FREE-WORK & ECO-WORK
by F Richard Singer III edition date 11/07/07
website: www.conceptualstudy.org email: richardsinger3@sbcglobal.net
The idea of a conceptual paper is presented
in the conceptual papers part of the above website. As with any conceptual
paper, this one is neutral with respect to any significant paraceptual
propositions, and it does not argue for or against anything or any course of
action. It merely presents and relates some concepts and indicates how I find
them personally useful in thinking about what people do. Perhaps these concepts
can be useful to some others persons. My decision to write this paper was
triggered by a comment I received in an email from Octavia
"Most people
feel they should be rewarded financially for what they consider their
intellectual property." - are we then more generous than others? Or
possibly more interested in sharing our ideas than in earning money from
them?.. I certainly can’t imagine much greater reward than that woman who wrote
me last week to tell me she had just finished reading Circle for the second
time; astonishing. Even more so that she is the third person to write and tell
me the same thing.
‘IS’ means ‘is conceptually within the
context of this paper’, and will sometimes be used to stress the conceptual
nature of a statement. The central concept in this paper is a concept of work.
Work
IS intentional activity whose main focus is on the production of some product.
Work can be extrinsically motivated by a
desire to benefit from some finished product. However it can also be
intrinsically motivated by anticipating the product or by the satisfaction
involved in productive activity itself. Altho these types of motivation can be
mutually supportive, they can also occur in ways that undercut each other. A
person can become so interested in the process, especially when it is creative,
that the product remains forever unfinished. Likewise a person can be so
focused on obtaining and using the final product that the production becomes
just a chore to be tolerated.
Side Remark I recall reading about a motivation research project
in which subject were extrinsically rewarded for a task they enjoyed, that this
increased the motivation, but when the rewards were removed the motivation
decreased below it pre-reward level.
Example 1 Most of my former students had previously acquired a
habit of being extrinsically motivated by grades. Many were also motivated to
study by a desire to learn. While such motivation is partially extrinsic, it is
more easily compatible former with the type of intrinsic motivation I wanted to
make fundamental. I wanted the study to motivated primarily by the desire to
explore interesting problems and ideas. To avoid grade motivation from undermining
such intrinsic motivation I made grading depend on time spent rather than on
results. However even the extrinsic goal of putting in time could obscure the
intrinsic motivation.
Example 2 I work at sculpturing channels in Plattin Creek.
Since I seldom have a final product in mind and because the activity is
enjoyable and relaxing, my motivation is primarily intrinsic. Altho I often
have evolving products in mind, such as to obtain a channel clear of all large
rocks, these product goals also tend to be intrinsically motivating However
when they become too important or gets linked to a deadline, the production
process become a chore and my motivation becomes compulsive. It is hard to say
if my motivation has become extrinsic, since the only extrinsic motivations I
can imagine is my desire to look at our show off my work. This does not account
for the inner need I feel to get something done.
Example 3 The product of coaching a little league baseball
could be a winning or even a championship team. It could be to produce a person
oriented team in which each members has the opportunity to develop and enjoy
being on the team. These and other product goals can be interrelated either
positively or negatively, and can provide extrinsic motivation for coaching. Coaching
itself can be interesting and intrinsically rewarding, but the goal of having a
championship team can obscure this intrinsic motivation while the goal of
having a person oriented team is likely o help maintain the intrinsic
motivation.
Ordinal Comparisons We commonly make ordinal comparison without any
commitment to there being some underlying phenomena that could be measured, and
for the purposes at hand these are easily understood. For instance I think that
most people would understand if I said that I worked harder today than I did
yesterday. Furthermore if they asked about how much harder, I would not think
about measuring, and I might merely respond by saying that I had worked a lot
harder. All concepts in this paper that involve matters of extent do so in this
comparison sense. Thus the fact that I imagine placing motivational factors on
a line segment has no quantitative significance. It is merely a heuristic
device I use for visualizing comparisons.
The E-I Dimensions I first encountered intrinsic-extrinsic motivational
concepts in a graduate seminar on motivation. I sketch them here primarily
because I will use them in presenting two motivational work concepts Let W be
any specific work activity, M the composite motivational factors for W. I imagine
a line segment as a heuristic device for an extrinsic-intrinsic perspective on
W. If M seems to be about equally intrinsic and extrinsic, imagine W at the
midpoint. If M seems primarily extrinsic, imagine W at or near the left
endpoint. If M seems primarily intrinsic, imagine W at or near the right end
point.
Side Remark For a more complex perspective I imagine the E-I
dimension as the horizontal axis and an intensity dimension as a vertical axis
to imagine my motivation perspective on W. I imagine this using arbitrarily
chosen 2 by 2 square with center at [0,0]. Suppose M seems to be of average
intensity. If seems equally intrinsic and extrinsic then I imagine W at [0,0].
For solely extrinsic use [0,- 1], for solely intrinsic use
[0,1]. Increase or decrease the first coordinate depending the intensity of the
motivation. Again using coordinates is a heuristic for imagining comparisons
and has no quantitative significance.
Free-Work versus Eco-Work Another comment in an email from Octavia focused my attention
on the fact that he word ‘work’ is often used implicitly for a concept that I
call eco-work, and that eco-work is even identified as the thing that a person
does.
When meeting new
people (as I did up in
Note that the prefixes ‘free’ and ‘eco’ below
refer to the motivation for doing the work rather than to what kind of work is
done. These motivational conditions are for clear cut case of these kinds of
work. There are other borderline cases and many cases that I would classify
using these concepts would be not be so clear cut. Some days I pull weeds
because I enjoy the activity and like thinking about what my garden will look
like if it had no weeds. This IS a clear cut case of free-work. On rare
occasions I think about what I have saved by not buying something to kill them,
but as long as this was a minor motivational factor this IS still free-work. It
would only be eco-work if this was a major motivational factor.
eco-work: motivation
has a strong extrinsic component involving personal economic concerns
free-work: intrinsic
motivational component strongest and no noticeable economic motivation
Eco-work may have a variety of non-economic
motivational components, as long has it has at least one strong economic one.
