Some thoughts ran through my mind today.
Thoughts regarding aspects of my life, both present and the future. Most of you may already know that I'm undergoing a course for business marketing in SIM. In this course, we learn many things- concepts that will generate profits for the organizations that we work for. We learn how to create demand for the goods and services we have; how to make advertisements, how to design promotions. Sometimes the things we learn seem to have a good purpose- societal marketing to cut down on smoking or perhaps environmental awareness on climate change, stuff like this. It may seem attractive at first but therein lies the entire parody.
Milton Friedman once advocated that there is only one social responsibility of a business- to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages open and free competition, without deception or fraud.
Today i engaged in a conversation with Ting. I said to her jokingly:
Me: No girls will like me. I've nothing. No money. Nothing. Except my dreams. Remember the 5Cs, there's a lot of truth in it.
Ting's reply to me was that she never saw the need for her BF to be rich. She told me that many girls has similar thoughts regarding this matter.
Obviously, I agree with her on that matter. I'm not such a pessimist about girls. My point that I wanted to put across here is that society these days is getting more and more materialistic. It wasn't always like this in the past. It's just the way society has been moulded today, by the hands of us marketers. This is the parody that all we marketers face and there is a great need to address this, or at the very least be aware of it.
How ingenious.I'll provide a very simple example of the situation. I cannot imagine anymore without some level of difficulty how the idea of proposing to a lady with a diamond ring came about. Since what time did such a ritual become a norm for men? Ever since diamonds were discovered you say. Perhaps. A guy who loves his girlfriend dearly decides to materialize his eternal love for her in the form of a diamond. Some other guy (the marketer) foresees a demand for this diamond and decides to tell the whole world, or more specifically women that there is no greater prove for a men's love for them than a diamond. We fell for it. Diamond's are now a woman's best friend. So what happens in such a society where a man is unable to afford that diamond ring? Most probably his sphere of women who is attracted to him is significantly reduce. There are of course exceptions to this. It's just that in general, expectations are rising. We expect more of this, or that and when we don't receive it, we don't feel as satisfied as we should have been then.
In the book Seven Types of Ambiguity, Simon was conversing with Angel.
"I have thought people should get involved with the problems of other people. People don't help enough. It's the... it's probably the closest thing I've ever had to a philosophy. A pragmatic philosophy. You see it every day. Most people are too... they're not evil. They're just..."
"Lazy?" I (Angel) volunteered.
"Apathetic."
"You're sure they're not evil?" I asked him.
"Some people are definitely, unequivocally evil, but most people are not. Most people are simply apathetic, unaware and frightened. A lot of bad gets done by people who are not bad people. Maybe it's always been this way but I think it's more so now than ever. I saw a documentary about the sixties on TV the other day. They showed all these people in their twenties and thirties sitting around holding candles singing "We shall overcome". They were protesting against racism and the Vietnam War. It's not that people in their twenties and thirties then were better or smarter than people in their twenties and thirties now."
"So what is it?"
"It's the times. The times, they have changed. Where once people were told that the answers were blowing in the wind, now it's they who are blown by the wind, the wind generated by the market. The ruthless pursuit of the bottom line is the siren song of the times and the song is played over the public address system in banks, in stores and supermarkets. It's played when you are downsized because your company can replace you with somebody in another country for two dollars a day. And it's played whenever you call up anything needing assistance and they put you on hold because they've cut back on staff in other to increase their share price.
"But people have always been obsessed with the bottom line. Why is it any different now? Hasn't money always been the siren song?"
"It has never been so loud. It's never been so ubiquitous. It has never before so routinely, so blatantly, ousted and nullified citizenship and notions of the common good, once was called the common weal. It has never so successfully colonized men's souls"
Back to my life. Whenever a person asks me what I had in mind career wise after I graduate. What industry do I want to work in? Any company I want to work for?
To good friends, I'll say "Maybe work for a small firm first, after that see how." On good days I'll say "Work for myself." and to people I don't feel like talking to, I'll say, "Sell backside lor."
In all instances I'm not telling any lie. Truth is, as much as I want to think I have, I've not really planned a standard path which I'll follow at the moment. I can't imagine myself working in say the slimming industry though. Having to tell women that they're fat, or they don't look good enough in order to achieve greater sales revenue. It's just against the principles that I have. (This is also part of the selfish reason in the disinterest I have in doing the Skinfood project). "You don't look good enough. Buy our product and you will be beautiful." Makes me feel sick.
There's another part of me that wants to run my own company. My friends always say to me "DREAMING AGAIN IS IT?" A little is my reply. Let's just call this company Mok Pte Ltd. My aim however is to create a firm ran by a group of closely knitted friends, and if possible together my wife too. And we'll have a great deal of fun working together just as I did in school. The fuel or passion of it all will not be for the money, but for our common dream of achieving something together. It must benefit society in a positive manner as a whole. We'll have a charitable company to donate 10% of our profits to. It'll be "make a wish", because I always believe in the power of dreaming and wishing and working hard for it (I want as many children to believe in that too). We'll have a great deal of satisfaction together and when I have a family and children myself, I want to be able to tell my kids that this is what dad did and that they can out do daddy as long as you work hard for it. When they start studying and have to select a firm to work on for their project, they can choose dad's firm and I'll give them all the interviews they require. They'll be proud of dad. Same goes for my friend's children.
After my career and family is stable, I want to start a chain of day care centers for children. I want to use my success to tell them when they are still young that:
it is OK to dream BIG.
Nobody ever has the right to trample or say that your dreams
Don't just dream, work hard for it
Never ever work for the money- it's much too small of an objective to aim for
It is possible because WE did it. Together.
