Inside Tips
MOTIVATION WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF INDUSTRIAL/ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
Two areas of I/O psychology invovle a tremendous amount of theorizing: motivation and leadership (the topic of leadership will be discussed in Chapter 12). Because both motivation and leadership are extremely complex and important topics in the work world, they are given a a great deal of attentnion by I/O pschologists. This chapter introduces a variety of theories of motivation. Rather than viewing these as isolated models, consider the ways in which they are similar. Some of these similarities are reflected in the grouping of theories into categories, such as need tehories and job design theories, as shown in the chapter outline. Other similarities can also help draw related concepts together.
(End of Book Page 182).
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Motivation Chapter of IO Psychology Book
pages 182-211 in Ronald E. Riggio's Introduction to Industrial/Organizational Psychology.
PART THREE CHAPTER 7
MOTIVATION
Chapter Outline:
Defining Motivation
Need Theories of Motivation
Basic Need Theories
McClelland's Achievement Motivtion Theory
Behavior-Based Theories of Motivation
Reinforcement Theory
Extrinsic versus Intrinsic Motivation
Goal-setting Theory
Job Design Theories of Motivation
Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory
Job Characteristics Model
Cognitive Theories of Motivation
Equity Theory of Motivation
Expectancy (VIE) Theory of Motivation
Comparing, Contrasting, and Combining the Different Motivation Theories
The Relationship Between Motivation and Performance
Systems and technology varialbles, Individual difference variables, Group dynamics variables Organizational Variables
Summary
PART THREE CHAPTER 7
MOTIVATION
Chapter Outline:
Defining Motivation
Need Theories of Motivation
Basic Need Theories
McClelland's Achievement Motivtion Theory
Behavior-Based Theories of Motivation
Reinforcement Theory
Extrinsic versus Intrinsic Motivation
Goal-setting Theory
Job Design Theories of Motivation
Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory
Job Characteristics Model
Cognitive Theories of Motivation
Equity Theory of Motivation
Expectancy (VIE) Theory of Motivation
Comparing, Contrasting, and Combining the Different Motivation Theories
The Relationship Between Motivation and Performance
Systems and technology varialbles, Individual difference variables, Group dynamics variables Organizational Variables
Summary
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Note
I know I have an announced goal of 200 words per day but those monday ones are gigantic. I'm taking the week off for blogging.
Monday, May 25, 2009
The philosophical concept of Rationalism is dumb
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/12/17/011217crat_atlarge
Innate ideas, for the most part, are false. Kaplan knew this.
Here is my most recent submission to the NC State Newspaper:
Depressed in the Summer? Stay positive
It is fascinating when a fad actually turns out to be true. This is because there is a new fad of self-help just about every week. Two articles, one from Newsweek and one from the American Psychological Association give verifiability to one fad, the power of positive thinking. I’m talking specifically about something that people vaguely remember as The Secret, which was on Oprah somewhere in 2006-2007. The Secret has a couple of recommendations about the power of positive thinking. According to these two articles, there is some proof to support these claims.
Sociology Class told me that the idea of positive thinking cropped up in the 1800’s as the Horatio Alger myth. Horatio Alger was a boy who grows up in various novels to become extraordinarily rich. This of course, is sort of a misapplication of the truth, at the very best. Later, in the 1920’s, people started in with the power of positive thinking. For example, people used to say, “Every day in every way I am getting better and better.”
The Secret recommends to its followers that they use the law of attraction, which says that like attracts like. The really absurd thing is, as any NC State chemistry student will tell you, this is not true. Like solutions dissolve like solutions, and opposites attract at the atomic level, as in electricity. No one really knows what humans do.
Nevertheless, The Secret recommends considering concrete aspects of a goal or a dream. Here we go again, readers think. But this time readers are wrong. According to Wray Herbert in his Newsweek article, “the Lure of Tomorrow,” thinking about concrete aspects of a goal is one way of ending procrastination. In a word, by thinking about concrete aspects of a goal, you actually get closer to doing it. In this way, thoughts do “attract” like actions, and therefore similar material manifestations.
