My Pet Project

Aim:

To meet a wide range of artists in the theatre play of life, to understand their characteristic traits and individuality.

My belief:

The majorly defining features of an individual in the society are as follows:
1. Individual’s justifications for his actions
2. Validations the individual seeks
3. Materialistic comforts the individual seeks, and
4. Individual’s complaints and grievances.

Read: What defines an individual in the society? for clarity.

Procedure:

To understand the individuality of the people I meet along the way in my journey, I will be using the following standard operating procedure:
1. Since it is necessary to get comfortable with people to be able to ask them the concerning questions, I will be spending a day's time at a defined location in the travel and speak with one individual at a time before I head out to the next place.
2. Questionaries are developed in such a way that the individuals can be scored on a scale of 1 to 5 for their levels of justifications, validations, want of materialistic comforts, and complaints. The features in which the individual takes only ‘self’ into account will be scored the least value (1), and the ones considering the good of the society will score the highest value (5).
3. The sample data collected over the large population range will be averaged out for each discrete feature and cumulative features.
4. The averaged-out data can be eventually assessed for correlations across age groups, sex, cultures, and demographics.

Questionaries:

Justifications:

1. How happy are you with your job?
2. Why are you happy, or aren’t happy with the same?
3. If you could change a couple of things in the society, what would they be?
If the individuals tend to justify their actions considering only their own personal benefits, they will score a value of 1.
If the individuals tend to justify their actions on behalf of the good of the society, they will score a value of 5.
Justifications on behalf of the family, the surrounding community, and the larger community will be scored with a value between 1 and 5.

Validations and conformity:

1. What group activities do you pursue in your free time?
2. Who are the friends/people you hang around most with?
3. What are the interests of the group?
If the individuals tend to hang around with their friends/community for their own personal benefits, they will score a value of 1.
If the individuals tend to hang around with their friends/community for the reason of contributing to the society, they will score a value of 5.
Reasons such as enjoying friendly company, learning from the community, and contributing to the community, will be scored with a value between 1 and 5.

Materialistic comforts:

What would you do if you were given an ‘X’ amount of money?

If the individuals tend to use the money on their immediate pleasures, they will score a value of 1.
If the individuals decide to use the money entirely for a social cause, they will score a value of 5.
Everything in between from using it for buying comforts, and savings for the future, to partially contributing to the society will be scored with a value between 1 and 5.

Complains and grievances:

What are some of the biggest complains in your life?
What do you think you lack most in life? What are your deficiencies?

Complains concerning the lack of immediate pleasures will be scored a value of 1.
Complains considering the highest good of the society will be scored a value of 5.
Every other reason for complaining from family, and local community, to the individual’s highest vision, will be rated between 2 and 5.

Form

Go ahead and fill out the form for yourself to figure out where you stand as an individual in the society. Be honest with yourself and value your answers on a scale of 1-5. I hope you learn something from filling up the form as I did.

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