When I think about it critically, I thereby came up with the conclusion (my opinion) that most people care about their progress and keep pushing ourselves toward the peak of the corporate world because of the capitalist ideology that has been in our veins since the day we were born in the midst of a concrete jungle surrounded by carbon dioxide.As a middle class person from a Chinese family, I was raised and tamed by this kind of ideology too, to  grow up with the eagerness to compete, and climb up the ladder of capitalist hierarchy. 

     However, when I grow up to the point that I can develop critical reasoning and experience many inequality and injustice happening in society , I find it more difficult to explain whether climbing this ladder is fair or not given that not all people are able to start off on the same track. For example, the only reason I can study at this LL.B program is because my parents can afford the tuition fee for the international program. However, there might be some kids who want this opportunity  too, but their parents cannot afford it even though these kids are more hard working or clever than I am. So, this made me discover the terrible truth that what I accomplished in terms of academics or finances could not actually be claimed as my success, but could only be regarded as merely the reward for my determination since not all people have the chance to join the same race as I am. If I claim my accomplishment as my success, it would be the same as saying that using a car to win the horse racing is fair and should be proud of.

     Nonetheless, even though I mentioned all this inequality stuff, deep down, I still want to live comfortably with a certain amount of wealth in my bank account since I have always lived this way since I was born. So, the main point I want to raise is not about inequality, but what I want to point out from what I learn throughout these few years is that apart from progress and ambition toward financial success , compassion toward others and the awareness toward our self-righteousness are important things that we should keep in mind as well. In a society that is ready to leave behind those who are defeated in unfair competition, what we can at least do is to help those who are truly in need of help to the extent we can and be compassionate to them. When taking compassion into consideration with my desire of wealth, I thereby came up with the life-long promise that once I am able to settle down and accomplish certain financial freedom, I will dedicate my life to help those who are left behind in the most efficient way to the extent I can.

New year remind me that I should be aware of self-righteousness

     In terms of awareness of self-righteousness, you may be familiar with the concept about human dignity in Constitution Law.  In my opinion, I also believe to the certain extent  that one thing that cannot be taken from every human being is their dignity.  As I developed my thoughts over a year, I learned that we should not take our social status for granted, and should respect every person as a human being regardless of their social status, gender or the money in the bank account. Although this may sound so cliche as you may have heard something like this a hundred time already, I believe that, in practice, respecting everybody with same regard  is not that easy thing to do since we are born in the society that, by its nature, classify people upon their wealth and provide us with negative perception of people whose occupation are viewed as low class jobs such as housemaids, security guards or garbage men. This can be proven by the fact that the short-drama shows on social media with the kind of plot about ‘the founder or directors of the company disguise themselves as security guards, and then get insulted or mistreated by self-righteous employees who think they can  abuse others who think lower than them’ are heavily produced and viewed by a ton of audiences in Thailand. 

   Even though I think these kinds of dramas are stupid and produced to generate a Tik Tok viewing algorithm, its popularity ironically reflects that people are so obsessed with the idea of class hierarchy and finding  the themes presenting how people are being treated differently according to their occupations are truly relatable. As mentioned, I do not have the guts to claim that any success belongs to me since I was born with the birth lottery, and eventually being born to which family is not a choice that any human can make. This means we should not be so self-righteous regarding our social status at all unless you make the way by yourself. This is because you cannot say that you deserve to be born to a rich family, in fact, you are born to a rich family because of luck. Therefore, I ultimately believe that  we should be aware of our self-righteousness by respecting all people with the same regards regardless of their social status because people have their own dignity and our social status which contributes to us to have a successful life merely happens by luck.

       What is written in this article may be a bit off topic, but I think the concept of new year symbolically refers to the new beginning, and usually a time for people to give some self-reflection. So, I think compassion and awareness toward self-righteousness mentioned above are two most important concepts that I learned last year, and probably two concepts that I will hold on to for the rest of my life.   As a nearly-graduated student who has been in education for more than 20 years, this year is probably the first year that I can regard myself as an adult, and a first year that I have to be responsible for myself. I guess this will not be an easy year as I have to deal with getting the first job and stuff, but I will go through it with patience and resilience.