Next, and in parallel, there is a power of staying positive, at least in your words. In a March 1998 APA Article titled, “Mom Was Right -- If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say About Someone, Don't Say Anything At All: The Boomerang Effect Of Gossip Is Discovered,” the article states that people identify what you say about stuff with your character. When you say stuff is intelligent, people start to think you are intelligent. When you say stuff is dumb, people think you are dumb.
Some words of warning are necessary. First, when you go around making your imagination list of what mowing the lawn feels like and the imaginary dreamscape joy of having completed weeding, remember that there is a very big difference between doing something and thinking about something. You can try really hard at thinking, but that’s still different from doing. The other thing is that calling people intelligent can make people think that you are intelligent; and so as always it is still good to stay positive. Unfortunately, and perhaps most importantly, just because people think you are smart doe not mean you are smart. It is just an important step in and of itself.
Innate ideas, for the most part, are false. Kaplan knew this.
Here is my most recent submission to the NC State Newspaper:
Depressed in the Summer? Stay positive
It is fascinating when a fad actually turns out to be true. This is because there is a new fad of self-help just about every week. Two articles, one from Newsweek and one from the American Psychological Association give verifiability to one fad, the power of positive thinking. I’m talking specifically about something that people vaguely remember as The Secret, which was on Oprah somewhere in 2006-2007. The Secret has a couple of recommendations about the power of positive thinking. According to these two articles, there is some proof to support these claims.
Sociology Class told me that the idea of positive thinking cropped up in the 1800’s as the Horatio Alger myth. Horatio Alger was a boy who grows up in various novels to become extraordinarily rich. This of course, is sort of a misapplication of the truth, at the very best. Later, in the 1920’s, people started in with the power of positive thinking. For example, people used to say, “Every day in every way I am getting better and better.”
The Secret recommends to its followers that they use the law of attraction, which says that like attracts like. The really absurd thing is, as any NC State chemistry student will tell you, this is not true. Like solutions dissolve like solutions, and opposites attract at the atomic level, as in electricity. No one really knows what humans do.
Nevertheless, The Secret recommends considering concrete aspects of a goal or a dream. Here we go again, readers think. But this time readers are wrong. According to Wray Herbert in his Newsweek article, “the Lure of Tomorrow,” thinking about concrete aspects of a goal is one way of ending procrastination. In a word, by thinking about concrete aspects of a goal, you actually get closer to doing it. In this way, thoughts do “attract” like actions, and therefore similar material manifestations.
Next, and in parallel, there is a power of staying positive, at least in your words. In a March 1998 APA Article titled, “Mom Was Right -- If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say About Someone, Don't Say Anything At All: The Boomerang Effect Of Gossip Is Discovered,” the article states that people identify what you say about stuff with your character. When you say stuff is intelligent, people start to think you are intelligent. When you say stuff is dumb, people think you are dumb.
Some words of warning are necessary. First, when you go around making your imagination list of what mowing the lawn feels like and the imaginary dreamscape joy of having completed weeding, remember that there is a very big difference between doing something and thinking about something. You can try really hard at thinking, but that’s still different from doing. The other thing is that calling people intelligent can make people think that you are intelligent; and so as always it is still good to stay positive. Unfortunately, and perhaps most importantly, just because people think you are smart doe not mean you are smart. It is just an important step in and of itself.
I keep on having these, "That was when I went obese" moments. Let me explain. First, I'll eat a hamburger. Then I'll have a hotdog. (what's your count for this year? the average american eats 72 hotdogs a year! beef hotdogs, kielbasa, sausage, tofu hotdogs, and chicken hotdogs all count) Then I'll have a salad. Then I'll have ice cream. Then, and here's where the comment slips into my brain's back door, "That was when I went obese."
Is there a philosophy for eating? Sure, there probably is. Is there a philosophy of nutrition and stuff like that? I'm guessing yes.
The closest thing that comes to my mind is of course hedonism. This is hedonism when I eat whatever. We actually went over hedonism earlier in this blog, and I think we went over Francis Bacon's definition of rhetoric as a way of staunching (stopping) lower hedonism for a better, higher hedonism.