Earning or saving money is a major example of economic motivation. However so
is the acquisition or production anything that one expects to use or exchange
for good or services within the economic system. Thus working for room and
board IS eco-work. Work having some economic advantage, but not strongly
motivated by this fact IS not eco-work.
While free-work is conceptualized as having a
strong intrinsic motivational component, free-work also may also have extrinsic
motivational components. A person volunteering as little league coach may be
motivated by a desire to be admired for his effort or by a desire to produce a
winning team. As long as the intrinsic motivational factors are stronger than
the extrinsic one, his coaching activity IS to a large extent free-work and for
the sake of simplicity I would probably call it free-work
Much work IS neither eco-work nor free-work.
Consider mowing one own lawn. Doing this to avoid paying to have it done IS
eco-work. Doing it to get a enjoy a good workout IS free-work. Doing it to
prevent the neighbors from thinking you are a slob IS neither free-work or
eco-work. Motivation that involves a mixture of all three such components is
also likely to be neither free-work nor eco-work, altho it could be eco-work if
the economic factor is strong.
Our society offers many options for volunteer
work: being on a school board, being a scoutmaster, leading a book study group,
handing out campaign literature, etc. Some communities even have volunteer fire
departments. Such work, may very to the extent that it is intrinsically or
extrinsically motivated, and at such times as the intrinsic components are
stronger as the extrinsic ones, such work is free-work. At other time the same
activities may be fail to be free-work. Even volunteer work can be eco-work.
For example handing working in a campaign with the hope that this will help you
obtain a government job.
Notation P is a variable ranging over the set of persons. S is a variable
ranging over states of affairs.
Ideals An ideal S for P IS a special kind of state that values. S may be some
actual state that P would have preserved enhanced or S my be some imagined
state that P wants to help bring into being. For S to qualify as an ideal, the
valuing of S must persist over time, be applied to numerous situations, be
acknowledged as a high priority reason for action.
To classify S as an ideal for P has no moral
or ethical connotations, and stating or adopting an ideal does not entail
advocating it or arguing for it. An ideal merely serves as a potential guide
for actions. This differs in several ways from the concept most people have in
mind when using the word ideal. This word has connotations of laudability or
goodness or even perfection; and people often argue about ideals as if they
involved truth claims. This is inappropriate for the concept I am using. My
concept of an ideal is introduced in My Net for Philosophy and developed in My
Net for Doing.
Nurturing An Imagined Ideal To nurture an imagined S IS to act in ways that help
bring S into existence. Personal nurturing of S IS nurturing by a person.
Social nurturing of S IS the concerted nurturing of S by an organized group or
by some social institution. To effectively nurture S IS to do so in a way that
has a significant impact on bringing S into existence. Some ideals, such as
being an honest person, can be effectively nurtured by purely personal
nurturing. However due to a variety of factors beyond personal control,
individuals can have personal ideals for which personal nurturing is not
sufficient. For example effective personal nurturing of the personal ideal of
staying sober can be supplemented by the social nurturing of Alcoholics
Anonymous. Some ideals, such as the ideal S of a society without interpersonal
violence, may be primarily determined by evolutionary forces that persons can
neither understand or effectively influence. S may not be possible even if
nurtured by the vast majority of persons in the world. However a person can
nurture S by effectively nurturing the personal state of becoming and remaining
nonviolent. This IS seed nurturing for S, i.e. it involve effectively nurturing
another ideal state with some hope that doing so could lead towards an
effective nurturing of S. However unless seed nurturing is undertaken with an
awareness that it broader effect may be minimal, it can result in
disillusionment.
Free-Worker and Eco-Worker Concepts While clear cut cases of free-work and eco-work are
mutually exclusive, a person may engage in either type at different times. P IS
a free-worker to the extent that P free-work is a major factor in P’s life and
that P would choose this to be the case. P IS an eco-worker to the extent that
eco-work is a major factor in P’s life regardless of whether or not P would
deliberately choose this to be the case. As usual, the concept of extent in
this case is ordinal rather than quantitative. A person can be primarily a
free-worker, primarily an eco-worker, primarily a worker whose motivational
factors are mainly extrinsic and non-economic. However main motivational
factors in a persons life can be a mixed in such a manor that none of these
classifications would apply. Note that such classification are value neutral,
and are merely intended to give one perspective on thinking about the role
motivational factors can have in relation to a persons attitude towards work.
Free-Work Ideals My personal free-work ideal to be primarily a
free-worker and to help others become aware of their potential as free-workers
and if they choose to move in a free-worker direction to help them with this
goal. My social free-work ideal is a social structure which is at least as
supportive of free-work as it is supportive of eco-work. For the rest of this
paper FWP and FWS denotes my personal and social free work ideals. My vision of
FWS is fairly vague which could be satisfied by a variety of social structures,
and FWS can be any state which is also compatible with my other ideals.
Related Claims My classification of FWS and FWP as ideals involves
no claims about their worth. However there are some related claims that could
be made in this regard. I find both A and B too vaguely formulated to examine,
but also not highly relevant to my choice of FWS. C is a claim think is
relevant, and my conjecture that C is true is the main reason for focusing on a
free-work concept.
A. Most peoples
lives would be better off if FWS existed.
B. FWS is ethically
better than a state in which eco-work is more prevalent.
C. Some people lives
would be enriched if they could become primarily free-workers.
Nurturing FWS could be socially nurtured, by trying to
establish an organization for its promotion thru encouraging the appreciation
free-work, analyzing how work done now as eco-work could be more effectively
done as free-work, disseminating information about free-work potions,
convincing many people that Claims A and B are correct, etc. I am more
interested in nurturing FWP mostly for its own sake but also as a seed ideals
for FWS. The part FWP that applies to shaping me is an ideal I effectively
nurtured long before I retired from eco-work. I have also been able to
effectively nurture the part that applies to others persons in a few cases.
