The Other Side

“When you're finished changing, you're finished.”     Benjamin Franklin


Its quite engaging to know about how we respond and react; Understand the patterns that drive our actions. In a quest for finding precise words to define my crazy thoughts, was reading through and found something about benefits of Philosophy - "... great benefits of philosophy is that it challenges us to think critically about our beliefs and to justify them with good arguments. The development of critical thinking skills is something that can help all of us to make better decisions in many aspects of our lives..."

This is when i coined the phrase - "Philosophy of benefit"(POB). Phew !! Chill, I ain't really talking about philosophy, but just a perspective about things. Let us consider POB and antonymous to that is the "Fear of loss" (FOL). I have tried defining them in a vague fashion to convey a thought.

All the actions we do, seem to fall into either POB or FOL, as the reason behind it.

To put it in a simple way, I work because i get money. I learn something new because i see some benefit or pleasure in it. We watch movies, travel and do innumerable interesting things as they make us happy and feel good. So it is the POB; definition of benefit varies form person. Similarly there a lot of things that we don't do or want to do because of the 'Fear factor' attached to it. That's how FOL controls our motives and actions. But we are mostly driven by POB than FOL is what i feel. To quote a simple example, we have people who smoke and booze though they are aware of the loss and effects. Arguments can be debated endlessly though.

What's the whole point of this? Its actually not about philosophy but about marketing that i wanted to talk about. Off late everyone is talking about going green, saving trees, saving paper and i have witnessed so many initiatives. To name a few - Bus day, using coffee mugs, and by now you should be quoting the major ones that i have skipped quite intentionally. Go green is not the only thing but many measures and marketing to save power, oil and water are all focusing and targeting public with FOL. Everyone is aware of this, yet people don't take initiatives to save any of the things because they don't really see a benefit out of it. It sounds funny when you ask someone to save oil so that someone can burn it tomorrow. By now you might have an intriguing feeling that "Dude its your world, save it..."

I agree taking ownership is what one should to. its individualistic. My arguments are when an institution or a group of people try marketing an idea, it should not be backed with FOL. Take public transport, car pooling to save fuel are nice options but not nicely put. Why should i share the luxury for no benefit is what a common man might revolt with.

Instead market it with POB. Say you get benefits using the shuttle transport provided by the company instead of car allowance. Its a win-win for both. I believe instead of just a lame propaganda and blogging and texting, we should come up with innovative ways to ask people to save and follow something so that they see the benefits in it than the loss that you are trying to exaggerate. This will by-large see an adoption and change can thus be achieved.

Change is needed in thought, in attitude. In this blog i lest, comment on an individual, its all about marketing.


“Some people change their ways when they see the light; others when they feel the heat”        
                                                                                                                    -- Caroline Schoeder