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Tuesday, January 23, 2007

If all human decisions are economic decisions, what about voluntary blood donation?

Today I donated blood at a camp organized in our office. Though I never came across a critical-for-blood scenario, I just walked in and and quickly went through the process. I also found that there were amny others like me. I was wondering what are the forces that drove these people including me. Though I have strong feelings about help and support to those in need, I never encountered a scenario where blood was life-saving. Few points that motivated me and my colleagues could be:
1. It was facilitated. None of us had to make any extra effort to do the blood donation. If we had to go to a Blood bank even if it is a kilometre away, I doubt anyone of us would have made the effort to go there.
2. The emotion attached to the act. After donating the blood I suddenly recalled some of the moments I experienced as a kid at my native place. Crow was the common bird that used to co-exist peacefully (not at all times though) with humans. If a crow, whatever reason gets injured, immediately I used to see that atleast a hundred gathered around and used to shout continuously until the injured crow recovered. On all other occassions it is very common to see one crow snatching food from another crow. Somewhere we all have that unity factor running through our blood and we feel very happy when we help someone and I feel this is of basic nature to all of us

In one of the recent training sessions, the facilitator, Air Cmde Parvateesam, mentioned that all our decisions are economically motivated. Though I could fully agree with that statement, I kept silent at the point but promising myself to examine it in different situations. The above blood donation situation provided me an apt situation. Initially I felt that there is nothing economical to this decision but slowly realised that there were many economic aspects intertwined to the situation not only from my side but also from the future beneficiaries of the donated blood.

After this analysis I realized that economic factors are so intertwined with human life that whether I agree or not, all my conscious decisions are indeed economic decisions.

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