What Motivates People and How?

I feel obliged to write a special entry for the Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day which is today, so hopefully this will serve as such. However, it's probably not going to be what you expect.

My first question is the one in the title: what motivates people? Why do people do what they do? One of the most common myths about it is what I call "pseudo-Darwinism" - the belief that people ultimately do everything to have sex, or even to procreate. This was started by Sigmund Freud, and also popularised by the book The Selfish Gene (which I haven't read but seems very interesting). However, this makes many explanations for human behaviour very contrived ("You chat on instant messaging because you hope that one of the people in the conversation will give you a lead for a date with an attractive woman/man...") which don't make much sense. It also fails to explain why many people and even many mammals who were castarated or otherwise incapable of bringing offspring do not commit suicide and otherwise seem to lead a happier life. It also doesn't explain why many people marry and lead happy lives, but don't want to have children. (And sometimes also have abortions.) Or why some people become monks or nuns, or other clergymen who are forbidden from having sex.

Plus, many people who have been virgins for a long time, or alternatively have wonderful significant-others (and sex partners) whom they'll never wish to hurt, are still chatting on the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and other IM services.

So it's not a very satisfying answer. But there's a more sensical explanation, and it actually heavily predates Darwin. In the first book of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle claims that we perform certain actions for certain ends, and that these ends are also sometimes means to an end. But there must be an ultimate end, because otherwise everything will be meaningless.

He then claims that "happiness" is the ultimate end for most humans. Happiness can also be interpreted, or subtituted for "self-esteem", "pleasure", "joy", etc. depending on how you see it.

So what does it mean? We do what makes us feel good about ourselves. However, different people, and people at different times, have different actions that they deem as making them happier. This is often perfectly natural. I can sit at the computer most of the time, while just writing, chatting, or writing software. Other people don't seem to like it enough to do it all the time. Often, what makes us happy or our tastes is not a moral decision but an ammoral one (i.e: something that's neither moral nor immoral.).

As software developers, our job is to make sure people encounter as few frustrations as they can with our software. This means that the software will have good usability, that it will "just work", that it won't have bugs, and that if such problems are encountered they can easily be reported and dealt with.

If a software works according to our expectations, and does what we want - we'll feel happy. If it is too difficult to operate, lacks necessary features, has obscure and unhelpful documentation, or doesn't behave acccording to our expectations - we'll feel unhappy and helpless. As an example, I was searching CPAN for an IMAP module so I can get a list of all the From: addresses in my work's inbox. The first hits seemed overly complicated and required too much research. Then I found Email-Folder-IMAP whose synopsis had done something very similar to what I wanted. After pasting the code, changing it a bit and running it, I had got a list of all the from addresses. That has made me happy, and I was determined to use Email-Folder-IMAP from then on.

Back to the main subject - the main problem in the world is that some people derive pleasure from causing damage. For example, Genghis Khan has killed millions of people in his irrational and pointless conquests, just so he can feel good about himself. Adolf Hitler was similar too. The reason he decided to set the blame on the Jews and to kill over 20 million people in World-War-II was so he can feel good about himself. Also notice how he constantly shifted the blame to his and his people's problems from himself to members of other people, especially the Jews. Constantly blaming others or the world at large for one's own problems is a vestige of what Neo-Tech calls "The Criminal Mind".

Of course, even the Nazis were angels in comparison to 20th-century Communistic regimes who had been responsible for killing 100 million of the citizens of their own countries. Why? Because the leaders felt that they were conspiring against them, and that these victims prevent "future growth", but in fact because they felt pleasure of doing this.

No reason for any human-induced mass-destruction have ever existed except for the fact that the Charismatic leader was a destructive and evil person (a "mystic" in Neo-Tech terminology) who wanted to feel good about himself.

But naturally saying "Would you kill a million people so I can feel good" would not motivate anybody, they needed a "higher cause": "God", "the Aryan Race", "the nation", "justice" (not real Justice - more like an a collectivist revenge), "the Proletariat", etc. (And more recently "the Environment", "our security", "fighting the drug abusers" and other causes like that). But these causes are unnatural because there is no good reason to follow them.

Ayn Rand has identified that any aim to an unnatural altruistic cause, instead of the real cause which is the well-being, freedom and prosperity of the conscious individual, is in fact a recipe for disaster. By altruism she didn't mean willingly and rationally contributing to the well-being of another individual (or group of individuals) you care about, but rather claiming that one's life is worthless without contributing or even sacrificing to an external cause, be it "The poor", "the weak", "the nation", "the faith" or whatever.

As we remember the victims of the Nazis we should realise two things:

1. If the Germans would have cared about their own well-being, been logical and considered Hitler a stupid and irrational pip-squeak and nothing more, then World-War-II would not have happpened.

2. If the Jews (and other Nazi-opposers) realised they were in danger, and would have marched into Germany and kill everyone that looked like a Nazi, aiming to eventually kill Hitler himself, the War would have turned out much differently.

   While I am a peaceful man, I am not a pacifist. I believe that when someone is in danger, they are allowed to exercise force against their oppressors. And sometimes it is necesary.

The issue is not the "strong-vs-the-weak" - it is the "noble-vs-the-evil", and ironically some of the causes that seem the most noble to us are in fact very harmful.

Now it is your mission to try to apply what I said here. Act for your own well-being and happiness. Oppose those people who tell you you should dedicate your life to them. Ridicule them. Insult them. Fight them. Laugh them out of existence.

Don't blame other people or the world at large for your own problems. Challenge every assumption. Make sure you have no prejudice or dogma. Understand that some people know more than you in some respects, and that even the most wise men can (and often do) learn from fools. Be fanatical for proper use of logic, which is the only valid tool that we have for judging what's correct and right and what's wrong and bad.

Don't be a slave to your emotions and feelings. A person who's behaving rationally will be happier in the long run than a person who's behaving irrationally, and will experience more feelings of joy, happiness and love. Your feelings are not facts and only reflect our thoughts, and general condition. While we want to be happy, we shouldn't make pleasure our master, but rather our servant in the ends for a better life.

Regards -- Shlomi Fish, The Eternal Jew.

Syndicated 2008-05-01 15:44:31 from shlomif