FWP & Me The main way I have nurtured FWP was by deliberately choosing
to emphasize free-work over eco-work in my own activities. I adopted this ideal
long before focusing explicitly on the concepts of free-work and eco-work, and
except for a few years of duality around age 20, I have been extremely
comfortable with the attitudes it entails. One of the main powers helping me in
this was a deeply the ingrained perspective indicated below. This is a maxim
rather than a claim; i.e. it shows that I apply a finite ordering concept of
worth in terms of worth to persons, and that this concept does not apply to
comparing persons to each other.
Persons are the creators of worth and are too
important to have their worth evaluated.
If I was to assign worth to persons,
I would merely say that each persons has infinite personal worth.
I think that my attitude towards FWP begin to
emerge when I was 12 years old. Having a variety of interest, I was often
engaged in intrinsically motivated work. In particular I enjoyed the work
involved in camping, especially building a campsite with simple tools using
only materials gathered from freely available. However I did not respond very
well to extrinsic motivation. We had a cherry tree in our back yard. I told my
mother that cherry pie was not worth the effort of cherry picking. This is but
one of many instances in which I was expected to engage work whose benefits did
not seem to compensate for the tedium involved. This was the case even when
mowing our neighbors lawn for money. Having my basic needs met, I preferred
free time to money, and after a couple of times I quit this job. I was told
that I would have to work for a living when I was an adult and that this was
good practice. I vowed to myself that I would find a way to earn a living doing
as little onerous work as possible. I recognized that one key to this was to be
thrifty and keep my economic need simple and that this was a challenge that I
would enjoy. This enjoyment of simplicity remained as a major asset in
nurturing FWP.
At the end of my first year of college I
decided that I wanted to teach college mathematics, and that this would be a
way to earn a living doing work which would be mostly intrinsically motivated.
However after a year of graduate study my formal education was interrupted for
financial reasons. I was married with a two year old daughter, so I was able to
obtain a computer related job because of my mathematical competence. However no
mathematics was involved in the job. I took this job primarily because they
would pay for further graduate work, and I thought I could tolerate the work
until I was able to complete a doctorate. I recall thinking that working 40
hours a week and another 5 hours for transportation left 123 hour not directly
related to the job. Subtracting another 56 hours for sleep left 67 non-job
related waking hours. In spite of this I was unable to adjust and this
triggered my first collapse of will. It was then that the duality in my
attitude towards eco-work emerged in force. For the only time in my life my
infinite personal worth attitude faded, and I felt a deep sense of shame
because I could only manage a part time non-professional job which was not
sufficient to support my family. I felt I should have a suitable job, but I
rebelled at the need to do work for purely extrinsic reasons.
During the next 4 years, I taught secondary
mathematics, and while a large part of this job was onerous, my interest in
mathematics and in helping others learn provided considerable intrinsic
motivation. Since this was considered a suitable job, my sense of shame disappeared
and my infinite personal worth attitude reemerged. However the duality in my
attitudes still persisted. It was not until I started teaching at the college
level that I was able to firmly believe the social expectations about work were
wrong and my attitude was right. It was only after I was able to formulate my
net for doing that I was able to see that my way thinking of this in terms of
right and wrong was not appropriate. Now I would say that becoming a
free-worker is personal choice, perhaps contrary to social expectations, and
that I do not know whether FSW would be better than a more eco-work related
society. I can give reasons for my choice of a free-worker type ideals, but
ethical consideration have very little relevance to the choice of this or any
of my other basic ideals. For a fuller discussion of the relationship between
choosing ideals and ethical consideration see "The Ethical Impact of
Will".
Once I begin teaching college there were a
variety of ways I could nurture my personal free-work ideal. I transferred from
a major university to a small college with a 3 person mathematics department.
Altho I then had to teach three courses rather than two, there was no pressure
to do research, so all of my research became free-work. Furthermore our department
had considerable autonomy and was run internally by consensus. Thus I was able
to choose what courses I wanted to teach and the times for teaching them, and
while this was still eco-work a major part of my day to day motivation was
intrinsic. Still there were restriction that I would not have encountered in a
totally free-work setting.
One problem with eco-work was the pressure to
have courses with enough students to be economically viable. I felt that grades
were a major barrier to the kind of learning I wanted to encourage, and for
many years, our Master of Arts in teaching program did not give grades. However
changing conditions, such as school districts linking tuition benefits to
grades received, made it hard unable to attract students to a program that did
not give grades. It was even more difficult to attract undergraduate majors
into courses that did not give grades. Many worried about how this would affect
their future after graduation. No such problem when I retired and taught
without pay and refused to give grades.
Even when employed I was able to make one
significant move towards becoming more of a free-worker. I reduced negotiated a
reduction of my eco-work to two courses by taking a salary reduction. This
allowed me more time for free-work, such as doing more informal and
individualized work with students. This even made the pressure to tailor
courses to attract students seem less restrictive. Much of my free-work
involved designing materials that helped alleviate the restrictions involved in
grading. Specifically I had materials that encouraged multiple options within
the courses I was teaching.
FWP and Other Persons Part of FWP is to help others become aware of their
potential as free-workers and if they choose to move in a free-worker direction
to help them with this goal. As with the other part of FWP this part is both a
seed ideal for FWS and an ideal in its own right.
The other person most directly affected by
personal free-worker ideal has been my wife Charmayne. My decision to become
primarily a free-worker is a decision which she has always supported. From the
beginning of our relationship we have discussed our ideals and values. Altho
hers are rooted in a biblical faith and mine are rooted in me, their overlap is
significant. Her attitude towards work is less radical than mine, but she has
always place a high priority on the kind of work that nurtures her faith based
values, and most of this work has not been eco-work. Free-work is not as
relevant to her and most of her non-eco-work is probably a mixture of free-work
and extrinsically motivated work. However my free-work ideal has been
instrumental in allowing her to make eco-work of secondary importance. It is
our discussions about the relative importance of material and deeper needs that
helped enable us maintain the decision that my engagement in eco-work could
meet our material need, leaving her able to nurture her values thru
non-eco-work.