Thoughts regarding aspects of my life, both present and the future. Most of you may already know that I'm undergoing a course for business marketing in SIM. In this course, we learn many things- concepts that will generate profits for the organizations that we work for. We learn how to create demand for the goods and services we have; how to make advertisements, how to design promotions. Sometimes the things we learn seem to have a good purpose- societal marketing to cut down on smoking or perhaps environmental awareness on climate change, stuff like this. It may seem attractive at first but therein lies the entire parody.
Milton Friedman once advocated that there is only one social responsibility of a business- to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages open and free competition, without deception or fraud.
Today i engaged in a conversation with Ting. I said to her jokingly:
Me: No girls will like me. I've nothing. No money. Nothing. Except my dreams. Remember the 5Cs, there's a lot of truth in it.
Ting's reply to me was that she never saw the need for her BF to be rich. She told me that many girls has similar thoughts regarding this matter.
Obviously, I agree with her on that matter. I'm not such a pessimist about girls. My point that I wanted to put across here is that society these days is getting more and more materialistic. It wasn't always like this in the past. It's just the way society has been moulded today, by the hands of us marketers. This is the parody that all we marketers face and there is a great need to address this, or at the very least be aware of it.
How ingenious.I'll provide a very simple example of the situation. I cannot imagine anymore without some level of difficulty how the idea of proposing to a lady with a diamond ring came about. Since what time did such a ritual become a norm for men? Ever since diamonds were discovered you say. Perhaps. A guy who loves his girlfriend dearly decides to materialize his eternal love for her in the form of a diamond. Some other guy (the marketer) foresees a demand for this diamond and decides to tell the whole world, or more specifically women that there is no greater prove for a men's love for them than a diamond. We fell for it. Diamond's are now a woman's best friend. So what happens in such a society where a man is unable to afford that diamond ring? Most probably his sphere of women who is attracted to him is significantly reduce. There are of course exceptions to this. It's just that in general, expectations are rising. We expect more of this, or that and when we don't receive it, we don't feel as satisfied as we should have been then.
In the book Seven Types of Ambiguity, Simon was conversing with Angel.
"I have thought people should get involved with the problems of other people. People don't help enough. It's the... it's probably the closest thing I've ever had to a philosophy. A pragmatic philosophy. You see it every day. Most people are too... they're not evil. They're just..."
"Lazy?" I (Angel) volunteered.
"Apathetic."
"You're sure they're not evil?" I asked him.
"Some people are definitely, unequivocally evil, but most people are not. Most people are simply apathetic, unaware and frightened. A lot of bad gets done by people who are not bad people. Maybe it's always been this way but I think it's more so now than ever. I saw a documentary about the sixties on TV the other day. They showed all these people in their twenties and thirties sitting around holding candles singing "We shall overcome". They were protesting against racism and the Vietnam War. It's not that people in their twenties and thirties then were better or smarter than people in their twenties and thirties now."
"So what is it?"
"It's the times. The times, they have changed. Where once people were told that the answers were blowing in the wind, now it's they who are blown by the wind, the wind generated by the market. The ruthless pursuit of the bottom line is the siren song of the times and the song is played over the public address system in banks, in stores and supermarkets. It's played when you are downsized because your company can replace you with somebody in another country for two dollars a day. And it's played whenever you call up anything needing assistance and they put you on hold because they've cut back on staff in other to increase their share price.
"But people have always been obsessed with the bottom line. Why is it any different now? Hasn't money always been the siren song?"
"It has never been so loud. It's never been so ubiquitous. It has never before so routinely, so blatantly, ousted and nullified citizenship and notions of the common good, once was called the common weal. It has never so successfully colonized men's souls"
Back to my life. Whenever a person asks me what I had in mind career wise after I graduate. What industry do I want to work in? Any company I want to work for?
To good friends, I'll say "Maybe work for a small firm first, after that see how." On good days I'll say "Work for myself." and to people I don't feel like talking to, I'll say, "Sell backside lor."
In all instances I'm not telling any lie. Truth is, as much as I want to think I have, I've not really planned a standard path which I'll follow at the moment. I can't imagine myself working in say the slimming industry though. Having to tell women that they're fat, or they don't look good enough in order to achieve greater sales revenue. It's just against the principles that I have. (This is also part of the selfish reason in the disinterest I have in doing the Skinfood project). "You don't look good enough. Buy our product and you will be beautiful." Makes me feel sick.
There's another part of me that wants to run my own company. My friends always say to me "DREAMING AGAIN IS IT?" A little is my reply. Let's just call this company Mok Pte Ltd. My aim however is to create a firm ran by a group of closely knitted friends, and if possible together my wife too. And we'll have a great deal of fun working together just as I did in school. The fuel or passion of it all will not be for the money, but for our common dream of achieving something together. It must benefit society in a positive manner as a whole. We'll have a charitable company to donate 10% of our profits to. It'll be "make a wish", because I always believe in the power of dreaming and wishing and working hard for it (I want as many children to believe in that too). We'll have a great deal of satisfaction together and when I have a family and children myself, I want to be able to tell my kids that this is what dad did and that they can out do daddy as long as you work hard for it. When they start studying and have to select a firm to work on for their project, they can choose dad's firm and I'll give them all the interviews they require. They'll be proud of dad. Same goes for my friend's children.
After my career and family is stable, I want to start a chain of day care centers for children. I want to use my success to tell them when they are still young that:
it is OK to dream BIG.
Nobody ever has the right to trample or say that your dreams
Don't just dream, work hard for it
Never ever work for the money- it's much too small of an objective to aim for
It is possible because WE did it. Together.
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