Humanity and our purpose

Watching a show called 1000 ways to die 

This show is absolutely crass. The puns they use are, well… painful. But I have noticed, I am more conducive to productivity when I am faced with white noise. At the same time, I have been looking into the words these advertisers have been using. 11pm, the best of the worst attracting those who are awake watching the ‘tube instead of sleeping (A.K.A. infomercials).

I remember buying a $500 Tony Robbins tape pack on late night TV. Victimized? Hardly. Targeted? ABSOLUTELY! Was it worth the purchase? I did listen to all the tapes and made positive changes in my life, built a business with the woman I love and managed to make it in a small way. So I guess yes, it was worth the purchase. (By the way, you can purchase the same tapes/audio series cheaper on ebay instead of the direct marketing company)

Humanity is designed to have a purpose, whether it is to be for self-indulgence and debauchery, profit, family, recognition, service to others or to a deity (or belief system!)

Late night TV can predictably give the underachievers or under appreciated or just those searching for something better a glimmer of hope. Hope that if Tony can do it, so can I. Hope that if someone as popular as Brittany Spears can have a complexion problem solved by Pro-Active, maybe I can achieve music greatness too. I know I stretch the imagination and reach sometimes, yet this seems to be the problem. People are looking for hope.

The first world citizens are certainly looking for it. What more our brothers and sisters in the poorer countries?

Maslow cited his hierarchy of needs, of which, a sense of achievement being one of the most important ones.

I blatantly took this image from the linked site

In simple terms, try giving a purpose to a family whose individual members (children included) scrape and barely get by. Their main focus is where to get the next meal. Give them a Hope that there is something better; you get a re-focusing of purpose other than basic survival.

I am not an anthropologist nor am I a sociologist. The experience I have in the Philippines is akin to a memory from a dream. Granted I still have the scars from growing up there, but society has a way to develop into a different analogue each time I visit. It’s the same… yet it’s different.

What stays the same, besides the enormous gap between the rich and poor, is the attitude of the people. The same stigma and superstition remain, as well as the seeming trust to those that momentarily captivate their attention. In blogs such as Get Real Philippines, a call for the Thinking Population is being heralded.

It all starts out with a simple ideal. A “Better Philippines” is a mantra I can rally behind. Yet who is to say what is “Better”? What metrics do we use? An even better question is how do we recover if we make a mistake?

The Fallows article I noted a few blogs back is one of the most articulate ones I have found. As I have shared previously, I am not a sociologist nor am I a person solely concerned about social justice. I am a firm believer in Free Enterprise. I believe in the hand up, not a hand down.

There is so much material to go through, it is going to drive me away from my main purpose, which is to build up my underprivileged brethren with Maslow's first two tiers (that is: Psychological and Safety Needs) of the pyramid using the Foundation.