Most of my friends, while aware of my own choice
to emphasize free-work do not find this relevant to there own lives. I can
think of two exceptions. It should be clear from the comments I quoted from
Octavia that she has been influenced by the fact that I have nurtured FWP. Bob
Corbett, a friend who teaches philosophy, says that my example of reducing my
eco-work to 2/3 time was what encouraged him to adopt a similar course of
action. I also know that he gives me some credit for the work he has done to
examine the idea of living simply and his decision to teach courses on that
topic. I recently asked him if he would comment on this, Appendix A contains an
extended response. This was followed by an exchange of email, a slightly edited
account of which I have included in Appendix B, primarily because it
illustrates problems in my attempts to communicate the perspective involved in
conceptual study.
Barriers To a Personal Nurturing a
Free-Worker Ideal One form of
nurturing for either FWP or FWS is to recognize and confront barriers of two
main types: those relating to material needs and wants, those relating to a
sense of worth.
Material Needs and Wants For most persons, an obvious barrier to becoming
primarily a free-worker is the prudential need to earn enough money to supply
their basic material needs. In his book "Free Men and Free Markets",
Robert Theobald proposes guaranteed income, the level of which would enable
every person to live at a modestly comfortable level.. Altho such a plan would
remove this material needs barrier to being a free-worker, implementing it may
not be possible because of prevalent social attitudes toward eco-work.
Specifically it seems many people feel that a family having a member who is
able to be engaged in eco-work should earn a living; for otherwise they are
sponging off of the productive effort of others. This may be related to an even
deeper upward mobility attitude which I have indicated below with an excerpt
taken from An Essay On Downward Mobility by Bob Corbett.
This may be the main barrier many persons would face in making a personal
choice to become more of a free-worker.
A dominant
activity for most people in our culture is tied to the phrase upward mobility.
Even the poorest people dream of it and pursue it as they can. This phenomenon
of upward mobility seems to me the dominant motivation behind a huge range of
our daily acts. What do we pursue in upward mobility? Our own material
well-being and comfort: large and comfortable home(s) with more and more
amenities; constantly improved quality of these amenities (e.g. first a wood
floor, then carpets, then Persian carpets); multiplication of personal
belongings (clothing, toys, jewelry, electronic equipment); the piling up of
external amenities (fancy or extra autos, country houses, boats, ever-fancier
bicycles) and the search for security (stocks, bonds, IRAs, private suburbs).
There is nothing about most of these items which deprives us of liberty or
virtue. But as a sum they define a LIFEFORM, which has overwhelming
significance -- ever upwardness. How much is enough? Who of you can really
define the stopping point?
Eco-work and Worth The comment below indicates an attitude that seems
just as much a barrier as the upward mobility one Bob discusses, namely that
ones importance or place in life is related to eco-work. This would not only be
a barrier to becoming more of a free-worker, but also to being a non-eco-worker
of any other type.
When I was very
small my father came for a rare and precious visit to my school. When he left
he did so with the excuse that he must return to his business. I asked him
about this, and about what my own "Work" might be, and he answered,
"Your work is play." This statement has I know been a powerful and
very subtle factor in thinking about my life's activity. Not having to work for
money has only furthered my idea that what I do is Play and not Real Work,
amongst other conclusions I can draw from this...
I have also counseled several students who
had sufficient wealth to live in luxury using only the income it would yield
but whose self-esteem was linked to becoming financially successful. Perhaps it
is only a rare person whose self image does not depend on eco-work. The remark
below reminded me of a discussion about ideas from Theobald’s book.
Your description
of Functional Worth set me to thinking about how difficult it is to have
self-respect in this culture if one is not directly earning money; it's such a
work-absorbed, Calvinistic culture...and if you then appear to "work"
and GIVE your product away-!
We discussed the question of work incentives
under such a policy. Only two of us said that we would not work in order to
obtain more goods and service than this minimal income would provide. However
as people revealed their personal reasons for remaining employed, I discovered
that the mainly it was because their jobs gave them a sense of worth.
In my paper entitled "Self-esteem &
Worth" I develop several worth concepts in order to think about
self-esteem. Here I merely sketch them. An activity X has functional worth in
relation to some system S to the extent that it contributes positively to the
functioning of S. Thus most eco-work is considered to have functional worth in
relation to our economy. X has transformational worth in relation to an
imagined state S to the extent that it contributes bringing S into being.
Using transformational or functional worth
concepts, P’s characteristics can be evaluated according to various standards,
and this can be important to P and may effect P’s self-esteem. However I do not
regard this as relevant to P’s worth as a person. A personal characteristic IS
merely valuable in relation to whatever purposes are at hand. As indicated
earlier, I conceptualize personal worth as deeper than this, altho I did not
explicitly formulate this concept until recently. Perhaps the most powerful
thing P can do to counter doubts about P's own worth is to repeatedly reinforce
a way of valuing all persons as having the same infinite worth, thus including
P.
It is easy for me to understand that in our
culture many people feel that they need eco-work to be worthwhile. However this
relation between eco-worth and feeling goes beyond just being employed. The
prestige of eco-work can even be linked to earnings. Comments on the way
teachers are paid in relation to other professions could be cited in this
regard. Self-respect can also be threatened by doing what society considers
eco-work without pay or with lower pay than the norm. Even when a person is doing
eco-work that they also personally valued for non-economic reasons, unless done
in the context of acknowledged social practice, they may feel that doing
additional non-eco-work of the same type is devaluating. I have always been
able to find others who were interested developing more radical educational
options. However eco-considerations like those just indicated have been a major
barrier.