Dr. Johnson says that humans move from hope to hope. It's that whole consumer thing. Our hopes can never be satisfied. I mean, that's why we keep on living. It's because if we got to the top of the peak of something, if we got to that plateau and were completely satisfied, we would just knock out. I'm interested in points of bliss because they are sort of like emotional landmarks that we can look back to. Nevertheless, I'm interested in the sort of yin and yang of this. Some of the most beautiful works of art, and certainly some my favorites, have been about the boredom and frivolity of human existence.
I have been having a recurring thought process. (Daydream seems inappropriate here. Also how come you can't footnote in blogs? I feel so incomplete). In this recurring thought process, I think of something conceptually complete, like a square (the geometric picture, not the math thing where you do x to the x). I do not think anything could be more square, unless it was something that had to be forced to become that concept. This is sort of similar to Unger's skeptical argument, to be reviewed in this blog later. Once something is geometrically square, you cannot make it any more square. It just is. Here, I therefore submit a metaphysical theory of completion. Once something is complete, there is nothing you could do to make it more of what it is. For one final example, you could make a garden more square like, but you could not change a square into anything more square-like.
Ready for the leap? I think other processes and concepts can be complete; or metaphysically complete in this way. I've been thinking about this recently about friendships. Sometimes I don't see these people whom I liked so much; and I don't know why. But when I put it like this, it sort of seems fishy, sort of superstitious.
Kant began the primitive aspects of the contemporary sciences and philosophy when he sort of implied, or at the very least acknowledged the limitations of reason. That is part of the Critique of pure reason in The Critique of Pure Reason. Part of the job of philosophy is certainly to integrate the sciences when they are too far removed from each other (get a load of the article at some point in this blog on this, where this NYT editorial poses an anti-Kant thesis! Of course this was written by a religion professor....). But another, and I think very important job of philosophy is to disintegrate and separate the sciences. I am more specifically talking about the bastardization of science.
Here are some of the classics and my favorites:
1) Opposites attract: The 20th century microphysics of electricity applied over and over to human relations.
2) Like attracts like: the opposite of the first one, maybe referring to the way that like dissolves like in polar or non polar solution reactions. Popularly misapplied in The Secret.
3) Religion and Science: like all the time, everywhere
4) Ramus's famed attack on Quintillian. Ramus says, angrily, that Quintillian's idea of rhetoric is a good man talking is horsefeathers. Rhetoric is oratory only, says Ramus.
5) Using "science" to talk about the end or the beginning of the world.
6) The use of philosophical induction (which is not mathematically deductive, as opposed to mathematical induction, which is) in Psychology.
Note on 6) Okay, time for a footnote again. Basically what happens is there's philosophical induction and mathematical induction. Philosophical induction is when you see a pattern and you suppose the next in the sequence. An example for illustration is: I hand you a fountain pen, I hand you a fountain pen, I hand you a fountain pen. What, praytell, could I hand you next? You guess a fountain pen. You guessed right.
Here's an illustrative counterexample to what we just did:
Q: Knock knock
A: Who's there?
Q: Banana
A: Banana who?
Q: Knock knock
A: Who's there?
Q: Banana
A: Banana who?
Q: Knock knock
A: [Exasperated] Who's there?
Q: Orange!!!!
A: Orange who?
Q: Orange you glad I didn't say banana?!!
This is approximately Hume's famous counterexample to induction. That is, I can give you a matchstick, a flame, a match box, and the strike; But you're going to be hardpressed to tell me that the struck match caused the flame. The big question is: where is the causation; and what is causation.
Thankfully, we have Kant to refute this and establish that there is causality. Kant's second analogy has been typed in full on this blog. My interpretation of this analogy, submitted to class, has also been posted (I think it will be in march 2009).
The problem of 6) still remains. That is, we got Kant's refutation of Hume, and ergo: induction. So yes we can have psychology and all sorts of sciences. The problem with induction still remains. We haven't gotten rid of it.
That is, a great many of those magazine statistics have met a cliff in a Wil. E. Coyote cartoon.
