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I was walking past the next door public school the other day and I saw young kids shouting, screaming and wildly running around in the school grounds. Their insatiable curiosity, innocent banter and raw energy was so full of life. I have to admit their energy served as a power bank for me that day and made me think of my childhood and schooling days. I was a handful for the school teachers, university professors and even still am to corporate jungles to this date.
Since I am reaching my late 30s now it makes me reflect on life choices a lot more compared to a decade ago. The choices which were personal even though I may not be aware of it. Growing up in three (3) continents and quite a fair few cities around the world – from early childhood in Pakistan, teenage years in UK and adult life in Australia. I can see how my nurture has impacted my character and values.
I recalled the interactions which to some extent are universal to most children in the world. Whenever you finish school, the question becomes which university are you going to? Followed by a list of universities with implied reference that I won’t be able to get into and how someone random people know has made it and a subtle reference that there is no job even if you finish university? When you passed university it was references to hypothetical people (or real) relatives and people who have received money, cars, kisses from employers because they are so brilliant with implied projection that what did you do or what will you get paid? Once you start getting paid, the question becomes how come you are not married? When you are married the question becomes when are you having children? When you have children – They repeat the toxic uncle and aunty interaction cycle with them in the name of family relations. More like personal conditioning of damaged self esteem by comparing you to others – for the key feature of this type of conditioning i.e. Validation.
I understand that life choices I mentioned depending on each person’s life journey will have circumstantial tilts, crowd sourced expectations and how we get our feeling of importance. Like most things, they are greatly influenced by early childhood, geography, religion and mainly whatever values that people hold and admire around us. Given this is an area of interest, I have written about the The Paradox of Modern Capitalism and Our Values in detail.
The core argument of that catharsis is that our beliefs are hamstrung to the default life philosophy. My understanding is that the default religion and life philosophy of the world is pursuit of happiness, acquiring external things for status and minimisation of pain i.e. capitalism and consumerism. Read more here
On a very surface level, if I was to segregate the two life philosophies i.e., Western and Eastern. Noting, my opinion may appear as broad generalizations and I acknowledge that there is significant complexity, diversity and exceptions to these values & beliefs frameworks. It will be hard not to mention that globalisation and increased interaction through social media has led to a blurring of these lines in many areas.
My reading of the two philosophies would look something like this, Western Life Philosophy of buying identity through acquiring external things for status, self worth, validation and purpose. Conversely, Eastern Life Philosophy of the basic needs (food & shelter), class struggle, reproduction, family and survivalist focus.
As I started searching for objective evidence on these philosophies. I was fascinated that below the surface of these two apparent opposing life philosophies there was a common variable i.e. the DNA ingrained physiological and psychological traits of humans.
I reviewed theories of motivation for humans such as Maslow Hierarchy of Needs, Alderfer’s ERG theory, Herzberg’s two-factor theory, McClelland’s acquired needs theory, and Max-Neef’s model of human scale development. While the theories of motivation relate to basic biological drives, individual characteristics, or social contexts, Abraham Maslow (1943) proposed a hierarchy of needs that spans the spectrum of motives ranging from the biological to social and to the individual. He proposed that human motivation follows a hierarchy, where people move step by step from physiological survival to safety, belonging, esteem, and ultimately self-actualization. His model suggests that lower needs must be satisfied before higher needs become powerful motivators. Alderfer’s ERG theory refined Maslow’s framework, condensing needs into three categories – Existence, Relatedness, and Growth. Unlike Maslow, he argued that these needs are flexible, can operate simultaneously, and that frustration at higher levels may lead people to refocus on lower ones.
Contemporary research by Tay and Diener (2011) affirms that universal human needs exist, but not in the rigid sequence Maslow suggested. Drawing on data from 60,865 participants across 123 countries over a five-year span (2005–2010), they found that while unmet basic needs naturally demand attention, people can still gain significant wellbeing from fulfilling higher needs such as social connections and respect – even when lower needs remain unsatisfied. Put simply, you may be hungry, but being with friends can still make you happy.