Reflecting on my experiences sketched in the
two examples below, as well as on and some of my other discussions about doing
things without obtaining either extra funds from the university or from grants,
I wish I would have formulation my worth concepts long ago. Now I would say
that there was no reason to expect what we want to try to have any positive
functional worth in relation to the current educational system. In fact if it
succeeds it might even have negative functional worth to that system. However
designing educational options is something to be done because of its potential
for transformational worth, and even transformation worth may not be
forthcoming. Furthermore neither the transformational or functional worth of my
work is relevant to my choice to have infinite personal worth. Why expect
economic support for such work? If it comes from a grant, fine. But if it is
important in terms of our ideals why not consider supporting it as with our own
work and our own resources. Our most important work does not have to be our
eco-work. The examples below are given primarily to illustrate the previous
comments and why I personally find eco-work potentially limiting. However that
also may reveal how my educational ideals and my free-worker ideals are
intertwined.
Example 4 When I became the director of a program for
mathematics teachers it was still being funded by a grant. We had developed a
flexible program in which students attended classes that explored a variety of
related topics. However they were not expected to master any particular
materials and could focus on any part of the materials they found relevant. To
implement this we used two teachers in the more basic classes. When the grant
expired the budget allocated was intended to allow for only one teacher per
class. Since I considered summers as the core component of the program, I
decided to accept this during the year but not during the summer. As director I
had autonomy in hiring as long as I stayed within the allocated budget and did
not pay salaries in excess of then norm. I considered my summer salary as
extra, and knew that the faculty I wanted felt the same way. We agreed to teach
that summer with two teachers for each of the classes with each faculty member
taking half the pay they had taken in the past. The previous program director
was no longer at the university, but had returned for the summer. She was
extremely complementary about how the program had developed and indicated that
this was one of her best teaching experiences. The other faculty were also
pleased with the results. However one faculty member who was comfortable in
working for half pay herself had reservations about this practice. Not sharing
her perspective, I do not recall it very well. It had something to do with the
idea that paying faculty at that rate even for this type of work was exploiting
them or demeaning to their worth.
Example 5 Since undergraduate students normally take courses
from various departments, designing options for them was harder than designing
options for graduate students. However I was able to initiate an extremely
radical option one semester, which one of the administrator even referred to as
an interesting piece of anarchy. The university offered a sabbatical option in
which a student could take a semester to engage in some supervised off campus
program and receive a semesters credit instead of taking courses. I interested
several faculty members in helping me use this as a mechanism for what I called
an on-campus sabbatical for reflecting on owns own education. This was a much
more radical option than the sabbatical option had been intended to provide.
The idea was that students took complete control of their own education for
that semester. The three of us who supervise this endeavor met with students
both individually and in groups to discuss what they were doing. Other faculty
could be supportive of their efforts or not. Some students worked with almost
no faculty input. Others audited various courses that were part of the regular
curriculum. The on-campus sabbatical instigated a faculty debate, some claiming
that what I was doing might totally undermine our creditability as an academic
institution. The most objectionable feature was that students were guaranteed a
semesters credit no matter what, and some of them were doing things that many
faculty members considered worthless. Since I observed students learning things
about themselves, I did not feel that way. One of our brightest students
learned that she did not want to be in college at that time and so we lost some
tuition. Did this endeavor have functional worth to the university? I would be
glad to discuss this endeavor further with anyone who is interested.
Property and Work The opening comment by Octavia mentions financial
rewards for intellectual property. I intend to write a paper on property
concepts, and one topic in that paper will to relate these concepts to eco-work
and worth. For now I only make two brief conceptual observations that I will
examine.
(1) Thinking of the
results of work as property IS to think of the work involved as
eco-work to some extent.
(2) Thinking in
terms of property IS one way of thinking in terms of functional worth.
Concluding Remarks As remarked earlier this paper makes no significant
paraceptual claims and neither argues for or against anything or any course of
action. Of course the paper abounds with paraceptual claims to help bring these
concepts into focus. I have tried to make only minor paraceptual claims that I
expect most people to find highly plausible. However concepts can be acquired
by using them to make paraceptual observations of varying degrees of adequacy,
and hence the truth of such claims is irrelevant to understanding these
concepts.
A large part of the paper focuses on the
relation of these concepts to my ideals. This is because the way I shape
concepts is by using them to think about what persons d, the person I
understand best is me, ideals play such a fundamental role in my thinking what
I do.
In case this focus on ideals might seems like
an advocacy of these ideals or of any course of action nurturing them, let me
affirm that this is not even an implicit purpose. Of course I wold welcome
allies in nurturing ideals that we share, but my attitude towards ideals and
doing is experimental. There attitude is developed in a rather long workfile:
My Net for Doing". Altho any brief explanation of what I feel is such a
radical attitude towards ideals and doing is likely to be misleading, I have
tried to do this in the conceptual paper entitled: The Ethical Impact of Will.
Below I give an even more condensed sketch.
My fundamental problem is the problem of what
to do. A person might I take either ethical or prudential or hedonic
considerations as most fundamental in grounding their choices. They mix them in
various manners. They may feel that in so doing they have or should have
grounded them appropriately, perhaps by reflecting on the purpose of life or
having this purpose revealed to them. I make no claim to understand what this
all about. My response is to look on what to do as an experiment in which I
take ideals as more fundamental than any other considerations. Furthermore I
use ideals, which while obviously suggested by the ideals of others, have no
external grounding. To regard living as an experiment that in some basic way I
do not know what I am doing or where I am going. For example FWS is stated in terms
of a vague social vision. I might conjecture some claim about FWS being more
supportive of some type of human good than a more eco-work oriented society,
but this would be a tentative conjecture. Furthermore I am willing to nurture
this ideal even if it might turn out to be a viper that poisons me or society.
However what if anything come after his life is beyond my understanding, and
the worst that can happen to me in this life is misery or death. The former I
have learned to manage and the latter will happen someday whether I live
experimentally or not. That a viper capable of poisoning society might emerge
seem unlikely because the nurturing of FWS is unlikely to be effective. For
many persons it might seem that the motivation for acting as if a tentative
conjecture is true may seem less motivating that acting from firm beliefs. I
find this to be the case in regard to a wide variety of my actions. However I
find tentative conjectures more motivating when it comes to deeper concerns.