Anti-Kantian thesis in an editorail in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html
This is relevant firstly because I was talking about it. It is secondarily relevant as we are discussing the integration and corresponding disintegration of sciences.
Is there a philosophy for eating? Sure, there probably is. Is there a philosophy of nutrition and stuff like that? I'm guessing yes.
The closest thing that comes to my mind is of course hedonism. This is hedonism when I eat whatever. We actually went over hedonism earlier in this blog, and I think we went over Francis Bacon's definition of rhetoric as a way of staunching (stopping) lower hedonism for a better, higher hedonism.
Dr. Johnson says that humans move from hope to hope. It's that whole consumer thing. Our hopes can never be satisfied. I mean, that's why we keep on living. It's because if we got to the top of the peak of something, if we got to that plateau and were completely satisfied, we would just knock out. I'm interested in points of bliss because they are sort of like emotional landmarks that we can look back to. Nevertheless, I'm interested in the sort of yin and yang of this. Some of the most beautiful works of art, and certainly some my favorites, have been about the boredom and frivolity of human existence.
I have been having a recurring thought process. (Daydream seems inappropriate here. Also how come you can't footnote in blogs? I feel so incomplete). In this recurring thought process, I think of something conceptually complete, like a square (the geometric picture, not the math thing where you do x to the x). I do not think anything could be more square, unless it was something that had to be forced to become that concept. This is sort of similar to Unger's skeptical argument, to be reviewed in this blog later. Once something is geometrically square, you cannot make it any more square. It just is. Here, I therefore submit a metaphysical theory of completion. Once something is complete, there is nothing you could do to make it more of what it is. For one final example, you could make a garden more square like, but you could not change a square into anything more square-like.
Ready for the leap? I think other processes and concepts can be complete; or metaphysically complete in this way. I've been thinking about this recently about friendships. Sometimes I don't see these people whom I liked so much; and I don't know why. But when I put it like this, it sort of seems fishy, sort of superstitious.
Kant began the primitive aspects of the contemporary sciences and philosophy when he sort of implied, or at the very least acknowledged the limitations of reason. That is part of the Critique of pure reason in The Critique of Pure Reason. Part of the job of philosophy is certainly to integrate the sciences when they are too far removed from each other (get a load of the article at some point in this blog on this, where this NYT editorial poses an anti-Kant thesis! Of course this was written by a religion professor....). But another, and I think very important job of philosophy is to disintegrate and separate the sciences. I am more specifically talking about the bastardization of science.
Here are some of the classics and my favorites:
1) Opposites attract: The 20th century microphysics of electricity applied over and over to human relations.
2) Like attracts like: the opposite of the first one, maybe referring to the way that like dissolves like in polar or non polar solution reactions. Popularly misapplied in The Secret.
3) Religion and Science: like all the time, everywhere
4) Ramus's famed attack on Quintillian. Ramus says, angrily, that Quintillian's idea of rhetoric is a good man talking is horsefeathers. Rhetoric is oratory only, says Ramus.
5) Using "science" to talk about the end or the beginning of the world.
6) The use of philosophical induction (which is not mathematically deductive, as opposed to mathematical induction, which is) in Psychology.
Note on 6) Okay, time for a footnote again. Basically what happens is there's philosophical induction and mathematical induction. Philosophical induction is when you see a pattern and you suppose the next in the sequence. An example for illustration is: I hand you a fountain pen, I hand you a fountain pen, I hand you a fountain pen. What, praytell, could I hand you next? You guess a fountain pen. You guessed right.
Here's an illustrative counterexample to what we just did:
Q: Knock knock
A: Who's there?
Q: Banana
A: Banana who?
Q: Knock knock
A: Who's there?
Q: Banana
A: Banana who?
Q: Knock knock
A: [Exasperated] Who's there?
Q: Orange!!!!
A: Orange who?
Q: Orange you glad I didn't say banana?!!
This is approximately Hume's famous counterexample to induction. That is, I can give you a matchstick, a flame, a match box, and the strike; But you're going to be hardpressed to tell me that the struck match caused the flame. The big question is: where is the causation; and what is causation.