Since, the people who were presenting these theories were also human, like us, suffered from validation cycle biases, so there are varied criticisms of each of them based on sampling data points, geography of the researcher and their understanding at the time of the theory being published.
In essence, Alderfer’s model is a compression of Maslow’s five (5) into three (3) functional groups.
Existence in ERG ≈ Maslow’s physiological + safety.
Relatedness in ERG ≈ Maslow’s love/belonging + external esteem.
Growth in ERG ≈ Maslow’s self-actualization + internal esteem.
I plotted components of Hierarchy of needs by Maslow and ERG theory – The core components of both are same, if we ditch the hierarchical application of the underlying components. The components being Food, Shelter, Love/Belonging, Self Esteem and Self Actualisation.
As I mapped them on a horizontal spectrum (Left to Right) of Eastern versus Western life philosophy and it had tales to tell which I was surprised to identify and contemplate. Why wouldn’t I and others, who have progressed through this life philosophy spectrum through their adolescent and adult years, paint the mosaic we call Life.
Eastern conditioning promotes educational degrees, a job, wife, child and recreating one’s own childhoods (big homes, grandparents raising children under the same roof and multi-generational thinking) as legacy, tradition, preservation of culture and success. Every major decision in life, love, relationships, validation from family/neighbour/community fueled by primary physiological needs i.e. food and shelter due to over population, lack of infrastructure and unfortunate by-product of collectivism aka corruption. There is growing research that the more family oriented a society is the more corrupt it is – as people justify corruption as looking after their family. You can see the phenomena in full glory in any over populated, under resourced, family oriented developing country on the planet. Also, you may fancy a read of the actual research from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) here. Of course, who would know better than the institution who lends billions of dollars to developing countries for nation building, funding capitalism, control and global diplomacy.
I recall growing up in Pakistan, if someone passed away at a young age due to cancer, the sad news is usually followed by a statement from elders: at least they had children without much regard to their future challenges without their father or mother. From a very young age, I felt this pain quite deeply, internalised the hurt and played out scenarios in my head if something was to happen to my parents or siblings. I have to admit, the survivalist approach does feature a solid support framework of family and community. When adversity strikes, the family or community steps in to do what’s right. They won’t give you the best financial or structural support there is but they will provide you enough with a fighting chance to not let your past define you. Also, you may have to thank them, do favors and get reminded of what they did for you for most part of your life. You may find similar examples around your surroundings, where a calamity might have impacted someone close to you and you would have experienced a similar event where an insurance company, distant relative or even community may have contributed to easing someone’s unchosen suffering – which is an inevitable part of life.
I say family is a blessing and a curse – it’s a blessing if it allows you to become more of who you are, have virtues and guides you to contribute to society. It’s a curse where it controls your behaviour beyond reason, projects its own values on you and down right limits your life choices to what suits them. All of this, for better or worse, does make you resilient or psychologically unstable – depending on the cards you are dealt with. Don’t believe me, look at the migrant communities and how much difference they have made to the world. Any country to date, large infrastructure, data centers of the Middle East to cotton mills of Great Britain have the labour and sweat of minorities. Today every company which has moved the world has a Immigrant CEO, from Jensen Huang (NVIDIA), Sundar Pinchali (Alphabet/Google), Arvind Krishna (IBM) and not to forget Stebe Jobs (Apple) and Elon Musk (Tesla/X) were also immigrants. It’s not all glory, its also appeals to default blame bias for masses, where they feel the right to blame migrants for lack of education, prosperity, life choices and failed promises of political parties to migrants. Well, if we chose the politicians or didn’t vote for them, they are still one of us (well most of them look like us) and whatever bad is happening in my life, the car I couldn’t buy, the stable family I couldn’t build or the competitive housing market due to policy skewness, lack of public investment and intergenerational wealth concentration factory of Australia – it is all because of migrants. Look at the anti-migration rallies, Australia first marches and the radicalisation of pitting humans against each other as they’re an economic function for consumerism and where you can’t consume you should blame someone else and try to get rid of them.