Perhaps this is because I am extremely skeptical when I find myself taking
complex paraceptual as true, when I am so aware of the complexities involved.
To skip the appendixes you can go back to Conceptual Papers
Or you can skip to Appendix B
for the correspondence about the paper.
appendix A: Bob Corbett on His work
Earlier I said that Bob gives me some credit
for the work he has done to examine the idea of living simply and his decision
to teach courses on that topic. I recently asked him if he would comment on
this, Here is his response.
You are correct in what you say in two main
areas, but not accurate in the too humble influence you allow they were to me.
Your influence was more important than you know.
I had ideals much like yours before I met
you, but sort of thought they were precluded by several decisions I had made. I married and brought children into the
world. My sense of responsibility said I had lots of obligations to the kids,
though I would have been hard pressed to name them. What I did know was what
ever they were they cost money, thus I had to work for money. I further
purchased a house getting in deeper.
I signed contracts with Webster U., and while
technically only year long contracts, I developed social relations with other
department and faculty members and entered into the spirit of building
I had already begun to do two things before
knowing this work/simplicity side of you much:
--
to simplify my own life to make it less dependant upon earned money.
However, this was less in order to do less
work that to free up more of my earned money to use it for charitable purposes.
I had already begun to do LOTS of other work that was work not for pay, but was
work in the behalf of other people to help them out.
Your model of more radical simplicity than I
had planned upon and then your decision to go 2/3 time as I remember it, was a
profound influence in holding out a model for me. I didn’t really get that into
gear well until 1989 when I resigned my full time position for a half time one,
and then took early full retirement just this June at age 62.
Secondly, our discussions over the years
concerning the advantages of freeing ourselves (my reading of what I focused
on) from work dependency in order to do "our own work" (closer I take
it to what you call free-work) influenced me a great deal. Webster
College/University was a good place to work for that. I wanted to teach, to use
my talents to challenge students philosophically and toward simpler lifestyles
and anti-materialist values. Many of my "required" courses for my
salary (which I needed both to live on and to give to my charity work) were
ones that I would have wished to do even were I not salaried, but had I not
done them within the structure, I wouldn’t have had the infrastructure to reach
the students. They were under pressure for degrees and credits, and often took
my classes with those motivations, but soon were swept up in the ideas
themselves.
Also, Webster U. realistically could not have
gotten away with using "volunteer" faculty were I in a position to
offer it. Too many complications with the structure of work in our society. I
should mention in this connection however, that many of us in the early days,
and I would suspect you among them, taught many courses as unpaid overload. We
all accepted that role. Today that is virtually unheard of.
In the years after 1994 EVERYTHING changed. I
got on line and began to discover that I didn’t need Webster U and paid work to
reach interested people and the people whom I did reach were not there with
many "mixed" aims such as grades, credits and degrees.
My work world took a quantum leap in amount,
I now work most of my waking hours 7 days a week 365 days a year at what I’m
interested in with a very small time out for paid teaching to have some living
income. I really don’t need that any longer since my retirement benefits kicked
in last month, but I do like the teaching for the same reasons as before. I now
am and can be much more selective about what I teach for the school.
I current run 5 e-mail lists all of which are
moderated and require many hours of labor. The most work is a daily e-mail
service of news, discussion and inquiry concerning the country of
I have a Dogtown history list which goes
along with my Dogtown history web site which is nearly as large as my
I have a travelogue e-mail list which is not
interactive, but just for those who want my travel writings on
I have a Nietzsche list which is small.
I just recently opened a new discussion forum
with an e-mail list that began exclusively with former students, over 100 of
them, and now is adding people as I’ve posted our initial discussions to a new
web page I’ve created for that purpose.
In addition to that my web site has huge
other areas including a massive repository of scholarly material on
In the areas of
To access Bob' website materials on simple living click on Simple
Appendix B: Some Correspondence about the paper
Remark I have edited the correspondence for ease of presentation. Part of
this is to remove comments that make sense only in reference to earlier drafts
of the paper, but I have also modified some of the correspondence I sent to
reflect thoughts that occurred later. I hope this does not affect the essence
of what has been said. Bob’s initial email contained two parts only one of
which is in Appendix A. Below is the part directly related to the paper. I find
it puzzling that he interpreted the paper as indicated his opening remark. I
never suggest measuring motivation, and I also think of motivation as complex
and that similar actions can be motivated differently at different times.
However I do not see why using the intrinsic-extrinsic perspective would
suggest otherwise. It is not intended as the only way of thinking about
motivation.
Bob’s Opening Remark Richard, I read the paper you sent and found it quite
interesting, yet I have some strong empirical doubts about reliable measures of
motivation, and some worries about the neat categories of interests and the
measures of them.
His Elaboration I have a view of human behavior as much more mixed
that you seem to. I think motives are tremendously mixed and that we are the
best liars in the world to our selves about motives.
Some things are clear and evidenced: some
work earns me money, some work earns me no money
That's not a motivation it's an outcome fact.
Different things HIT me at different times. Over
a long period of time with my non-paid work I recognize various motives:
--
I do things because I'm just driven to see it done. I want reviews of
Arthur
Schnitzler's works available to people on the web.
--
I do things to help others or try to change them.
--
I do things because I like it that other people like and appreciate what I do.
--
I do things because I like it that people think well of me.
--
I do things to escape any boredom.
--
I do things to help myself figure out the world
--
I do things because it is my habit to work.
-- I do things to
escape loneliness, thus working so much I create conditions for loneliness!!
-- I do things
because I seem to be committed to doing them by my past actions and others are
dependent on my doing them.
--
I do things to challenge others.
--
I do things to amuse myself.
And I'm sure I could go on and on.
Many things I do probably have ALL these
motives mixed up in them in ways that no rational tools can reasonably separate
them out and identify them. Jean-Paul Sartre's analysis of self-deception is
valuable in this regard.