Thankfully, we have Kant to refute this and establish that there is causality. Kant's second analogy has been typed in full on this blog. My interpretation of this analogy, submitted to class, has also been posted (I think it will be in march 2009).
The problem of 6) still remains. That is, we got Kant's refutation of Hume, and ergo: induction. So yes we can have psychology and all sorts of sciences. The problem with induction still remains. We haven't gotten rid of it.
That is, a great many of those magazine statistics have met a cliff in a Wil. E. Coyote cartoon.
Anti-Kantian thesis in an editorail in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html
This is relevant firstly because I was talking about it. It is secondarily relevant as we are discussing the integration and corresponding disintegration of sciences.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.
The Adventurer, # 84 (August 25, 1753)
(with help from wikiquote)
The Adventurer, # 84 (August 25, 1753)
(with help from wikiquote)
Start Talking
Samuel Johnson has a quote where he says that silence quickly propagates itself. Wikipedia says that normative refers to ought to or should tenses. I happen to have thought that normative meant normal or referring to forms outside of general experience. So normative ethics refers in this idea to ethics that does not refer to any individual person, but the ethical conduct of everyone and exists outside of everyone.
Dr. Johnson says silence propagates itself. I keep telling myself that the best philosophy is two parts descriptive and one part prescriptive. There is a real, dare I say, philosophical struggle in the sciences, like Sociology, as to when their findings should be prescriptive. It almost seems unscientific to have a motive of helping the world when doing science. But because we know the Motive Fallacy, i.e. that motives do not change the truth or falsity (or in this matter the actual help or science of something), we know that this is not the case.
Philosophy can be perscriptive, as in telling everyone what to do, what they should do, as in this previous definition of normative ethics. It can also be descriptive, telling us what already is. Hey, because as we say, "We're hardly sure about anything."
Silence propagates itself, it makes itself. This rings true for me because one time I was in the car with my friend Nick and he was outrageously furious at me. Looking back, I have no idea why. I had picked him up from the airport and after a few accented monosyllabic sentences ("No!" "Why?!") we drifted into painful silence, like a room with too much heat.
Another part of this aphorism (saying) is prescriptive: start talking. Watch out for silence. There's stuff to talk about. There's things to say. Things need to be said. Start talking.
Dr. Johnson says silence propagates itself. I keep telling myself that the best philosophy is two parts descriptive and one part prescriptive. There is a real, dare I say, philosophical struggle in the sciences, like Sociology, as to when their findings should be prescriptive. It almost seems unscientific to have a motive of helping the world when doing science. But because we know the Motive Fallacy, i.e. that motives do not change the truth or falsity (or in this matter the actual help or science of something), we know that this is not the case.
Philosophy can be perscriptive, as in telling everyone what to do, what they should do, as in this previous definition of normative ethics. It can also be descriptive, telling us what already is. Hey, because as we say, "We're hardly sure about anything."
Silence propagates itself, it makes itself. This rings true for me because one time I was in the car with my friend Nick and he was outrageously furious at me. Looking back, I have no idea why. I had picked him up from the airport and after a few accented monosyllabic sentences ("No!" "Why?!") we drifted into painful silence, like a room with too much heat.
Another part of this aphorism (saying) is prescriptive: start talking. Watch out for silence. There's stuff to talk about. There's things to say. Things need to be said. Start talking.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Some Notes on Boredom and Leisure Time
It seems like routine and the transcendence from around and through routine is a central way of attaining goals. It's not a lot of bite; there's no drama there. I think that some of the best things in life are from boredom. there are positive theories of invention from and about boredom. That is, Jared Diamon entered, in Guns Germs and Steel, an empirical argument for invention, in terms of mechanical engineering, with the theory that invention and synthesis could not happen if not for agriculture and farming. Recently, the May 11, 2009 issue of the New Yorker has a reflections piece from Adam Gopnik which seems to second this theory. People would not have time to invent new production methods of food if there were not abundances of food in order to make that time in the first place. The advent of leisure time in the 20th century coincides with some of the greatest inventions ever.
