For me, I've tried to live my life rationally. Thinking about value of things, whether something makes sense to do, whether the cost:benefit is worth it, stuff like that.
That's what a capitalistic world is pretty much about. Doing things worth doing logically with actual tangible benefits.
And when I see people spending money on stuff which I feel irrational, I tend to raise an eyebrow and wonder why people do such things.
Like buying branded bags when they cannot afford it. I mean if someone earns $20k per month, fine, they can buy the occasional luxury product for their own happiness. But I hear of people earning $2k-$3k per month and they scrimp and save for months to splurge on a $7k bag, which to me is pretty much irrational. They could be using the money to do so much for their future...
BUT... I've grown to accept this... different people do things differently. To them, they are happy with such things and to them, it is worth saving and spending.
When I hear such stories now, I do ponder a bit, but I've let it go, to each their own.
Personally, I find it irrational but I have gotten some sort of understanding and acceptance of such actions.
More recently, another bunch of actions which I find irrational is people who pursue social work or environmental work without any sort of benefit, or the effort outweighs the personal benefit, but the effort of one may benefit many but not benefit the person providing the effort.
This tends to appear in situations like food rescue missions, where the group of people from SG Food Rescue, a bunch of folks who are into saving edible food destined for the dumpster, and they redirect the food to others who may be willing to consume it. I'm also involved with this community albeit in a more rational way.
And I see people who are willing to stay up late til 3am in the morning traveling to a location to load cartons of whatever food onto their car, and sending this food to a distribution point. They may take a bit of the food for themselves but the effort for what they take for themselves is not proportional, they get way less than the effort they put in, simply because they can't consume so much anyway. BUT, the whole community benefits, cos other folks can now go to the distribution point to take the food, so maybe another 20-50 other households will be able to get their hands on the product due to the efforts of a few people.
And once again, I find this extremely irrational. I would understand if this is their job, even social workers get paid to help others, but these bunch of people are just volunteers, they don't get anything tangible in return except a few cartons of food which isn't really worth the effort. And they do this regularly... so they can't be consuming so many cartons or kilos of food, so more often than not, they usually take just a small amount for themselves, cos most of us have so much food that we can't take in a few cartons at a time. So they may personally transport 100 cartons while they may only take 1 carton home.
And I for months, I could never get my head around this. There's no logic behind this. Saving food meant for the dumpster, which is usually not our problem... redirecting the food to someone else... also usually not our problem... with no personal benefit.
Sometimes the food is given to the needy, sometimes it's given to our community, the point about SG Food Rescue is food rescue, not always about feeding the needy. But SGFR does send food to charitable organizations.
And my left brain was going crazy when I saw what these folks did... and for the longest time I just left it as it is... an irrational behaviour, since they are happy to do such a thing then they do lor...
But recently after months of headache, I'm starting to understand this... Sometimes, things don't need to make sense. If it feels right doing it, then just do it. If I/you think too much about it, then logically, no one would do it.
And somewhere in between, I'm beginning to understand and accept this, and my own thinking changes along with this... that... it's not always about personal benefit...
It's tiring, it's irrational, it doesn't make much sense, it's troublesome, there's minimal personal benefit, but yet somehow... it's still worth doing... and... that's all the reason that's needed.
If it's always about dollars and cents... then there's so many other things that no one is going to do. But yet, there are so many people doing good things with little benefit for themselves.
I guess it's what people call a CAUSE, or finding your calling. Something that you feel is worth doing regardless of effort and return.
And it's interesting, how my own mentality has changed... no, I'm not as altruistic as many of them.
But mentally, I've started to see how this makes sense... when logically, it doesn't make sense.
And maybe somewhere along this journey, I may get more involved in during such irrational activities...
...not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
--Professor of Sociology named William Bruce Cameron
Usually this quote is attributed to Albert Einstein, but it's likely that that's not true, as explained here.
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