Some Thoughts by Richard Perhaps what Bob means by the term ‘motive’ may not
be what I mean by the term ‘motivational factors. However the fact that motives
or motivational factors can be identified is what I would mean by rational
tools, and looking at his list, I find it useful to relate them to the
intrinsic-extrinsic dimension. That a people might be mistaken about
motivational factors seems like a reason for care rather than a reason for not
trying to understand them better.
My Brief Response To Bob The intrinsic-extrinsic of motivation is a purely
conceptual distinction, and such distinctions involve no paraceptual claims,
not even claims about utility. However I would not make such a distinction if I
did not at least find it personally useful. That the conceptual nets I use are
of limited utility in dealing with complex paraceptual states of affairs is not
something that bothers me.
Bob’s Next Email Richard, I would certainly agree that any analysis
which aids one to understand something more clearly is useful to that person. I
was assuming some desire to communicate that distinction to others. When
ordinary language is used with ordinary words which appear to make claims about
motives and use the term "motive" a fairly straight forward word,
then it would seem that invites misunderstanding to say the least.
Is the distinction merely something private
in such a way that if read by another it doesn't matter it tends to mislead one
to think one may be talking about the world and not about a purely conception
universe? It puzzles me.
I'm further puzzled why the use of such
language and seeming descriptions of the external world of work would be more
attractive in the language of free work and eco work rather than in something
that appears to be very close to the same thing, especially if motives don't
really matter as paid work and non-paid work which has the advantage of being a
logical disjunction and of being less mysterious that language which plays on
the normal terms of the world.
My Second Reply to Bob You asked if I could clarify. Probably not. What I am
trying to do with conceptual studies is so unlike traditional academic
endeavors that it may not be possible to convey my perspective except to
persons already having a fairly unusual epistemic orientation (note I said
orientation: not theory or belief or system or anything else that might have
truth connotations not of a purely conceptual nature). I am writing primarily
for what I believe is a very small audience, namely to persons who might
already have a compatible orientation. Your sentence below indicates you are
not in this primary audience, altho this statements puzzles me because the
paper on free-work and eco-work focuses on ordinary conceptual study rather
than on conceptual philosophy.
Perhaps I am so
wedded to my existential concern with uncovering the world that conceptual
philosophy just is beyond me.
I do have a secondary audience in mind,
namely those who can at least tolerate the perspective needed for conceptual
study to understand some short papers written from this perspective. Of course
to do so, an initial understanding of this perspective is necessary. This may
be easier to acquire for those not already used to the kind of perspectives
found in the academic world (outside of mathematics). I have tried to explain
the nature and purpose of conceptual study in the workfile "My Net for
Philosophy". However I had hoped some incidental brief statements about
the nature and purpose of would make enough of this perspective apparent so a
reader would be able to understand the perspective well enough to glean the
main ideas without the kind of puzzlements you have expressed. Perhaps this is
not a sufficient prerequisite for these papers. After all I would not recommend
a paper on boolean lattices for someone who only had an algorithmic perspective
on ordinary algebra.
Altho your orientation may not incline you to
take interest much in what I am attempting, you comments have helped me think
about certain matters. So I will respond further to some of your comments. You
referred to my earlier statements.
The
intrinsic-extrinsic of motivation is a purely conceptual distinction, and such
distinction involve no paraceptual claims, not even claims about utility.
However I would not make such a distinction if I did not at least find it
personally useful. That the nets I use are of limited utility in dealing with
complex paraceptual states of affairs is not something that bothers me.
You replied:
I would certainly
agree that any analysis which aids one to understand something more clearly is
useful to that person. I was assuming some desire to communicate that
distinction to others. When ordinary language is used with ordinary words which
appear to make claims about motives and use the term "motive" a
fairly straight forward word, then it would seem that invites misunderstanding
to say the least.
Is the
distinction merely something private in such a way that if read by another it doesn't
matter it tends to mislead one to think one may be talking about the world and
not about a purely conception universe? It puzzles me.
I use the term ‘motivation’ rather than
‘motive’. I am using the concept of motivation commonly used in psychology, and
perhaps I should have stressed this. The extrinsic-intrinsic distinction is
also standard, and I the main reason I focus briefly on it is because I use it
to articulate the free-work and eco-work concepts. However unlike an
experimental psychologist who thinks "if it exist it exists in some
quantity, and if it exists in some quantity it can be measured"; in making
the distinction I make absolutely no use of the idea of measuring. In fact I
deliberately use the word ‘imagine’, and perhaps I should have indicated that
my little line segment for imagining is a heuristic device.
It also puzzles me when you talk of words as
making claims. I might use words to state a claim. However in saying something
like "The motivation for an act can be thought of in terms of intrinsic
and extrinsic components.", no paraceptual claim is involved. I find it
puzzling that what I think of as merely an indication of a commonly used
psychological distinction could taken otherwise, especially in a conceptual
paper. I am willing to make the paraceptual claim that some motivational
psychologists find this an important and useful distinction, and that they
believe that this distinction is helpful in understanding human behavior. I
will neither make nor dispute the claim that the distinction it is as important
and useful as most of them think it is. Such claims are not important to my
purposes for this paper, altho the interest one has in the paper might be
affected by beliefs about such claims.
What is a purely conception universe, or even
a purely conceptual universe? I think in terms of conceptual networks, not
universe. Most nets are tools that can be used to talk or think about what you
call the world, and conceptual study of a net at may illustrate its use because
nets are acquired primarily using them. However purely conceptual study can
result in much more powerful nets.. For example, a person might acquire an
initial understanding of a net the integers by using negative numbers to think
about liabilities. However to understand that the product of two negative
numbers is positive a person must focus on were purely conceptual
considerations.
Furthermore I find conceptual study useful
even when I focus on concepts that I would not use in my own nets. I often find
other persons using nets that I find alien or too vague to be useful.