The Aesop's moral and fable in question reads like this: There's a crow with a beak too short to get to a berry at the bottom of a bowl. The crow needs to get to the berry so that he can eat it. He picks up a stick with his beak and uses the tool in order to grab the berry. In this way, and in terms of the moral, necessity is the mother of invention.
Diamond reverses this and says that invention is the mother of necessity, in that people usually make the inventions and then find the uses. For example, Edison invented the phonograph in order to record wills and deeds; legal documents. He didn't especially think that people would use that invention for music.
Gopnik says that frivolity is the mother of invention. He enters the Devil's Paradox of invention that when a problem has been solved there seems to be inventions.
All of this factors into my complicated arguemtn for laziness. Dr. Samuel Johnson said of his life that much was intended and little was done. This, from the man who wrote the English Dictionary and revolutionized criticism. All of this also ignores that laziness, boredom, syntehsis, invention, they are all radically different. They have overlaps, but their connotative meanings are especially important. As illustrative example, Dr. Johnson worked hand to mouth for most of his life. He might have been indolent by his own standards, but he certainly worked like heck all the time. Because of the connotative meanings, we know that there does not have to be an inconsistency here. You could work very hard and still intend to do so much more.
The Aesop's moral and fable in question reads like this: There's a crow with a beak too short to get to a berry at the bottom of a bowl. The crow needs to get to the berry so that he can eat it. He picks up a stick with his beak and uses the tool in order to grab the berry. In this way, and in terms of the moral, necessity is the mother of invention.
Diamond reverses this and says that invention is the mother of necessity, in that people usually make the inventions and then find the uses. For example, Edison invented the phonograph in order to record wills and deeds; legal documents. He didn't especially think that people would use that invention for music.
Gopnik says that frivolity is the mother of invention. He enters the Devil's Paradox of invention that when a problem has been solved there seems to be inventions.
All of this factors into my complicated arguemtn for laziness. Dr. Samuel Johnson said of his life that much was intended and little was done. This, from the man who wrote the English Dictionary and revolutionized criticism. All of this also ignores that laziness, boredom, syntehsis, invention, they are all radically different. They have overlaps, but their connotative meanings are especially important. As illustrative example, Dr. Johnson worked hand to mouth for most of his life. He might have been indolent by his own standards, but he certainly worked like heck all the time. Because of the connotative meanings, we know that there does not have to be an inconsistency here. You could work very hard and still intend to do so much more.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Strike through the Masks
Quote from Moby Dick:
The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
Some Samuel Johnson typed up
By Samuel Johnson
CHAPTER XVII
The Prince associates with young men of spirit and gaiety
RASSELAS rose next day, and resolved to begin his experiments upon life. 'Youth, cried he, is the time of gladness: I will join myself to the young men, whose only business is to gratify their desires, and whose time is all spent in a succession of enjoyments.'
To such societies he was readily admitted, but a few days brought him back weary and disgusted. Their mirth was without images, their laughter without motive; their pleasures were gross and sensual in which the mind had no part; their conduct was at once wild and mean; they laughed at order and at law, but the frown of pwer dejected, and the eye of wisdom abashed them.
The prince soon concluded, that he should never be happy in a course of life of which he was ashamed. He thought it unsuitable to a reasonable being to act without a plan, and to be sad or cheerful only by chance. 'Happiness, said he, must be something solid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty.'
But his young companions had gained so much of his regard by their frankness and courtesy, that he could not leave them without warning and remonstrance. 'My friends, said he, I have seriously considered our manners and our prospects, and find that we have mistaken our own interest. The first years of man must mjake provision for the last. He that never thinks never can be wise. Perpetual leveity must end in ignorance; and intemperance, though it wmay fire the spirits for an hour, will make life short or miserable. Let us consider that youth is of no long durration and that in maturrer age, when the enchantments of fancy shall cease, and phantoms of delight dance no more about us, we shall have no comforts but the esteem of wise men, and the means of doing good. Let us, therefore, stop, while to stop is in our power: let us live as men who are sometime to grow old, and to whom it willb e the most dreadful of all evils not to count their past years but by follies, and to be reminded of their former luxuriance of health only by the maladies which rito has produced.'
