Keeping Our Sense of Priority

Keeping Our Sense of Priority

By Daniel Semere

Ask anyone about what they want and see for their future. The range and the Variety might fluctuate but they all have something in common: good, better, and more. Everyone wants good house, car, income... better life style, service... more wealth, luxury... There is nothing wrong with wanting more or anything better. In fact it is a natural human phenomenon. What’s more it is also a base for any development because it is a motivation or an incentive for anyone to work and contribute more. The simple math is that if there is no “wanting more or better” there could not be working more and thus no development. And our civilization might not have been achieved. So more than just a human phenomenon it is also a necessity. Indeed the history of our world from the primitive stage up to today’s consumerism has been the history of development and civilization.

Man first had the three basic needs to fulfill. It’s when he has met these demands he started to look up and search for better ways of producing more of these needs. And the result of this evolution was today’s age of consumerism where people surpassed the three basic needs of food, shelter, and cloth, and aspire luxurious life. However, this at the moment is true only to rich and mainly western nations as most third worlds are still striving to suffice with their basic needs. Fulfilling these demands and going beyond by all means require the utmost dedication, work, and thinking for the future. And it is within this perspective we have to visualize ourselves. The stage we are in is what determines the kind of life we could live. No one can possibly think of possessing a car when one barely fares for one’s belly.

It would be paradoxical. As a nation too, this theory apply. But this doesn’t mean we don’t want to own a car or live as we aspire someday. Not at all. It’s just, there is this thing called priority, and this just happen to be not in our top list for the moment. Not as a matter of choice rather as a matter of ability.

However, there is a growing concern especially on our youth that they might be illusioned by the alien trends incompatible with our reality. As we all know the world is shrinking in a speed faster than the wind because of technology. This has created influx and intermingles of ideas, values, and culture from literally every corner of the globe. This in turn has caused the infringement of one on other, as there are massive crossing overs. And so as much as the world could benefit from these technologies, it is also creating chaos by disturbing settled societies, their values and culture, and ideals. One dangerous effect of this on our youth, which the writing intends to stress, is that we are loosing our sense of prioritizing. We are being seriously affected by this alien consumerist culture and ideals. In order to understand the graveness of this problem lets remind ourselves an obvious fact we seems to loose side of.

More than being a third world, or developing or underdeveloped country Eritrea has lost a lot in terms of opportunity. And as it has been repeatedly disclosed at independence we had to begin from negative. What this situation entails is that in whatever we do our efforts must be doubled in order to cope up with the rest of the world. This fact is the framework that shaped our priority not only as a nation but as individuals too. That’s why our medias talk about self-reliance, infrastructure, basic service, and food security etc. when the west talks about space, nuclear, fashion, etc. This clearly portrays the difference in priority. But we need to bear in mind that our priorities were once upon a time western’s priority too. Lucky for them however, in most case they had all the time and space and freedom to choose and develop their own ways conducive to their situation. In this sense countries such as Eritrea that are in road of development are not so lucky as they are met with constant incursion from outside. And this has been facilitated by the advancement of medias and communication network that reflects alien values incompatible with our societies and priority. As in elsewhere the first victim are of course the youth.

Aside from the technology, Eritrean society is blessed with the intangible assets needed for development. Industrious, devotion, ethics, will and optimism has always been noble characteristics of our society. The growing contact with the outside and the corresponding influence (specially from medias) however, is beginning to erode these noble values. And our youths are being swayed by this incursion and are losing grip. Consequently we have become infected with the consumeristideals,whichourground reality do not support or afford. In doing so we could unintentionally jeopardize our future. To make the matter worse students are one of the worst affected parts of the society. The fact is that consumerism is an addiction and is a threat even to the west. Recent report has disclosed that US’ saving rate is now 0%, which means that there is no prospect of further investment. But since their economy is a stable one, they might not suffer much in short term although further development might be considerably delayed. The problem comes when countries like Eritrea get entangled with the trend. We might not have such wealth to compare the magnitude of the problem with countries like the US. Nonetheless there is a growing tendency of spending more in a way that doesn’t take in to consideration the future. How many of us really spend more than we produce? How manyofusgoout3or4timesa week and what did we produce? In the other hand how many of us think about saving? Now students might not work and so cannot save. Ironically however, many have a share in the families’ income just to spend it in such manner. This is not to be against having fun, but we should modify our way of achieving it. And when in some cases they happen to have a work many are seen spending their money unwisely and extravagantly. A presentation by a certain Eritrean professor Abebe stated that we as a society are not so good in saving. Moreover, when compared to our counterpart in the east it could be said we barely knows the meaning of the word itself. In some cases in the east, he said, “people live by the cent and save by the penny” as a result the fastest growing economies in the world are found in the east. Most importantly they have developed a culture. When we come to our case there is a rampant extravagancy when our reality demand more concern to the future. It demands more emphasis on our studies to search for ways that’ll ensure the utilization of our resources for our and our country’s development. It demands savings for investment to make our future bright.

In short we should live only the kind of life we could afford to live and we must take utmost care not to jeopardize our future by trying to live beyond reality. So wanting more or better should be realistic. Always remember that anything we want better or more can only be gained depending or relying on our given situation. We have to be careful not to build our house in sand, for you reap what you saw, and this extravagancy can only get us nothing but a bleak future. Remember what we like might be so much different than what we need.

Share this post