Thursday, August 26, 2010

Where will our development take us to?

'GDP is not representative of the actual strength of an economy.'

These are chilling words for the USA and other giant economies out there. The strength of China is an intriguing issue. It was one of the world's strongest economy eons ago, and now they are back again. They have trudged through adversity and some daunting obstacles, only to make a full circle to the economic limelight. How are we going to stop China?

Truth is, we can't. And if we can't, we might as well join them. It is a good time to start picking up mandarin, for all we know, it might be an essential language in time to come. Basically, I am suggesting that we have something important to take away from this. We must prepare for China's inevitable rise. For example, this embodies having good links with both the east and west. The world is changing, and we need to keep up.

How do we become a rising star then? To be open-minded? To be hungry for success? To be optimistic and willing to take risks to invest? I agree that these factors brought up are necessary for a star to rise. However, I would like to bring a chinese saying out here. That is '知己只比,百战百胜’. In english, it means 'Know thyself and know the enemy, and every war can be won'. I feel that knowing the enemy (by being open minded to criticism and improvement techniques) is not sufficient. We also need to understand our own anatomy and makeup, our strengths and our weaknesses, and our ability in order to truly be a rising star. These two sides complement each other, and allow us to elevate to greater heights. This model can be applied across many fields, such as in business and in our everyday lives. However, it is also true that understanding ourselves can be a potential hurdle, as we could underestimate or overestimate ourselves at times.

We then followed up with a video about the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals). The video was concise and straightforward, providing statistics to the current conditions to each problem the goals were trying to address. By providing awareness to everyone in the class(and possibly beyond), it has achieved quite a bit already. The first step to any goal is to create public awareness of the situation, especially to countries such as Singapore as we are not exposed to many of life's atrocities. The goals might take a long time to complete, but the first step has been taken.

The break came to abruptly pause the vivid discussion, and when we returned, human development came into focus.

When Prof probed me regarding the definition of human development, I answered with a generic and generally accepted answer. However, human development has always been very hard to define. Was the pinnacle of human development attaining happiness? Or was it to satisfy materialistic needs? Or is it something else? The human development index based it on 3 things - education level, standard of living and life expectancy. We all would disagree as it is a very abstract and subjective issue. We can never understand why the people in India are happy while the people living in urbanized cities aren't. Worst of all, we are unable to 'reboot' our mind such that the embossment of the cities were erased so that we can empathize the happiness felt by the Indians despite their living conditions. The disparity is there to stay and we can never close the gap together. Now then, where would our development take us to?

This is the question that I felt should have been considered in class. If a rise in GDP (urbanized city) is counteracted by a decline in happiness or rise in stress levels generally; how are we different from the country that has a low GDP (India) but yet a happier place? The number indicated by the HDI would most definitely be different as happiness is not a factor of consideration due to its in-quantifiable nature. However, does that mean cities with the higher HDI are better off?

The presentations by members of the class was well thought out, and interesting to a large extent, not to mention entertaining. It provides us with different perspectives on the topic and triggers our thought process. Now, i see the value of the oral presentations during class. The discussions were once again astounding. It has also made clear to me that having an extension base of general knowledge is extremely important. The 2nd class has lived up to the expectations set by the first.

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