They stared a while in silence one upon another, and, at last, drove him away by a general chorus of continued laughter.
The consciousness that his sentiments were just, and his intentions kind, was scarcely sufficient to support him against the horrour of dierision. But he recovered his tranquillity, and pursued his search [for happiness].
CHAPTER XVII
The Prince associates with young men of spirit and gaiety
RASSELAS rose next day, and resolved to begin his experiments upon life. 'Youth, cried he, is the time of gladness: I will join myself to the young men, whose only business is to gratify their desires, and whose time is all spent in a succession of enjoyments.'
To such societies he was readily admitted, but a few days brought him back weary and disgusted. Their mirth was without images, their laughter without motive; their pleasures were gross and sensual in which the mind had no part; their conduct was at once wild and mean; they laughed at order and at law, but the frown of pwer dejected, and the eye of wisdom abashed them.
The prince soon concluded, that he should never be happy in a course of life of which he was ashamed. He thought it unsuitable to a reasonable being to act without a plan, and to be sad or cheerful only by chance. 'Happiness, said he, must be something solid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty.'
But his young companions had gained so much of his regard by their frankness and courtesy, that he could not leave them without warning and remonstrance. 'My friends, said he, I have seriously considered our manners and our prospects, and find that we have mistaken our own interest. The first years of man must mjake provision for the last. He that never thinks never can be wise. Perpetual leveity must end in ignorance; and intemperance, though it wmay fire the spirits for an hour, will make life short or miserable. Let us consider that youth is of no long durration and that in maturrer age, when the enchantments of fancy shall cease, and phantoms of delight dance no more about us, we shall have no comforts but the esteem of wise men, and the means of doing good. Let us, therefore, stop, while to stop is in our power: let us live as men who are sometime to grow old, and to whom it willb e the most dreadful of all evils not to count their past years but by follies, and to be reminded of their former luxuriance of health only by the maladies which rito has produced.'
They stared a while in silence one upon another, and, at last, drove him away by a general chorus of continued laughter.
The consciousness that his sentiments were just, and his intentions kind, was scarcely sufficient to support him against the horrour of dierision. But he recovered his tranquillity, and pursued his search [for happiness].
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Perspectives!
One thing that I figured out in 3rd grade was that the nature of time is the lack of repetition. Consider: Today is May 2nd, 2009, and we are never going to get that back again. Now, when I was in third grade, this seemed like a big deal. Question: why did it seem like a big deal and it does not seem like a big deal now? Back then, I lamented the fact that this moment will never return again. The whole point of our system of time is uniqueness, as a means to denote it. Heady philosophy for a 3rd grader!
Consider: the reason that we do not think 0f the "miracle of birth" as a miracle is because it has happened over 6 billion times (As of the present day-amount of people: think of the ages and ages of births and animals and plants that have had sex and birthed). We only think of the miracle of birth or the miracle of the moment when we think of its uniqueness compared to all others.
The reason that we do not care for this moment is because we think we will get it back again. We think we are going to hit this moment again and again and again.
With his philosophy of contingency, Leibniz has a theory that we are in the middle of a bunch of possible realities. So when you go for the strawberry ice cream instead of the vanilla, there is another planet out there with you going for the vanilla, instead of the strawberry. With the recent theories of physics, it seems as though with the multiuniverses and multiple dimensions, Leibniz could seriously be right.
Spinoza, as I learned in Jarrett's Guide for the Perplexed: Spinoza, thought that the only reason we believe in contingent truths is because we really do not take into account uniqueness. For example, when you go to chop a tree down, it seems as though, standing in front of the forest full of trees, that you could cut down any of them without any ramifications or determined-ness. The reason for this is because you do not see the fact that the tree you chopped down was that particular tree with those particular circumstances. That tree was really selected because it was the closest to the house, because it was just the right size, or because you had the specific emotions at that time to cut it down.
So you're never going to get this day back again. The reason that you do not really care about this substituted denotation of the moment (this moment = this time, right here, right now), is because it looks like all other moments. It looks the same as the next moment and in this way, you are not going to realize how special this is until 15 years later.
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