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Objectivists' Motivation

Posted by Zenphamy 8 years, 9 months ago to Philosophy
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OBJECTIVIST MOTIVATION

Ayn Rand’s Objectivist motivation boils down to one statement—Existence exists. You exist and in order to continue to exist, there are facts that need to be logically and rationally incorporated within the self, recognized, and exercised. Food, shelter, etc. And that logic continues on to other levels of life and Objectivism and complexity.

In another life a number of years ago, I worked for Armand Hammer, a few levels beneath, but became exposed to him and his traveling video production group, and during conducting him through the project and explaining the different phases and progress, became a little nervous about the cameras and production people as well as curious. I asked one of the production people what this was all about.

I learned that Hammer, during his later years had decided to develop a series of productions for Occidental’s management and for others. A significant portion of the series dealt with the need to understand the differences of what motivates employees as well as others that one dealt with throughout business and life.

What Hammer believed was that the environment and conditions of the decade in which one comes to adulthood becomes a primary motivator for much of the rest of one’s life. He used as illustration his own teen years in Russia as a young Jew (with his need for his freedom to accomplish and live without fear), then that of those that came to age during the depression of the thirties (the need for a sense of security even more than high pay and personal recognition), those that then came to age during WWII, etc.

That occurred in 82 and I was in my mid 30’s. I’d reached senior engineer and manager with responsibilities greater at a much earlier age than a lot of employees significantly older than I, and many working for me. I’d done well in my relationships, but there was friction—some that I was never able to overcome that bothered me. I didn’t seek or expect friendship as much as I did mutual respect and acceptance beyond mere age.

Hammer’s thoughts and examples had a significant impact on me in future experience with those I was responsible for, worked for, or negotiated with. In exploring those thoughts and that approach to others, I felt that I understood my own motivations, both personally and as a practicing Objectivist.

But I’ve always wanted to have a conversation with other Objectivists about what do they see as their motivations, where-ever that drives them to. So what do you think?


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  • Posted by $ minniepuck 8 years, 9 months ago
    At this point in my life, my motivation is to live my values. While my values are not all concrete yet--I am still working on me, still discovering--I am making a conscious effort to not work against what I now know is right. My husband said that he wants our kids to know who Mom and Dad are, what it means to have our last name. That made sense to me. So, when I make decisions, I ask myself if I am being a good example. Since I'm here, you can get a pretty good idea of what I stand for.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 8 years, 9 months ago
    Everyone needs to ask him/herself "What am I unusually qualified to do?" AND "What do I enjoy doing?" If your career does not feel like work, and yet you are motivated to work tirelessly to achieve your objectives, you have chosen your career wisely.

    I am a chemical engineer and a materials scientist/engineer, and have recently moved somewhat toward biomedical engineering. Here is why.

    When I was four, I was prescribed tetracycline as the fourth medication of choice to kill a particularly nasty disease. Tetracycline killed the illness, but a year later, I was playing cards with my father when Dan Rather said, "This just in. Do not give tetracycline to children who don't have their permanent teeth in yet." I had just gotten my first permanent tooth, and it was quite yellow from the very persistent tetracycline. In fact, every visible tooth in my mouth came in yellow. My parents paid for a lot of dental work as a result. I am quite grateful. When I went to the dentist at age 5, I was fascinated when he mixed the two parts to make a polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) composite, now popularly known as bone cement. Now the era in biomaterials has gone from replacement to regenerative medicine, and I have gone with that movement.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 9 months ago
    That is a big request. I could write a book on that topic. However, here is the Cliff Notes, cut-down version summary:
    I am a child of the Depression. Born in a year where the birthrate was lower than job prospects. As a child, I watched my parents finish the meal that as a picky eater, I left over. Money loomed large in my mind. I was on track to becoming a musician, and eventually a composer. However, at the age of 20, I fell in love, got married and had two kids and while I could make money as a musician, it required traveling and odd hours. My wife worked at secretarial jobs, Grannies baby sat, but I had to finally come to the realization that I needed to make more money and be around my boys as they grew. Took up my second favorite passion, photography. I decided to put everything I had into that endeavor and eventually worked my way into my own business, and from there, over the years into related businesses until I decided to retire. My wife was no slouch, either. She became a prize-winning photographer and became my partner. She also was a CPA without certification which helped enormously. More than anything, Objectivism helped me to maintain my work ethic and allowed me to cope with adversity without giving in to it. As an aside, I did get a retirement job teaching music for a number of years.
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  • Posted by Mamaemma 8 years, 9 months ago
    My motivation is to enjoy my life, to laugh and have fun and love deeply the people who matter to me. And of course all of this is dependent on living according to my values.
    The enjoyment is getting harder, as I have to ignore much of the insanity of our country today. Being in the Gulch brings me great enjoyment and laughs and fun and the relief of being around people who share my values.
    When I was younger, my motivation was to achieve. And I did, and do.
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  • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 9 months ago
    "May you live in interesting times." is not a curse for me. I am basically a very lazy person who is fascinated by many things. I am motivated to drag myself off the couch of indolence and run around, sticking my nose into stuff, "What is that? Look! What is over there?"