Another phenomenon which baffles me most is…For the first time in human history, everyone is aggrieved at the same time. It is gobsmacking that everyone in the world irrespective of class, creed, colour or geography feels persecuted. White people feel persecuted, black people feel persecuted, rich people feel persecuted, poor people feel persecuted, trans people feel persecuted and straight people feel persecuted – Bro who is actually persecuted? The silver lining of Performative Victimhood.
I remember coming home from high school and telling my parents, how come everyone’s problem is bigger than my problem. My sweet parents as always, blank and wondering, what is wrong with him that he sees things so deeply – Humara beta aisa kyun hai? (Why is our son like this 😀 ). I started going on about how come everyone has a tagline to outvictim the matter being discussed without merit? I told them about the street food cart owner, who sells samosas, that he wanted me to pay 20 rupees extra based on a tax he heard on the news the day before (which wasn’t yet implemented or passed the legislation process). In his mind, it was justified as he is looking after his family. For me, when I asked for the basis of such on the spot samosa price hike, he gave me the answer which is a tagline commonly used for every unfair dealing in that country – If I don’t do this (usually slightly illegal and unethical practice), how will I feed my family.
When I was growing up, if someone was down or had a health issue – they were told to walk it off or keep going or Allah (God) will help you. Somewhere along the lines of suck it up and keep going being sold as a virtue for a century. This is the age of performative victimhood, where I stabbed someone because I am triggered and I cheated on you because you were about to…is now a virtue. You’d be like that’s a bit extreme…You know what I feel is extreme…Nationalism, Totalitarianism or illegal occupation. Look at Israel, it bombs, occupies, undertakes genocide and murders tens of thousands of children in the name of right to defend itself or pre-emptive strike on another country. I don’t want to get political but I would be lying that where two sub-cultures don’t agree in the same suburb in an Australian city, this is a factual reality where countries across the world have united. Similarly, you marginalise humans based on their beliefs, colour and their identities and they get radicalised given the subliminal antisocial treatment and marginalisation from society..they act on it..through violence, public display of anger or God forbids through school shooting, acts of evil and crimes against everyday humans going about their life. We recently had Bondi’s terror attack on Jewish community, where innocent lives were lost and the country condemned the inhumane acts of two terrorists. Similarly, we had heroes emerge from a wide diaspora of faith, class, culture and colour to disprove the media news cycle of hatred, political point scoring, division & hatred. Political point scoring is needed to compensate for cost of living pressure, their failure as politician, rort policies and hatred is needed for the goals of the eyeball driven commercial functions who rule our lives. P.S. Totalitarianism with a wrapper of democracy is the new political ideal. Especially, where subtle racism and discrimination is systematically enabled and institutionalised (Australia, America and most Western Countries). It’s the same play book of cover of Reparations with deeper Oppression. It’s part of human nature to seek power and feel special by oppressing others – where it’s enabled by a sovereign it’s a ‘fascist regime’ who uses gaslighting and virtue signalling to rule and abuses the people (taxpayers, voters, workers, employees) who funds them. The default fad political ideology is the replica of Israel, North Korea and Russia. The Ends justify the Means – the end of Power, Oppression and Control for own political agenda. My emotions are raw as we witnessed this in Sydney on 13th February Protest & Police Brutality as of last week.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind – George Orwell
We are all heroes in our stories and create villains to feel morally superior, feel important or make meaning of our lives – the irony of human nature, survivalism, ego based existence in a material world and insecurity management by a self imagined narrative factory – now on AI steroids around the world.
