> The findings in this study support Self-Determination Theory, a well-established theory of human motivation developed by two of the paper's authors, Deci and fellow University psychologist Richard Ryan.
"well-established" makes me think that this article functions more as a PR piece for SDT. However, I've never heard of SDT befor reading this article, and I find SDT interesting as it seems to be a functional lens through which to study basic human needs - like the need for relationships.
"SDT suggests that there are three basic psychological
needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness that
underlie growth and development"
"[Self-Determination Theory] begins with the assumption that people are active organisms, with innate tendencies toward psychological growth and development, who strive to master ongoing challenges and to integrate their experiences into a coherent sense of self. This natural human tendency does not operate automatically, however, but instead requires ongoing nutriments and supports from the social environment in order to function effectively."
Reading the article, it sounds like the interpretation of results could have been pretty heavily cooked. With someone this hot for a prior theory it's important to know exactly what experimental methods they used and exactly what they found. Article's pretty short on that.
What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun.
Even the thing of which we say, "See, this is new!" has already existed in the ages that preceded us.
Actually, you really wonder how Ecclesiastes managed to get included in the Bible, considering that at this point the Earth was supposed to be four thousand years old or whatever. And yet even 4.5 billion years isn't old enough for everything to have happened, not even close. Aren't exponential possibility spaces wonderful?
If you take it to mean human nature and the completely cyclical patterns of human behavior, then it's most certainly correct. That's how I've always interpreted it.
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again
Verse 10 is about things:
Is there anything of which one can say,
"Look! This is something new"?
I think verse 9 is false. Remember one of the ways Solomon got his pleasure: "I bought male and female slaves and had other slaves who were born in my house." That's the only thing I can think of though.
early 14c., from Anglo-L. biblia, from M.L./L.L. biblia (neuter plural interpreted as fem. sing.), in phrase biblia sacra "holy books," from Gk. ta biblia to hagia "the holy books," from biblion "paper, scroll," the ordinary word for "book," originally a dim. of byblos "Egyptian papyrus," possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician port from which Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece. The port's name is a Gk. corruption of Phoenician Gebhal (modern Jbeil, Lebanon), said to mean lit. "frontier town" (cf. Heb. gebhul "frontier, boundary," Arabic jabal "mountain"). The Christian scripture was refered to in Gk. as Ta Biblia as early as c.223. Bible replaced O.E. biblioðece "the Scriptures," from Gk. bibliotheke, lit. "book-repository" (from biblion + theke "case, chest, sheath"), used of the Bible by Jerome and the common L. word for it until Biblia began to displace it 9c. Figurative sense of "any authoritative book" is from 1804. Bible Belt first attested 1926, reputedly coined by H.L. Mencken.
The parent post said "Book of Ecclesiastes, nuff said." in reference to an article about lifestyle. I made a tongue-in-cheek comment about how we should obviously start taking our values from the Bible. Bible = word of God = axioms to live by. That's why it's correct!
1. Benjamin Franklin wrote that when colonial era children were taken by Indian tribes and were later found again, they usually didn't want to come back. Their lives were too easy and carefree now.
2. Egyptian society didn't change for thousands of years. The weather was mild and the Nile would flood every year, providing them plenty of easy food. There was no need to strive for anything.
If happiness is the most important virtue to optimize in society, then I'm forced to believe that pre-colonial American Indian society and ancient Egyptian society were far better than modern societies. But I don't believe that.
Believing in happiness as supreme is a first principle. You can't prove it, you have to accept it as a given and the rest of your philosophy descends from that. Personally, I don't accept this assumption. I think happiness is important, but I think other things like beauty and truth are just as important.
Egyptians and Native Americans certainly had happy times, but I don't think anyone then or now would trade that life for ours. If you lived more than a few hundred years ago, your life would be, in all probability:
- If you are male, your main job is to do hard, backbreaking labor, six or seven days out of the week, all day long, from sunup to sundown. If you're sick and can't work, you might be able to call on a relative or friend to help, otherwise you're screwed; there's no medical care, no life insurance, no disability insurance and no paid vacation. Every so often, someone will come along, hand you a sword, and tell you to go die for the Emperor; if you aren't killed in battle, it's quite likely that you'll die of disease or starvation hundreds of miles from home.
