save for future generations such that the next generation does not toil for sustaining the same lifestyle and they grow. Thus does the society. Anthropologically this may sound logical. But there these parents sometime forget to define how much is enough. Do they teach their offspring the purpose of providing them with wealth enough to sustain a good life style is for them to grow as an individual and thus help the whole human race grow? Yes for achieving one purpose as best possible few more responsibilities and goals are sacrificed. Mediocrity will not need you to think about it. But being more than mediocre will make you think and reason your choices well. Achieving best without well-reasoned choice of scale of measure for defining best will fail the purpose. Coming back to the question of good lifestyle that one should expect for oneself and descendants can be answered with the help of defining needs vs. wants and understanding how many wants we really need to fulfil beyond the necessary.
The ‘occupy wall-street’ movement in a way should be considered a wake up point for the wall-street brokers and bankers to reflect on why they invented complex and add-other-attributes type financial instruments which later failed. They need to think if making money at the rate they wanted was any good. The shareholders investing in such a good financial market need to think if their greed is justified. When justified it won’t remain greed. Expecting growth is good for individuals and the human race but excess will ruin things just like recent recessions have proved. The whole western thinking needs thus to go for introspection. They need not go to some Eastern Guru for the same. Reflect on the catholic values and understand why the seven sins are considered sins. Reinterpret self-reliance essay by Emerson to decide what is good for you and the society. Even Dexter understood what is good for the society and him and put his murderous intentions to good use. I do not encourage vigilantism and mercy killings by that example though ;)
Commenting on this from Indian (rather Hindu) perspective I shall repeat what one of the Upanishads advises i.e. we (the teachers) only offer you teachings but it is for you to interpret and understand what is good and how these teachings should be followed by you. I sometimes laughed at such an advice since a criminal defined by society as criminal may very well reason his need to commit the crime, but again an individual needs to understand how his choices affect the society and thus may affect him in return i.e. If all criminals could justify their actions free riding will be encouraged leading to peril of the society and thus the individual. Yes hence defining good or bad and deciding on making choices hence should be dependent on both how the choice affects the person himself and the society at large.
What I advised for western society affects the eastern one too. The country where Kamasutra was conceptualised, considers the text merely as a sex guide. The teachings about society and the guidelines about maintaining a healthy lifestyle mentioned in it are ignored. Many other ancient such teachings have been forgotten. The goal of achieving good lifestyle defined in own skewed ways marred introspection and became social expectation. Yes the goal is not achieved for many but of those for whom the goal was achieved very few understood and explained the purpose and the way forward to their descendants. Yes my argument is that we need to change our thinking as an society and it is needed to be done at least by this part of population which achieved expected lifestyle and can go on to define personal growth. This does not mean that Indians need to change their ways of valuing family and society a lot more than western counter parts. But even Buddha went on to find his purpose, define his own goal and to achieve it. He had the support of his family too or at least he could convince them later :)
Just like argument for understanding purpose behind individuals’ action argument can be extended for collective action of a group by considering the group as a whole and as an individual in its surrounding society. In fact for the society setting goal like growth can be analysed and answered by asking how much growth is needed and in what aspects. Just because we can formulate complex systems complicating life is not necessary.
Also coming to think of ancient teachings which are ignored now-a-days in India, it is majorly because the lack of encouragement of debate and argument in our society. If you taught your child Socraterian method to reason and grasp knowledge he would make you explain the purpose of actions and understand it even if you forget that as your duty. Our society could have grown a little better with politicians being not able to take the voters for a ride with their offerings. Proper reasoning and thus estimations would have even improved city planning. Yes idealistic thinking like this can promise to achieve many things convincing you of logical soundness. You may not have looked at the loopholes in such logic because of framing of arguments.
Hence the last nail here is dependence on logic while arguing all this. Like Wittgenstein I too doubt the success of such an ideal to come true because logic is not all persistent. It certainly satisfies the thinkers but the cost of thinking and using logic many a times overwhelming. The philosophers who laughed at it should consider why white collars get paid lot more than blue collars. Introspection and understanding the purpose of our imminent actions should at least be foundations of the society and taught in every family and school when we haven’t found a way to discover the purpose of life at large yet. In my middle class family even though I get to read Socrates pretty early in life arguing was not something much encouraged. May be it is difficult to argue with children but my persistent effort brought fruit later where we get to argue much of our action in the family. How much of the argument is actually followed and how much of regular social norms at the end of the day is a different story though. :P
PS: Please let me know of grammatical errors, logical loopholes and other remarks.