    I realize that I have made many decisions in my life to secure the basis for a good income, but that I have never yet made a life decision per se, "to make more money". I want to live in wonderful times, so I poke around, creating moments of wonder.

    And thus has lain the rest.

    Jan
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  • Posted by VetteGuy 8 years, 9 months ago
    Several years ago, I came to a realization that I rarely got to do the things I really enjoy because I was working too much. It didn't help that I enjoyed sports better suited to people half my age (or less). I decided to make better use of my most irreplaceable resource, Time. I left the corporate rat race, became a consultant, and work when and how much I need to to keep the bills paid. We have never lived lavishly, so we have enough savings that I won't become financially dependent in my old age. As a full disclosure,
    I didn't read AS until AFTER I semi-retired, (when I actually had time to read for pleasure!) so I can't say it factored into my decision. But after I read it, it did seem to me that in my own small way, I had "gone Galt".
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  • Posted by khalling 8 years, 9 months ago
    I think db and I share a quest for the truth. As we have gotten older, the desire is stronger to reveal truths to other people. Expose charlatans who obfuscate and hide the truth. I think in part it is why we were so driven to be entrepreneurs. It 's hard to get to truth about so many things - value of products, services, skills of peers and bosses, goals of the company you work for, etc. On the other hand, self inquiry is probably the hardest part in aquest for truth. It 's easy to avoid for most. Still working on that....
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  • Posted by $ puzzlelady 8 years, 9 months ago
    Here are a few sayings that capture my approaches to life, in no particular order:
    * You cannot fake reality...
    * Waste not, want not.
    * Fill the unforgiving minute / With sixty seconds' worth of distance run ...
    * Winners never quit, and quitters never win.
    * Don't give or take the unearned.
    * Deal with others as equals until proven otherwise.
    * Change what you cannot accept; avoid what you cannot change; accept what you cannot avoid.
    * Respect the rights of others as you want your own rights to be respected.
    * It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
    * It is better to forgive and overcome than to brood over old wrongs and keep old resentments festering.
    * Become, ere life is flown, / Not a stumbling block but a stepping stone.
    * Something worth doing is worth doing well; something not worth doing is not worth doing well.
    * Find a need and fill it.
    * Whatever you do, make it good and true and beautiful.
    * Look for the best in people.
    * Not all investments pay off. Don't risk more than you can afford to lose, including in relationships.
    * Don't waste time arguing with immutably unreasonable people.
    * To thine own self be true. Build your self on truth.
    * In any compromise with evil, only evil will win.
    * Don't allow violence into your life.
    * Keep a full context. (Check the premises.)
    * Consider the consequences.
    * Never stop learning.
    * Causality, identity, non-contradiction.
    * Honesty, integrity, honor.
    * Energize the positive; eliminate the negative.
    * Find the harmonic balance. It's the key to happiness.
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  • Posted by wiggys 8 years, 9 months ago
    As an objectivist I am always motivated.
    Having a manufacturing facility i have the capability to manufacture many things, however, if I can not improve upon a product made by some other company i will never make it, but if i can improve upon such a product I may choose to make it. Being able to make a better product does not necessarily measn that it will sell profitably as I have learned, but I will always look for a new product for me, so I am never without motivation. That said the government doesn't help, actually they are a pain in the butt, but that is for another day.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 9 months ago
    Zen, my story is a lot like yours. . like Dr. Morris Massey,
    I contend that people form their value systems in
    their youth, before age 20 or so, and adjust them
    as they go along -- primarily due to shocks which
    hurt them.