Conceptual study in which I formulate conceptual distinctions that allow me to
at least approximate what they are talking about can aid me somewhat in trying
to imagine what others may be thinking, and it may even help me communicate
with them. For example, I have needed to do this in regard to the net many of
students use for thinking about mathematics.
You further remarked:
I'm puzzled why
the use of such language and seeming descriptions of the external world of work
would be more attractive in the language of free work and eco work rather than
in something that appears to be very close to the same thing, especially if
motives don't really matter as paid work and non-paid work which has the
advantage of being a logical disjunction and of being less mysterious that
language which plays on the normal terms of the world.
Being attractive is not my goal. My goal is
to focus on two concepts for which that there are no commonly used terms. This is
one reason why I specifically use hyphenated words. I use would not use ‘paid’
and ‘non-paid’ because these terms have connotations that are contrary to the
distinction I have in mind. I deliberately indicated that free-work and
eco-work, while mutually exclusive, are not mutually exhaustive. I tried to
make it clear in the little league coaching examples that non-paid work may our
may not be free-work. Free means free from extrinsic forces. There is no
conceptual reason that work one is paid to do cannot be free-work, altho I
would make the paraceptual conjecture that paid work tends to move towards
being extrinsically motivated. I also tried to make it clear that non-paid work
can be eco-work, i.e. writing ones resume is a minor example. Most important is
the fact that motivation (not motives) is central to the concepts I am trying
to bring into focus. Altho the concept of motivation I am using is essentially
the same as that used in motivational psychology, perhaps I should indicates
its main conceptual features. I hesitate because I am suspect that this might
raise more questions than it answers.
The
motivation for an act X that a person P might take
IS
The
set of P’s personal states that tend to mobiles X.
There is are some paraceptual conjectures that
I use in relation to motivation, and while these apply to actions involving
free-work and eco-work, they also apply to other kinds of actions.
(1) Whatever P
understands about P’s motivation for X, further exploration can enhance (or
obscure) this understanding.
(2) P’s ability to
effectively make a variety of conceptual distinctions can be helpful in
relation to (1).
(3) P’s
understanding of particular actions can help P in understanding P’s behavioral
patterns.
(4) P’s
understanding of P’s behavioral patterns can be used by P to live more (or
less) effectively.
A Remark That I Did Not Think to Make Perhaps the reason Bob sees so little point in
thinking about free-work and eco-work is that his own personal motivational
factors for so much of his work fits in neither category. In the reasons he
listed in his first response many seemed to have strong extrinsic components
without any significant personal economic concerns. I also suspect that Bob is
motivated to a large extent by ethical or moral concerns. On the other hand I
have almost always been motivated in a different manner. Bob seems to find so
much to do, that I feel exhausted just reading about his activities., My
motivation is much more on personal ideals than on ideals for society or the
world. Thus I am puzzled by why I choose any the courses of action, and have
asserted that I not only cannot can give sufficient reasons for my choices that
some choices are so basic that no set of reasons is sufficient to account for
them. There was a several year period in which I was so puzzled about what to
do that I merely detached and observed until all positive motivation
disintegrated. It was this experience that motivated me to shape a fairly
radical net for doing that helped me realize and endorse the fact that personal
ideals were more basic to me than ethical considerations.
An Email From Octavia Being frustrated in my correspondence with Bob, I
sent copies to the person whose email had triggered my writing about free-work
and eco-work. I asks Octavia for any comments, and here is most of her reply.
Richard, I am really delighted with the
progress in your Free-Work and Eco-Work paper. I also found Bob's comments both
interesting and revealing.
I know my comments may seem random, and they
are; they are my scrawlings in the margins of your words, as it were - and thus
are additional to what I have already said. When you are speaking about working
with rock in Plattin, and you end, "This does not account for the inner
need I feel to get something done," it caught my eye this time, altho this
same statement was I think in the original shorter version you sent. I felt at
once in response to this, "We humans are naturally producers and find
pleasure in creating and/or achieving results". The problem has always
been that perverted "idle hands do the Devil's work" ethic that so
embodies the Calvinistic spur digging into our sides at each moment. People
naturally want to create, but as you point out in your lawn-mowing episode, if
you are from early childhood being reminded that one must work for a living,
the focus is immediately taken off the process and onto the end.
Personal Note: When I was very small my
father came for a rare and precious visit to my school. When he left he did so
with the excuse that he must return to his business. I asked him about this,
and about what my own "Work" might be, and he answered, "Tavie's
work is play." This statement has I know been a powerful and very subtle
factor in thinking about my life's activity. Not having to work for money has
only furthered my idea that what I do is Play and not Real Work, amongst other
conclusions I can draw from this...
This leads me to your Free-Work Ideals,
letter C, in which fortunate category I reside :"Some peoples' lives would
be enriched if they could become primarily free-workers." Having attempted
to Work in the "real world", and having been made thoroughly
miserable by it, I know how blessed I am to have the option.
But then that brings us to Sense of Worth.
Finding ways to describe myself that ring true is something you know I am
experimenting with. What works in
Another thing that struck me on this reading
was your discussion about your resistance to assign grades to your student's
work. You have written about this before in other places and I was impressed
with it. I myself went to two non-graded schools (also unaccredited), but did
not think such a thing was possible at the college level until you first told
me about it. Since grading/judging is a form of valuing results instead of
effort the resistance you feel to grading is natural and consistent.
Finally, the Canon "Persons are creators
of worth and are too important to have their worth evaluated. If I was to
assign worth to persons, I would merely say that each person has infinite
personal worth." So beautiful, so powerful. The first time you sent this
to me I was so struck by it. We ought to print placards and every home, school
room, business, and place of worship hang one.
Bob sounds like a most interesting person;
certainly when in his comments to you he notes that his entire life opened up
when he went on line and found like minded folk there, I felt kinship with him.
He had gone from relative isolation to the creation of thriving on-line
communities. Will you send me the URL of any of them? I'd like to check one
out.
Send me more on all this as it evolves!
Octavia, perhaps playing and not Working