Motivations, Human Nature, Christmas, and Social Science
The following essay has loads of organizational problems, I'm sure, but I've been thinking about some of this recently, and finally got a chance to put some of these thoughts on "paper." I hope that it's more-or-less clear.
Every year on the 26th of December, the church where I've attended Christmas Eve services holds a "swing" service, complete with swing versions of carols and non-traditional traditional music. It's a lot of fun, and the director of the music school that provides the swing orchestra is does a great job. They have a great soprano singing the some of the tunes, and the audience/congregation also gets a chance to sing along as well.
At the end of the service, they leave out an offering plate to help defray the school's expenses, as well as an offering plate for a Christian charity that helps poor people in Brazil. It's always a really good time, but it got me thinking about the multiple motivations we have for the things we do. Sure, the director of the music school as well as the soprano undoubtedly truly believe that they are honoring the Lord through their music, but they also derive joy from performing for a crowd -- and one that will pay them a little, to boot! Additionally, the congregation meets to worship, but we as congregants are also having a good time doing so.
The nature of voluntary action is one of complex motivations. Community bake sales to raise money for the family whose house burned down, or getting your friends together on a sunny Saturday in May to clean up a section of highway are likely relatively inefficient ways of solving these problems. Nevertheless, we continue to do them.
Some of this, it seems, may be linked to a sense of community: cleaning up the section of highway sucks when you're doing it alone, but with a handful of friends, it's exponentially more tolerable, and maybe even (I dare say) fun. The pleasure we derive from being outside on a nice day with friends, and knowing we're "doing the right thing" together helps to make our altruistic work a little less of a sacrifice (especially if someone buys us drinks that evening and puts our picture in the newspaper!) and a little more of a social outing. We're not bad as people for enjoying the publicity (and the drinks!), but we're maybe less altruistic than we were than if we were doing it alone, in the rain.
This essay by Russ Roberts (as well as the blog post here that links to this essay) started to pique my interest on these things. Our wants and desires are much easier to justify when we feel like we are doing something for some "greater good." It's not as though we are exactly selfish, but if our interests dovetail with the "right" thing to do, it undeniably facilitates our ability to do so. We like doing the right thing, especially if we personally benefit from doing so. To admit this is not to debase ourselves to animals, simply ex post rationalizing the chase after our carnal urges; rather, it demonstrates our difference from mere beasts, since we develop a code of ethics and conduct that allows us to choose the correct course. We are neither bestial, with only desires, nor angelic and altruistic. Our curse and our blessing is to thread this needle as human beings.
Our motivations, our incentives are more complex than we can grasp logically or arithmetically. One of the failures of social "science" is our inevitable inability to quantify this, and it is an error to implicitly assume that we can. In the course of studying civil organizations in this part of the world, I'm surprised by the professionalization of these organizations -- the people most involved in civil society are the ones being paid (often by governments or by the EU) to do so. Again, that's not to say that these people are "only in it for the money" (they're definitely not) but if there wasn't any money, it seems unlikely that there would be as many paid "volunteers" either. It makes it very difficult to unravel the motivations of these players as altruistic angels, or self-serving opportunists.
I remember a book from my childhood you could find in the basement in my church in Colorado called The Clown of God. It has a sort of Little Drummer Boy feel to it, about a spiritually impoverished juggler who has nothing but his colored balls and a desire to honor the Infant Jesus with a gift. So he juggles in an empty church before an altar for the Child. In the end, he discovers that the most altruistic feelings usually come in secret, and that God sees the purity or impurity of our motivations better than we do ourselves. This is why Christ instructs us, speaking in Matthew 6, to pray and donate to the poor in secret. Doing so provides a check on our bestial, acquisitive nature, and turns our moral compass back towards God. We can and should still enjoy a performance of Händel's Messiah, and it would be wrong to characterize Elvis' rendition of O Little Town of Bethlehem (to say nothing of his version of Take May Hand, Precious Lord!) as solely a profit-making enterprise of Colonel Tom Parker, but we should also recognize the twin aspects of our nature. It's unfortunately not a particularly scientific endeavor.
