For the Many

No choice na! Words most of us utter when we are faced with a situation when we reached a certain dead-end of options. Yet there are those who use this as an expression which a progressive mind often repels. You have a choice. The world is full of choices. You could innovate or redefine your standards. We also do compromise.

The word compromise according to Peterson (2012) is used in two different senses, one typically positive and the other typically negative. The good sense of compromise is finding a common ground with another person, as in reaching a mutual agreement about a difficult course of action affecting both of you. The bad sense is being untrue to your core values and beliefs, as in selling out to achieve some short-term goal.

The second one, most of time, would be counterproductive since it will eventually erode the foundation of a person or an organization. This would also define the person in terms of deciding the best for him/herself or for others.

In today’s scene, it is a bit hard to keep up with who believes what, and who is living their beliefs. “Walking the talk” and “Doing what I do, not what I say” seem to have become trite phrases that are discounted. You don’t have to look far to see that much hypocrisy abounds. What is hypocrisy? According to Dictionary.com, it is “the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform; pretense. (Flaxington, 2018)”.

It is the pressing issue we have among our leaders. There must be a strong one whose heart is rooted to make the common good be materialized. But with the deficits of the families and the educational system, the in-breeding of children seem to be on the skewed area. Adults thrive on selfish intentions and the web it created in the society is so intricate to align to the welfare of the majority.

The common good is a notion that originated over two thousand years ago in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. More recently, the ethicist John Rawls defined the common good as "certain general conditions that are...equally to everyone's advantage".

The common good, then, consists primarily of having the social systems, institutions, and environments on which we all depend work in a manner that benefits all people. Examples of particular common goods or parts of the common good include an accessible and affordable public health care system, functional education, an effective system of public safety and security… Because such systems, institutions, and environments have such a powerful impact on the well-being of members of a society, it is no surprise that virtually every social problem in one way or another is linked to how well these systems and institutions are functioning (Velasquez, Andre, et.al., 2017).

There is indeed a great need to function well and align our roles to the greater whole. People who have this mindset have reached the level of actualization that they are now making their needs as the stepping stones in attaining the welfare of the many. Those who got sick or being bound by their deficits continue to hoard things and accolades for themselves.

Choice theory is the study of how decisions get made. The term was coined in a book of the same name by William Glasser, who argued that all choices are made to satisfy five basic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun.

Underlying these basic ways of thinking about, according to Ye (2017) is the assumption we truly understand our preferences and how to weigh them against each other. But what happens when freedom conflicts with power? How do you choose when two options will provide you with equal amounts of fun?

One thing to keep in mind is the importance of others as well as the self. This could lead the person to decide well not just to arrive to an escapist way of saying: No choice na!

In a knowledge-based economy . . . a knowledge worker’s primary deliverable is a good decision. In addition, more and more people are being tasked with making decisions that are likely to be biased because of the presence of too much information, time pressure, simultaneous choice, or some other constraint – Eric Wargo.