We design human nature by designing the
institutions within which people live and work. --Barry
Schwartz
The Way We Think About Work Is Broken
--by Barry
Shwartz, syndicated from ted.com,
Nov 26, 2015
Today
I'm going to talk about work. And the question I want to ask and answer is this:
"Why do we work?" Why do we drag ourselves out of bed every morning instead of
living our lives just filled with bouncing from one TED-like adventure to
another?
You may be asking yourselves that very question.
Now, I know of course, we have to make a living, but nobody in this room thinks
that that's the answer to the question, "Why do we work?" For folks in this
room, the work we do is challenging, it's engaging, it's stimulating, it's
meaningful. And if we're lucky, it might even be important.
So,
we wouldn't work if we didn't get paid, but that's not why we do what we do. And
in general, I think we think that material rewards are a pretty bad reason for
doing the work that we do. When we say of somebody that he's "in it for the
money," we are not just being descriptive.
Now,
I think this is totally obvious, but the very obviousness of it raises what is
for me an incredibly profound question. Why, if this is so obvious, why is it
that for the overwhelming majority of people on the planet, the work they do has
none of the characteristics that get us up and out of bed and off to the office
every morning? How is it that we allow the majority of people on the planet to
do work that is monotonous, meaningless and soul-deadening? Why is it that as
capitalism developed, it created a mode of production, of goods and services, in
which all the nonmaterial satisfactions that might come from work were
eliminated? Workers who do this kind of work, whether they do it in factories,
in call centers,or in fulfillment warehouses, do it for pay. There is certainly
no other earthly reason to do what they do except for pay.
So
the question is, "Why?" And here's the answer: the answer is technology. Now, I
know, I know --yeah, yeah, yeah, technology, automation screws people, blah blah
-- that's not what I mean. I'm not talking about the kind of technology that has
enveloped our lives, and that people come to TED to hear about. I'm not talking
about the technology of things, profound though that is. I'm talking about
another technology. I'm talking about the technology of ideas. I call it, "idea
technology" -- how clever of me.
In
addition to creating things, science creates ideas. Science creates ways of
understanding. And in the social sciences, the ways of understanding that get
created are ways of understanding ourselves. And they have an enormous influence
on how we think, what we aspire to, and how we act.
If
you think your poverty is God's will, you pray. If you think your poverty is the
result of your own inadequacy, you shrink into despair. And if you think your
poverty is the result of oppression and domination, then you rise up in revolt.
Whether your response to poverty is resignation or revolution,depends on how you
understand the sources of your poverty. This is the role that ideas play in
shaping us as human beings, and this is why idea technology may be the most
profoundly important technologythat science gives us.
And
there's something special about idea technology, that makes it different from
the technology of things. With things, if the technology sucks, it just
vanishes, right? Bad technology disappears. With ideas -- false ideas about
human beings will not go away if people believe that they're true. Because if
people believe that they're true, they create ways of living and institutions
that are consistent with these very false ideas.
And
that's how the industrial revolution created a factory system in which there was
really nothing you could possibly get out of your day's work, except for the pay
at the end of the day. Because the father -- one of the fathers of the
Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith -- was convinced that human beings were by
their very natures lazy, and wouldn't do anything unless you made it worth their
while, and the way you made it worth their while was by incentivizing, by giving
them rewards. That was the only reason anyone ever did anything. So we created a
factory system consistent with that false view of human nature. But once that
system of production was in place, there was really no other way for people to
operate, except in a way that was consistent with Adam Smith's vision. So the
work example is merely an example of how false ideas can create a circumstance
that ends up making them true.
It
is not true that you "just can't get good help anymore." It is true that you
"can't get good help anymore" when you give people work to do that is demeaning
and soulless. And interestingly enough, Adam Smith -- the same guy who gave us
this incredible invention of mass production, and division of labor --
understood this. He said, of people who worked in assembly lines, of men who
worked in assembly lines, he says: "He generally becomes as stupid as it is
possible for a human being to become." Now, notice the word here is "become."
"He generally becomes as stupid as it is possible for a human being to become."
Whether he intended it or not, what Adam Smith was telling us there, is that the
very shape of the institution within which people work creates people who are
fitted to the demands of that institution and deprives people of the opportunity
to derive the kinds of satisfactions from their work that we take for
granted.
The
thing about science -- natural science -- is that we can spin fantastic theories
about the cosmos, and have complete confidence that the cosmos is completely
indifferent to our theories. It's going to work the same damn way no matter what
theories we have about the cosmos. But we do have to worry about the theories we
have of human nature, because human nature will be changed by the theories we
have that are designed to explain and help us understand human beings.
The
distinguished anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, said, years ago, that human
beings are the "unfinished animals." And what he meant by that was that it is
only human nature to have a human nature that is very much the product of the
society in which people live. That human nature, that is to say our human
nature,is much more created than it is discovered. We design human nature by
designing the institutions within which people live and work.
And
so you people -- pretty much the closest I ever get to being with masters of the
universe -- you people should be asking yourself a question, as you go back home
to run your organizations. Just what kind of human nature do you want to help
design?
Syndicated
from TED, a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas,
usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or
less).
Be The Change: What idea have you held about
human nature that has shaped the way you treat others? Can you imagine your
interactions with others being different if you had a different perception of
human nature?
Sourced From www.dailygood.org