Similarly, when we decipher these two distinctive life philosophies they appear to follow the underlying same principles of human nature. For example, in the western ideology of individualism, I am special, so I am adored, beautiful and amazing – therefore, my kids are amazing. So it’s not about them, they’re a self-object to me and my ambitions, winning the mum/corporate boss babe game and mostly getting all that I want – because it is about me. On the flip side, the eastern philosophy of collectivism, family is everything and a female’s job is to have children and make sure they have good degrees, manners, religion, discipline and everything else. I gave up my youth and opportunity to work to look after my couple of kids. However, they are only good, moral and nice if they do as I say, like study what I say, act as I say and marry to whom I say – because it is about me. In the western life philosophy, it is the aspirational deservedness and worship of one’s own superiority – the religion of self/narcissism. In the eastern life philosophy, there is the aspirational value and worship of community, tradition & religion over self. It’s fascinating that both the philosophies have a grass is greener around each other’s values too. In western life philosophy, everyone is isolated and lonely. In Australia, 1/3 people report to high levels of loneliness, 2/3 of those people have family or a significant other in their life. There is an overwhelming need and often contrived approach to form community, like mini-sub cultures and cults just for humans to interact with each other i.e. run clubs. On the other end, the eastern life philosophy dreams of individuality and being free to live in their own way. However, they get reeled into family, community, social and political drama of the eastern countries as it’s against the inherent community nurturing and values.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions – Saint Bernard
There is an automatic linkage of purpose, identity, feeling of importance to things you spend the two most valuable things in life i.e., your mind and your time – as it becomes a core value in your life. It is all the same, Eastern or Western values the underlying emotions and need to create meaning in our life. Then what’s the difference? It is the Nurture and Values.
The people who grow up next to the sea can swim 6 kms everyday in the ocean before work aka Sydney. The people who grow up in mountains can walk backwards on ninety degree hills. The people who grow up in Kingdoms made in the name of religion are religious. The people who grow up in communist societies are adherent to those ideals. The people who are born in democratic (capitalist) society feel people who don’t emulate the same values are wrong – You get the point. The inherent nurture, values and survivalist instinct makes it a natural ‘us’ against ‘them’. It is not that people in China hate people in the US or people in the US want to kill and murder everyone in the world. Their hope generation mechanism requires them to create ‘us against them’ for their inherited nurture and values.
| Culture | The Promise | The Price | The Logical Flaw |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eastern | Belonging | Your Identity | Duty without joy is slavery. |
| Western | Freedom | Your Meaning | Choice without value is noise. |
| Integrity | Truth | Your Comfort | The only way to be “unconditioned.” |
News Flash, there is no ‘us’ against ‘them’. It is just the ‘Us’. Below this skin, nationality, region and opinion, desires & aversions – it is the same skeleton, bones, blood, human fallacies, emotions and needs. The way everyone gets those needs met varies based on their nurturing, personal conditioning and values.
Conclusion:
I feel we over optimise for differences in the philosophies and forget what is important i.e., Life. For me personally, I think I have observed, to some extent practised both philosophies and continue to expand my own value hierarchy.
Both western and eastern life philosophies have pros and cons, as with most things in life, no wonder many of us switch them at mid-life crisis. I hope after reading this piece you have the ability to differentiate and evolve the philosophy you inherited.
Not just that, go further to define your own values leveraging the wisdom & knowledge of both domains to create a better world (nurture) for all; self (individualism) and others (collectivism) – as it is just opposite sides of the ‘human’ experience spectrum.
Those who believed in God told me: do as I say, and God will love you.
Those who did not believe in God told me: do as I say, without question, and I will love you.
In the end, I learnt to love myself to know that God is eternal light that shines through every living thing…
So I searched for God… and found only Myself.
Adnan Rasool (Inferred from Rumi’s work).
References
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Belief vs. Life Philosophy: The Paradox of Modern Capitalism and Our Values
INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND Fiscal Affairs Department
Corruption Around the World: Causes, Consequences, Scope, and Cures- Caulton, J. R. (2012). The development and use of the theory of ERG: A literature review. Emerging Leadership Journeys, 5(1), 2-8.
- Alderfer, C. P. (1969). An empirical test of a new theory of human needs. Organizational behavior and human performance, 4(2), 142-175.
- Alderfer, C. P. (1989). Theories reflecting my personal experience and life development. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 25(4), 351-365.
- Schneider, B., & Alderfer, C. P. (1973). Three studies of measures of need satisfaction in organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 489-505.
- Turabik, T., & Baskan, G. A. (2015). The importance of motivation theories in terms of education systems. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 186, 1055-1063.
The Expectation Economy: Where Does It End and Where Might Life Begin?