- If you are female, you basically have no rights; you are legally the property of your husband, who may have three or ten or twenty wives, and are required to do whatever he says. Your main job is to take care of your children; since there is no birth control, you will probably have ten or more, of whom a good percentage will die before their first birthday due to the sky-high infant mortality rates.
- And, of course, in any case, there is no electricity, no telephones, no televisions, no air conditioning, and no computers. Running water and books are, with a few exceptions like imperial Rome, luxuries available only to the rich and privileged. Depending on where/when you are, you might have decent sanitation, or your streets might be literally overflowing with sewage.
- If you want to live like this, for whatever reason, you still can. Go out into the middle of nowhere and purchase a plot of land (such land is generally worthless). Build a house on it, farm it for food and make all your tools yourself. Strangely enough, most people who talk about the virtues of the simple life never do this (although a few do, and I admire them for their non-hypocrisy).
"Every so often, someone will come along, hand you a sword, and tell you to go die for the Emperor; if you aren't killed in battle, it's quite likely that you'll die of disease or starvation hundreds of miles from home."
But less likely than dying at home on the farm, at least in Rome.
"your husband, who may have three or ten or twenty wives"
In which case your husband is probably rich, powerful, and influential, and you share a measure of luxury. Most men in polygamous cultures only have/had one wife because they can only afford to support one wife.
"If you want to live like this, for whatever reason, you still can. Go out into the middle of nowhere and purchase a plot of land (such land is generally worthless). Build a house on it, farm it for food and make all your tools yourself."
There's a marked difference between living in a primitive community and living as a primitivist hermit.
No, I wasn't suggesting people from today would rather live in those societies. Part of peoples' sense of well-being comes from a comparison of their quality of life relative to what they believe is possible. American Indians did not know of modern health care, so they were not depressed they didn't have it.
As for your first two bullets, I specifically called out two societies. I don't believe, as you suggest, that all societies more than a few hundred years ago were organized the same. At any rate, I suppose it's possible that Franklin was wrong or American Indian children had it great, but their lives turned into a living hell upon maturity, but I'd have to see more evidence of that.
"The weather was mild and the Nile would flood every year, providing them plenty of easy food. There was no need to strive for anything."
I don't know anything about the Indian tribes but I know that slavery, serfdom, superstition, and tyranny were integral parts of ancient Egyptian society.
I think that's a compelling irony of the data if it can be taken as accurate. Perhaps material goals are the most efficient means of (material) progress, but is there psychological cost associated with that achievement? Reminds me of "Death of a Salesman" and the "illusion of the American dream" school of thought.
I think the keyword here is "psychological". If you train yourself to control your mental state you can suffer all sorts of physical afflictions but psychologically you can still be as happy as ever.
I used to think that balance was the key, but after some consideration I'm undecided. If spending all your energy on training yourself to be happy actually makes you happy despite your physical well-being, why would you need balance?
There are a few sites I came to avoid on principle. nytimes always has very well written and interesting articles, but with no long-term value. And science daily... well, there is very little science in there. They sound good, but they also lack meat, and honestly they're not that well written.
"well-established" makes me think that this article functions more as a PR piece for SDT. However, I've never heard of SDT befor reading this article, and I find SDT interesting as it seems to be a functional lens through which to study basic human needs - like the need for relationships.
"SDT suggests that there are three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness that underlie growth and development"
"[Self-Determination Theory] begins with the assumption that people are active organisms, with innate tendencies toward psychological growth and development, who strive to master ongoing challenges and to integrate their experiences into a coherent sense of self. This natural human tendency does not operate automatically, however, but instead requires ongoing nutriments and supports from the social environment in order to function effectively."
http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/theory.php