I suspect that my gym workouts are breaking down my immunity system as I seem to be more susceptible to germs. *sneeze* damn...

we were discussin about how cultural factors make Maslow's hierarchy of needs less credible in the Sg context and this fired some thoughts into me:

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has inherent flaws as esteem and self-actualization needs do not apply to everyone, not even to the middle and upper-class individuals because there is no homogeneity. We must also keep in mind that the era in which his theory was formed has become obsolete in this fast-changing society. With new demands surfacing continuously, our needs change. In the Singapore context, our basic needs have perhaps evolved over the past few decades from biological needs during the days of colonization to material gains in our present modernized society. Even now, the unfavourable economic climate in Singapore has yet again changed our basic needs to our needs for job security. Perhaps one need that has been unchanged all this time is safety needs. It is primitive instinct to protect ourselves from danger and I am sure that this need has always been with us from the days of the Japanese invasion till this age of terrorism. As for the need for self-actualization, I would define it as a conscious awareness of what your abilities and achievements are. self-actualization is not simply individualistic because when you achieve self-actualization, you may be motivated to use your awareness of your own abilities to work with others to achieve a common goal. If we were to compare how different Singapore is from Western culture in order to see if his theory fits into the Sg context, I would like to question what does the Western culture consist of? If we know the essential ingredients of the Western culture, we will then be able to compare Singapore with the Western culture more easily. However, I think that it is hard to say how different Singapore is from the rest of the world since external influences have been streaming into Singapore and practised by the locals. So which aspect of the Western culture are we comparing? The pop culture? Political culture? Since Singapore adopts so many different external models, it would be a difficult task to compare Singapore with Western culture.

hope my opinions are sound enough....