Hello everybody from a sweltering day here in London. It feels good to have 30 degree Celsius in the capital for a few days straight.
I was having a drink with a friend the other day who is a management accountant and was laid off last November from the financial industry and is still struggling to find suitable employment.
She has been thinking during her time out of work what else would give her a sense of purpose and satisfaction in life. She enjoys many extracurricular activities and especially working with kids.
So I posed her a question. If money was no object would she engage in a commercial activity to provide a service or a product or would she completely go off the radar and live either a WAG-like lifestyle or a hermit?
After quite a bit of deliberation she came to the conclusion that engaging in some sort of commercial activity would be where she would see herself.
Now let's look at a WAG-like lifestyle or the opposite term for men in those positions. I think most people would be bored where life revolved around shopping, the gym and the tanning salon. I'm sure others would enjoy this, but most people I have come across seek a purpose for themselves.
The second lifestyle of becoming a hermit or going off into the wilds to find yourself and meditate may appeal to some who are disillusioned with life and society and do not want anything to do with it. However, by disappearing like so, someone who is talented, skilful and has something that can benefit society would be doing the world a disservice.
Whereas, when someone turns to a commercial enterprise be it the little boy who is selling lemonade outside his house or Bill Gates whose software is almost on every desktop and laptop PC in the world, the domino effect benefits far more than initially envisaged.
Since man moved from the hunter gatherer lifestyle to the agrarian way of living he has bartered or traded what he produced for something else. For example, a pig farmer bartering meat for cow's milk. Nowadays, we have micro-credit that enables the poorest of the poor to access funds to start cottage industries in Africa, Asia and beyond.
We have a school kid in the UK inventing a solar powered refrigeration unit for countries in Africa and other continents where access to electricity is non-existent. This invention will benefit the less developed world in such a way that no amount of aid can do so.
I believe commercialism is in-built into our genes, some more so than others and the products and services that are invented, developed and spread across society on the back of commercial activity have a greater positive impact than any other method of advancing civilization.
Take Michael Jackson's music, if it weren't for the commercial exposure he got, then today not many people would have heard his music and thus not mourn his passing or revive the music he produced.
Shah Alam
Subscribe