    I was lucky. . I found Rand when I was 15 and fell
    head-over-heels for her. . as I have matured, my
    view of life has been shocked a bunch. . but the
    foundation is solid. . be positive, but real. . love
    heartily, with humor. . Make Every Hit Count.
    and, good enough is perfect. . the few whom I love
    know it. . frequently. . I vote with my bucks and
    my actions, so here goes!!! -- j
    .
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  • Posted by autumnleaves 8 years, 9 months ago
    Interesting subject. Because I Am elderly, had to rack the brain on motovation in the early years.
    High school...wanted the diploma with good grades to get into nursing school to begin earning my living! When earning had to get continuing education units. As I loved learning new things, always had many more units than necessary. Married with kids...worked in volunteer jobs to great satisfaction. Taught kids to swim for 16 years.
    Now, in retirement, travel, camping learning about this great country of ours.
    My greatest pleasure now is learning something new every day.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years, 9 months ago
    For a long period of my life my motivations were to escape the monotony of life in the business world as an employee or as a manager...I was never quite happy; I was hyperactive. Later in life I returned to my own internal motivations of doing something, an invention, some knowledge or understanding that would propel the Human race, I so feared would be extinguished; (1950's nuclear war fears) into the future safe and sound. I know...sounds a little lofty...but as young child, that's how I felt. So for the past 20 years I have sought knowledge and understandings that might give me a clue as to what to do. After all that study...I started writing, something I loathed most of my life but now something I can't stop doing. Hoping my Big Picture integrations about our upside down paradigm might make a difference in a beneficial way for Mankind...and maybe a little enjoyment and security for myself.
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    • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 9 months ago
      Carl, my dad and I built a fallout shelter in the basement
      of our little home, in the 50s. . some of the blocks
      are in the home I'm sitting in right now. . small world. -- j
      .
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 8 years, 9 months ago
    "What Hammer believed was that the environment and conditions of the decade in which one comes to adulthood becomes a primary motivator for much of the rest of one’s life."
    My high school aggressively promoted the idea that a prestigious college were [use of subjunctive is intentional] the key to success and happiness and that they were the ticket to get into a prestigious college. I realized later that they were showing only one side of the story. I came to think that the people aggressively promoting this were just after their own gain. They were salesman, I thought, aggressively promoting their own product/service, with the burden being on the consumer to seek alternatives. When I read Fountainhead, though, I changed my mind again. I realized some people just want a reaction. They just want to be involved with something important in some way, not as a way to get money so they can go live their dream. They don't have a dream. They're like addicts who get a high from attention or reaction from others. On some level they mean well, but on another level they get a sick pleasure out of teenagers thinking the institutions they represent hold the key to a happy life.

    Sometimes I still have vestiges of those old incorrect thoughts about all the value being in esteemed institutions, i.e. The Dean in Fountainhead. My understanding of Objectivism, though, makes me stop and say: 1) I am the one and only decider of what's valuable to me, and 2) empiricism and reason are the *only* decider of what's real in the world. The opinions of the most highly esteemed people are nothing next to those.
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  • Posted by $ sjatkins 8 years, 9 months ago
    I would state it differently. You are alive. You are the kind of being whose survival and thriving depends on the best use of your mind and all it implies as virtues serving the quality of your life.
    As Rand said, you have one fundamental choice - to live or not. If you choose to live then the rest of Objectivist ethics follows. It is the first and core decision.

    The rest is up to each individual to decide the particular values that they wish to seek and keep in their life. I am not sure you can make a general statement about that bit beyond what is already in objectivist ethics as far as specific virtues and motivating general values go.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 9 months ago
    Pretty much the same with my own caveats. I hate wasting time. I try to learn something new every day. It has to be something of meaningful value to me. Value is not always measured in dollars and senseless. But it's always my measurement.

    When I die it goes with me unless...I pass it on to someone younger. My theory of immortality.
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  • Posted by cksawyer 8 years, 9 months ago
    GREAT QUESTION! Maybe the most important. Thank you for asking it, Zenphamy

    I am mission-motivated.

    I dug deep as a young man to arrive at a v1.0 of a statement of personal mission - that fundamental direction or purpose (analogous to essential characteristic in concept definition) that most fully harnesses and focuses all of my strengths, talents, experiences (including painful ones) and interests toward that place and or people on the Planet where I can generate the greatest total value.

    That primary personal mission statement can be translated to an aligned, integrated mission statement for any area of my life (e.g., professional or business mission statement).

    As I discover - grow, change, accumulate more knowledge and information about myself and the world around me and watch emerging reality reveal what simply hasn't happened yet, I evolve and refine that mission.

    My mission has been through a number of iterations an revisions as it continually informs my choices of direction, action and attitude, as much as can can stay awake to it moment to moment.

    Today, I find my passion, purpose and sense of clarity confidence and meaning in my life mission.
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  • Posted by $ sjatkins 8 years, 9 months ago
    But on a personal value note, this is a wondrous time to be alive. So much is possible now for the first time in human history including ending aging and producing more abundance than even the most optimistic of us have dreamed. I value doing what I can in my professional life and by advocacy to realize the opportunities of this time and to keep them in the forefront of the attention of others. There are too many voices of negative and too few for the wondrous and realizable positive. I am not primarily an intellectual crusader but we desperately need more people lifting their heads and joyfully making the possible reality.
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