Society's Priorities - II

In one sense, the priorities of a society are a sum of our priorities as individuals living in that society. What we consider to be important as individuals gets aggregated and eventually translates into what we value as a society. In a capitalist society, the primary mode of this expression is via the marketplace - whether the marketplace is that of goods or of ideas.

The picture however is not as simple as this. Our individual priorities do not arise in a vacuum. They have always been influenced by our families and peers. The rise of mass media and new forms of communication have enabled external interests to also influence our individual priorities. Psychological tactics (of which marketing is an important part) are major tools that are used to influence us as individuals. In many cases, this is done for purely commercial purposes. Sometimes however, this is done to influence society in a particular direction. Even when done for purely commercial purposes, the result is often that society turns in a direction that perhaps is not conducive to its future.

Why is it that top actors are paid so highly while top teachers are paid a pittance? Is the work of actors really that much more important? Why are celebrities followed avidly while firefighters are ignored? Are the former really so vital to the proper functioning of our society? Why are bankers paid so much more than their peers in other industrial sectors to the extent that people with PhDs in Physics and Maths are working in the financial sector? Are bankers really that much more intelligent, harder working and more productive? Why do we have the phenomenon of celebrity CEOs? Why do we elevate and celebrate people who are essentially bureaucrats? Why are technicians valued more than artists or philosophers?

All of these show what we truly value as a society. As individuals, we will gravitate towards areas that our society values more highly. So we have the phenomenon of young people trying to become actors while teaching positions (or firefighting or police) lie vacant. We also see bankers awarding themselves huge bonuses shortly after causing a major economic collapse while police, firefighting and public health services are scaled back or shut down for a lack of money. Whatever rhetoric we may employ, there are areas of our society that we simply do not consider to be important even though objectively viewed they are necessary for the future health of our society.

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Society's Priorities

A free market economy is a grand social experiment in societal priorities. The products and services we purchase, the types of jobs that are rewarded and the types that are not rewarded, the level of trust in personal and business interactions are all indications of the priorities that we have as a society. Our actions show what we value and what we don't. Rhetoric is cheap. It is easy to say anything specially if one feels that the words spoken will not come back to haunt them. Actions are what count.

Take education. Something that is vital for society's future prosperity. Without an educated workforce, many of the techniques and processes that are routinely discussed in the business community would simply not be possible. Most R&D in the public and private sector depends on the continuous infusion of young researchers who bring in a fresh perspective on old problems. So given that education is so important, teaching should be among the most highly paid of professions. The fact that it isn't specially at the primary and secondary levels says that despite our rhetoric, as a society, education is actually not considered very important.

Finance on the other hand is seemingly vital to an economy's health and success. The work that financial managers do is far more important to society than all other sectors of the economy despite the fact that finance is in essence a service industry which needs other sectors in order to exist. That is why the financial sector routinely hands out multi-million dollar packages thereby attracting the best talent and starving other sectors of the same.

Given our spending patterns, it seems that as a society, we care more about consuming in the present than preserving and adding for the future. As a group, our priorities are geared more towards enjoyment of the present despite the warnings that we have been given in the shape of various economic crises that have arisen from time to time.

Priorities

What do we consider to be important matters and what are unimportant (or at least relatively less important) matters to us? Our priorities affect us and those around us and the converse is also true; the priorities of the people around us affect them individually and us as well. While we tend to think that our priorities are dictated only by us, the fact is that our priorities are also affected by what we read and see around us. Not only that, there is often a mismatch between the priorities that we think are important and the priorities that would be important to us if we were super rational (or Homo Economicus as economists love to portray us). On top of all this, each of us plays multiple roles in our daily lives. Each role has its own set of priorities and all of these priorities must be juggled on a daily basis - something that is not easy and does not come naturally to most people. As Gema from Florida put it so nicely in this post on priorities "balancing priorities has been like juggling fireballs barehanded and with little training." In essence what is it that the vast majority of personal development sites, articles, blogs etc. are teaching? How to handle all the different priorities that we encounter in our daily lives in our various roles.

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