Jack, you haven't missed the point. You've extended the dialogue.
Let me address my passion about motivation first. It arises from previous
and continuing failure to impact the automatic assumption of motivation.
You say "We often express biological developments as motivated..." I
object to the casual, sloppy and anthropomorphic use of a word which is so
deeply imbedded in management thinking and, of course, that of the whole
culture. I don't have a passion for attacking it in a merely social
setting. In management its one of the metanarratives that contains a
fatal flaw. The flaw is the asssumption of mechanistic, reductionist
psychology.
> But, because we are aware of the power of inertia, we tend to associate
> social action with motivation. Indeed, we spend an inordinate amount of
> time and energy trying to "understand the motives" behind behavior. This
> suggests to me a structure of belief which is very widespread and which
> underlies a great deal of social change.
Inertia is not a natural state of living beings any more than equilibrium
is a natural state of living systems. "Inertia" is usually a judgement
from a particular point of view which obscures that that is the case.
Try out the idea that behaviour emerges from the rich interplay of forces
that is always present and always beyond analysis. At the very least, and
I hesitate to use the terminology, consider that human beings are dynamic
systems and I think you'll find with that limited view that motivation is
a phantom that isn't real and won't produce systemic alterations - ie
desired action.
It is not empirically so that action is preceded by any particular
internal states - mental or emotional. Carefully check it out with
yourself and others.
I suggest that motivation is just another "explanatory principle" like
instinct which produces an end to useful thinking instead of a beginning.
You ask for examples so I'll try a couple on. But I would rather you
discovered its through self observation and trying the exercise I
suggested.
My first "example" is a narrative about myself. I observe that I went
through the day without being aware of a single "reason for doing"
anything. I have had a productive meeting, explored ideas, read and
responded to some e-mail, checked on conference enrolments. I also ate a
few times, exercised and did other basic functions. I can examine each of
these actions and come up with some explanation _after the fact_ and call
that the motivation but it wasn't _present_ when I did the things. It was
no more present than for the cat that was wandering around as far as I can
see. I also spent time with an associate who believes in "vision" as a
motivating force. We argued for a while. My main argument is that I'm
not aware of vision in my life and yet I seem to be doing effective things
and good things. He then observed that he was accomplishing a great deal
of suprising things that he hadn't set out to do and that he didn't have a
vision at the moment and it didn't bother him nor seem to inhibit his
action nor his effectiveness.
My second example is from Milton Erickson's hypnosis research. He
hypnotised somebody, gave them a postypnotic suggestion to pour a jug of
water over their head when a cigarette was lit, and, after the event
happened as directed, he asked the subject to explain his action. The
subject immediately had a "rational explanation" that would be called a
motivation - he said that it was hot in the room. And with no apparent
embarassment about the foolishness of his explanation.
But, I won't go on because I think you can see that we can explain every
action by motivation once we've accepted the presupposition that there
must be some kind of mental or emotional cause - motivation- for every
action. Once we believe that, we can prove that every action is
motivated. That's the clue that there's something like a metanarrative
operating - it can't be called into question and have the person doing the
questioning be considered part of the fraternity.
--
Mike McMaster <Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk>
"Postmodern society is the society of computers, information, scientific
knowledge, advanced technology, and rapid change due to new advances in
science and technology." Postmodern Theory, Best & Kellner