Every year on the 26th of December, the church where I've attended Christmas Eve services holds a "swing" service, complete with swing versions of carols and non-traditional traditional music. It's a lot of fun, and the director of the music school that provides the swing orchestra is does a great job. They have a great soprano singing the some of the tunes, and the audience/congregation also gets a chance to sing along as well.
At the end of the service, they leave out an offering plate to help defray the school's expenses, as well as an offering plate for a Christian charity that helps poor people in Brazil. It's always a really good time, but it got me thinking about the multiple motivations we have for the things we do. Sure, the director of the music school as well as the soprano undoubtedly truly believe that they are honoring the Lord through their music, but they also derive joy from performing for a crowd -- and one that will pay them a little, to boot! Additionally, the congregation meets to worship, but we as congregants are also having a good time doing so.
The nature of voluntary action is one of complex motivations. Community bake sales to raise money for the family whose house burned down, or getting your friends together on a sunny Saturday in May to clean up a section of highway are likely relatively inefficient ways of solving these problems. Nevertheless, we continue to do them.
Some of this, it seems, may be linked to a sense of community: cleaning up the section of highway sucks when you're doing it alone, but with a handful of friends, it's exponentially more tolerable, and maybe even (I dare say) fun. The pleasure we derive from being outside on a nice day with friends, and knowing we're "doing the right thing" together helps to make our altruistic work a little less of a sacrifice (especially if someone buys us drinks that evening and puts our picture in the newspaper!) and a little more of a social outing. We're not bad as people for enjoying the publicity (and the drinks!), but we're maybe less altruistic than we were than if we were doing it alone, in the rain.
This essay by Russ Roberts (as well as the blog post here that links to this essay) started to pique my interest on these things. Our wants and desires are much easier to justify when we feel like we are doing something for some "greater good." It's not as though we are exactly selfish, but if our interests dovetail with the "right" thing to do, it undeniably facilitates our ability to do so. We like doing the right thing, especially if we personally benefit from doing so. To admit this is not to debase ourselves to animals, simply ex post rationalizing the chase after our carnal urges; rather, it demonstrates our difference from mere beasts, since we develop a code of ethics and conduct that allows us to choose the correct course. We are neither bestial, with only desires, nor angelic and altruistic. Our curse and our blessing is to thread this needle as human beings.
Our motivations, our incentives are more complex than we can grasp logically or arithmetically. One of the failures of social "science" is our inevitable inability to quantify this, and it is an error to implicitly assume that we can. In the course of studying civil organizations in this part of the world, I'm surprised by the professionalization of these organizations -- the people most involved in civil society are the ones being paid (often by governments or by the EU) to do so. Again, that's not to say that these people are "only in it for the money" (they're definitely not) but if there wasn't any money, it seems unlikely that there would be as many paid "volunteers" either. It makes it very difficult to unravel the motivations of these players as altruistic angels, or self-serving opportunists.
I remember a book from my childhood you could find in the basement in my church in Colorado called The Clown of God. It has a sort of Little Drummer Boy feel to it, about a spiritually impoverished juggler who has nothing but his colored balls and a desire to honor the Infant Jesus with a gift. So he juggles in an empty church before an altar for the Child. In the end, he discovers that the most altruistic feelings usually come in secret, and that God sees the purity or impurity of our motivations better than we do ourselves. This is why Christ instructs us, speaking in Matthew 6, to pray and donate to the poor in secret. Doing so provides a check on our bestial, acquisitive nature, and turns our moral compass back towards God. We can and should still enjoy a performance of Händel's Messiah, and it would be wrong to characterize Elvis' rendition of O Little Town of Bethlehem (to say nothing of his version of Take May Hand, Precious Lord!) as solely a profit-making enterprise of Colonel Tom Parker, but we should also recognize the twin aspects of our nature. It's unfortunately not a particularly scientific endeavor.
posted by Professor Starobrno at 5:09 PM
1 Comments:
Nice post, Matt. Mr. Finch just told me this very minute that you have a blog. I had no idea, so I added it to my RSS reader right away. However, there's one teeny problem: your post is in white font, so I had to highlight the whole thing in order to read it! I couldn't figure out how to fix it in my settings; maybe you can fix it in yours? Also: hee hee.
18:24
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