The world needs to change and I’m starting from me.
Written by: Ethan Seow Yi Zhe / The Chill Philosopher
I am writing this personal manifesto because of a deep need to connect with people who think similarly. And for those who know me, this has been a path I’ve been on for a long time, but could never articulate it fully until recently (literally 2 days before writing this). Let me begin by stating my personal life-work and how I hope to achieve it.
Goal: Create a world where people are conscious and mature, focusing on what matters as a humanity rather than mindless self-gain.
Method: Create a society where people’s needs are met eagerly, and support is given to those who need to find it.
Current step: Develop systems of creating and maintaining the teams of people doing this work such that it can last beyond our lifetime.
Let’s break them down and share the fundamental assumptions about my life-work.
Goal: Create a world where people are conscious and mature, focusing on what matters as a humanity rather than mindless self-gain.
My goal is to create a world where people are open to new perspectives, engage actively in improving humanity as a whole, and are keen to empathise and be compassionate to one another. How would it look like?
Imagine a world where leaders walk the talk, live by example and are open-hearted to listen to their people. Imagine a world where everyone is a leader in their own way, and feel no anxiety over fending their own territory. Imagine a world where leaders are chosen because of active discourse, open communication, and honest feedback.
Imagine a world where individuals on the street are friendly, authentic, and able to be compassionate in times of need. Imagine a world where every person’s needs are met, and the compulsion to squabble over perceived “scarce resources” is no longer there. Imagine a world where every person is able to offer a listening ear, a source of inspiration, or a helping hand when someone else is in need.
That’s the world I wish to create. Would you like such a world? I definitely would.
And in my journey, I’ve struggled to find the means of achieving it because I thought I had to have all the answers. Clearly, it isn’t the case. I found many people on the way of doing their part. What matters more, to me, is my role to play here.
I discovered this role from the tender age of 14 and has been my journey ever since. It is a is to address and solve why we can’t have it at the root of the problem — “human nature”. To be exact, it is to address our gross misunderstanding of human nature.
When people are greedy, we call it human nature. When people desire to play politics and maliciously hurt others, we call it human nature. When people fight over morsels rather than grow the pie, we call it human nature. When we see people do good things and are compassionate, we don’t call it human nature. We say that those people are heroes. They are better than us mere mortals. It’s almost as if we believe that human nature is evil. Is it?
I’d propose another view — the terrible things that humans do are due to human nature in reaction to a lack of fulfilment of our most fundamental needs. This is why they keep fighting over toilet paper, money, status, power and whatnots, rather than care to build towards a better common future. People who do these malicious things feel a deep lack of fulfilment where they are psychologically and emotionally.
If a person’s needs are truly fulfilled, they are everything that we just described in the world I wish to create. They become civic-minded, open-hearted and compassionate people that care for others and believe in taking responsibility for their actions. I’ve experienced how it is possible. I’ve seen selfish, self-absorbed people turn into the kindest, most compassionate people through addressing their needs.
It goes back to how we understand human nature and our needs.
Why we behave badly
2 years ago, I rebooted Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs because I discovered why it had not served us in creating the ideal society we’ve been seeking. At first, I thought Maslow got it wrong — when people had their needs satisfied by others, they seem to be more demanding for more of the same things, like spoilt brats. Surely, if a person’s needs are satisfied they shouldn’t be demanding more?
Then comes people who would reduce it to simply “human nature”. But it isn’t.
What I discovered in the process of reading Maslow’s own writing, he had a clear difference between satisfiers and needs. So, when a person says that they need more food than they actually do, they are hoarding satisfiers, not needs. That means that the person’s needs are still not met, and the things they are hoarding are an attempt to try to placate it.
So, when you see a person being spoilt and unreasonably demanding, it is due to a deep, psychological craving for something to satisfy a need. And because the person believes that they need more “things” to satisfy their needs, they keep clamouring for more. We don’t need these “things” to satisfy our needs, we need to know how to satisfy our own needs.
A common example of this misunderstanding is when people think that they are hungry when they are thirsty. The feeling is similar, there’s a feeling of lack on the stomach, the body clamps up, and they feel weak. If the person reaches for dehydrating food, the person would continue to keep eating to try to satisfy this strange never-ending hunger. If the person manages to have soupy or moisture-rich food, the person would feel satisfied.
But if the person just drank a glass of water, the same thing would have been achieved, without the caloric intake.
Do we know how to satisfy our own needs? Do we know what need is calling out at us?
