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"I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse"
the infinite yes presents: The Bribe Mentality
neglecting & derailing intrinsic motivation
song: "she sold her love to a modern man, Coz solid currency is the hardest to love"
...and so, the evidence...I mean it's not even a close call
in behavioural science that these if-then rewards
if you do this then you get that
They're terrible, they simply don't work.
What we have is we have this carrot and stick motivational system
that's kind of like a technology
that has outlived its usefulness
We need to kind of update what we're doing
Time for motivation 3.0? - Yeah.
Intrinsically motivated action or things we do because we get enjoyment from doing them
could well be described as joyful participation in Life
Take a minute to think about the things in your live that you participate in
joyfully. If you answered: "your job", you're in the minority
In fact I couldn't find any statistics on how many people
actually say they get any enjoyement from their work
but I could find statistics on how many people were dissatisfied from their work
and its over half. This often happens, even to people
that are able to get jobs that they actually enjoy
Because as a person is presented with extrinsic motivating factors such as money or even
excessive praise or other positive reinforcement, what ever
intrinsic motivation might have been present
becomes seriously undermined as they lose their sense of authorship, authenticity and autonomy
over what they were doing, and now must be baited for
what earlier they would have done voluntarly.
Excessive extrinsic motivation is actually a widely recognized
phenomenon in the entertainement business
where acussations of being a "sell out" or "just doing it for the money" are hurled
regurlarly when a music artist signs a deal with a major
record label and the music quality slumps
or a film maker makes a particularly high budget film. And this is not to say that
quality necesseraly deplets as rewards increase. Many well paid people display
outstanding talents, there is no denieing that
but as the "bribe" so to speak is accepted, the person's
self-motivated interests often waines and fizzels out. Now bribe may seem as a strong word
afterall when we think of bribes we usually think of corrupt police officers
or the Mafia, so why then would I refer to voluntary
payments for actions willingly performed
as bribery? well websters dictionnary defines bribery
as : "Money or a favor given or promised in order
to influence the judgement or conduct of a person in a position of trust"
and since to quote Alfie Kohn "One of the most thourougly
researched findings in social psychology
is that the more you reward someone for doing something,
the less interest that person will tend to have in whatever he
or she was rewarded to do". we see that we can not have rewards without them functionning as
Bribery. Even if it us unintended, a reward is by design an
attempted manipulation of another person's behaviour.
When we are talking about money... The reward we give for most forms of social participation,
we must recognize that by being deprived of this reward
is life threatening and so the bribe for particpating
in our society is done virtually by gun point; functionning
under the assumption the people are so ampathetic
or so useless that they must be threatened with mass
deprivation ie: "being broke" before they will ever
contribute to society. And it is only in function, under this
assumption that people have benn conditionned
to sometimes actually act that way. When bribed into action one can not joyfully participate in that
action nor can they gain any real happiness from the bribe itself.
Money does not buy happiness and
afection given on the conditional basis will only serve to
cheapen itself. So the rewards we are given
don't event make us happy. Ok yes, everybody would be much
happier if they had enough money to live comfortably.
No one is arguing that but once we get passed this level
higher rewards do not equal : happier people.
In fact the more possessions one has, has been shown to often
negatively affect their stress levels. Which makes sense because as holding a mind set
of constantly chasing extrinisic rewards is one of always being
one step behind, always unfufilled every step you take up
that ladder. But so what if we are not joyfull
or unfufilled, maybe people don't like it as much or don't
want to do it as much but aren't people just
plain more productive in a society when they are chasing
rewards? Actually no. In study after study the
results say that after a certain reassonably low level of
income further reward has absolutley
no effect on the productiveness of people who are doing
work that requires even rudimentary thinking skills.
Once our basics needs are met, people who get paid more
do not perform better and in many cases even
perfom worse. The only thing money is good at motivating is
mindless, repetitive droning work that could
just as easily been done by monkeys. Or more realistically
robotics technology. It is an absolute insult
to the progress of humanity and the history of human
achievement that we allow our brothers and sisters
to continue to be subjected to the needless imposition to
this kind of mindless meanial labor when we
have the technology to move beyond it. Of course that is not
to say that there is no work to be done
but working towards a society that actually takes care of its
inhabitants is something that I think we
could all joyfully participate in. "When I ask people from all
over the planet, in my work, to think
of something they did recently that enriched somebody's life
and anyboby can usually think of it.
Although it takes a while because we everyday do so many things that do that.
Its so part of us that we don't think of it, you know. We give
verbal greetings that are designed to
connect in pleasent way with people. We cook meals for
people. We do/touch them in ways that nourish.
So very often it takes a while before people can answer this
question but then they get something in
mind that they've done for somebodyint the last 24h, now I
say focus your attention in how you think that enriched
their lives in terms of their needs. What need of theirs were
met, how do you think that left them feeling?
And when people start to imagine that you can see a beam
come out of their face, their eyes. How do you
feel right now? When you realize that you did something that
had that impact on people and people say I feel good, I feel happy, I feel delighted.
Then I ask them this question : "do any of you know anything that is more fulfilling
than to do that? To use the power we have in a way that contributes
to people's well being. I've asked that question all over the planet
and nobody has ever said to me if you get a Lexus thats better or if you know, if
you get these cultarly induced rewards that's better.
No. People will say the most fulfulling thing is to contribute to people's well being.
Well thats play then, thats the most enjoyable play that we human beings engage in.
To contribute to people's well being now sometimes that play
can envolve hard work, because I may work very hard to do something that
contributes to people's well being. Sometimes I travel a long waycross the world or
to offer something people that have enriched my life. But it s play when my full focus
of attention is on why I'm doing it and not doing it for money,
I'm not doing it to get a positive report card.
I'm doing it because somthing that has increased
joy in my life its joyful to share it with others its a fun game.
Its the most fun game I have ever found: contributing to
people's well being. I'm really confident its
the most fulfillng game we human beings will ever find.
Social contributions must be freely and willingly given
if we as a civilisation are to reach out peek potential.
By working to secure the integrity of society for all people not just those with so called
monetary wealth. We create an environnement that will truly nurture
the inquisitive, productive and giving qualities present in all people.
We must stop competing for rewards that leave us
unfulfilled and release a new culture of selfmotivated
collaborative advancement. The drive to move society to the next
level is present within the population. Lets not stifle and insult
that drive by assuming its actions are conditionnaly based on some
superflous reward. Human beings want
to help: Let's let them!
A resource based economy does not use money
Instead relying on intrinsic motivation
Removing the very base for greed and corruption.
Allowing us to nurture each other and the planet
We can't fix problems using the thinking that caused them
For more information on a resource based economy
Google 'The Zeitgeist Movement' and 'The Venus Project'
Thanks for watching. www.theinfiniteyes.com