Sterling Terrell

recovering economist

Correct Behavior Is Necessary For What?

Correct Behavior Is Necessary For What?

You may think that something is necessary – but necessary for what?

I don’t like the finger-in-your-eye kind of posts, but let me be real here…

If your worldview can not answer a few simple questions about the ends of your actions, you may have a little soul-searching that you need to do.

  • Equality is good. But why should I care that opportunities are equal?
  • Justice is laudable. But why do people need to care about something that animals don’t?
  • Virtue is ethical. But on what basis do you get your moral standard? And why should the rest of us care about it?

I mean, can there even be “correct behavior” without a standard?

Correct compared to what?

I am pointing as gently as I can…

Do you see it?

They write in order to produce certain states of mind in the rising generation, if not because they think those states of mind intrinsically just or good, yet certainly because they think them to be the means to some state of society which they regard as desirable. It would not be difficult to collect from various passages in The Green Book what their ideal is. But we need not. The important point is not the precise nature of their end, but the fact that they have an end at all. They must have, or their book (being purely practical in intention) is written to no purpose. And this end must have real value in their eyes. To abstain from calling it good and to use, instead, such predicates as ‘necessary’ or ‘progressive’ or ‘efficient’ would be a subterfuge. They could be forced by argument to answer the questions ‘necessary for what?’, ‘progressing towards what?’, ‘effecting what?’; in the last resort they would have to admit that some state of affairs was in their opinion good for its own sake.

-C.S. Lewis, The Abolition Of Man (Amazon)

How To Modify Behavior

How To Modify Behavior

If you want to know how to modify behavior, read this post first.

And now, these 20 too.

Now then.

I believe that for this exact reason, many struggle with creative output.

Why?

Well, making art is risky. There is opportunity to look like a fool. Some people will love what you do, while others hate it. It can be an incredibly difficult feat of endurance. And still, after overcoming it all, there is no guarantee of success.

For these risky choices, we focus on what is lost.

Understand: Living a creative life was harder to start than WW2.

If you want people to modify their behavior, is it better to highlight the benefits of changing or the costs of not changing? According to Peter Salovey, one of the originators of the concept of emotional intelligence and now the president of Yale, it depends on whether they perceive the new behavior as safe or risky. If they think the behavior is safe, we should emphasize all the good things that will happen if they do it—they’ll want to act immediately to obtain those certain gains. But when people believe a behavior is risky, that approach doesn’t work. They’re already comfortable with the status quo, so the benefits of change aren’t attractive, and the stop system kicks in. Instead, we need to destabilize the status quo and accentuate the bad things that will happen if they don’t change. Taking a risk is more appealing when they’re faced with a guaranteed loss if they don’t.

-Adam Grant, Originals

Sterling Terrell