When people are sad and reach for comfort food rather than going deep into themselves to find out what’s wrong, it becomes a crutch. Every time they feel sad, they’ll reach for the bag of chips, or wonderful home-cooked food to feel more satisfied. Does this make them feel better? Yes. Does this satisfy their needs? No. The feeling keeps coming back and they keep having to go back to those “things”.
Eventually, they would start stashing up all the snacks and food they can to make sure that when they feel down or sad, they would be able to reach the food. They would hoard, and fight and steal to just get the resources they “need”.
That’s where greed, power-hunger, politics and whatnot arises from.
All the problems with “human nature” begin with us replacing what truly satisfies our needs with other things. And they would need needs copious amounts of the replacement just to achieve the same effects, with tons of side effects.
With that context put in place, let’s go into the method that I wish the achieve the goal with.
Method: Create a society where people’s needs are met eagerly, and support is given to those who need to find it.
At the bottom of the pyramid in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, is called physiology. I changed it to biology to make it a little bit more specific because we need to recognise that biologically, our brain needs intimacy. The best way of describing intimacy was summed up beautifully by Stephen R Covey in his quote, “The deepest hunger of [a child’s] human heart is to be understood, for understanding implicitly affirms, validates, recognizes and appreciates the intrinsic worth of another.”
Intimacy is the feeling of being understood by another. And feeling understood makes a person feel that they are valid, and they are of worth. That is the fundamental need that has not been satisfied for many of us. Therefore, we seek intimate relationships that “make us feel alive”, but die off as soon as the problems start appearing. Therefore, we seek the things that we think would make us valid — money, family, status, power, whatnots.
The demands of society today have created a feeling that you have to be a “contributing member of society” through the means of economic participation for you to be valid. If you don’t earn money, you’re invalid. If you don’t earn x amount a month, you’re invalid. If you earn more, you’re more valid.
Going back to the story of a person eating to replace thirst or sadness, the person might be able to achieve the feeling of validation through the things that they hoard. But all the person really needed was feeling valid. That could be achieved by having intimacy with the people around them.
That is why the method goes back to addressing people’s needs — it is about kindness, validation and support. It is about being intimate with people who just need that little boost of understanding, affirmation and validation. Being understanding doesn’t mean “yes, I agree with you” but a process of appreciating and letting the person express themselves. It is not easy (because we are not taught to do so today), but it would do wonders.
So, the method is about creating a society that would do that for anyone. Understanding and appreciating people is not difficult once we are fulfilled ourselves, which is why this society cannot magically appear tomorrow. That’s when we go into the next step.
Current step: Develop systems of creating and maintaining the teams of people doing this work such that it can last beyond our lifetime.
Creating such a society, in reality, needs tons of resources. Why? Because the world today is highly fragmented, lonely, and antagonistic. The discrimination we are experiencing today is due to the feeling of lack of intimacy these people feel in their lives. The situation is already bad and turning people around is difficult without the resources in place.
What are the resources?
1. People. People are the most important resource in this picture. They have to be fulfilled on the inside and therefore are able to give to others before they can impact others.
2. Reach. The more we can spread this message and gather the right people to come along, the better. The right people are the people who already feel fulfilled, are on a path to support others, and are looking to join forces.
3. Financial. The tool of today is still money. The ability to feed and take care of people, the ability to spread the word, the budgets to create the needed content and products to make this happen all require money.
4. Research & Ideas. We need more thoughts, research and practical means of creating the processes to reach the society that we need. There’s plenty going on, and it’s about how we gather these resources together to make things work.
Creating and sustaining and replicating these teams that create impact on the ground is essential. The initiatives that I have started or are still a part of — Undelusional, The Office Matters, Dakota Wellness, Quick Connect (with Alex), Chill Sessions (with Lionel) and The ASEAN Living Room (with Michelle) — are all measures in which I wish to engage people to reach the goal together.
Only when the teams and the communities they create are feeling fulfilled, can we spread more and share the love across the societies we are participating in.
How can you get involved?
You can get involved with the initiatives, as a part of the communities and to engage with my life-work in different manners (if you can think of some).
- The Office Matters. Please go to our The Office Matters Facebook Page, like it and watch out for the next couple of updates that I’m having!
- Dakota Wellness. Head over to the website and sign up as a person who’s interested in learning active listening. =)
- The ASEAN Living Room. Please head over to our Facebook page, like it and join us on the next couple of sessions we’re doing.
- Quick Connect. Head over to Strengths Alchemy, like it and watch our sessions and join us every Tuesday evening when we go live!
- Chill Sessions. Head over to The Chill Philosopher Facebook Page, like it and let me know what you think of our sessions!
