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The dark side of motivation
Motivation is what allows us to survive, prosper and reproduce — but it is also behind the worst of polarization and tribalism. We should use it with care, and engage critical thinking
How come we are here? A good few billion years ago, a bunch of chemicals in the primordial soup that sloshed around a young Earth combined to form what we would, much later, call ‘life’ — organisms that somehow possessed two key capacities. They were able to reproduce, and they could distinguish what was beneficial to them from what was detrimental. The motivation of these organisms to reproduce and, in order to do so successfully, to survive long enough by pursuing the beneficial and avoid the detrimental kicked off an unending evolutionary chain, and the rest, as they say, is history.
That motivation has, since then, become a bit more sophisticated, but in essence, we — and our fellow living organisms — are still driven by strong motives to do what is (or rather, often, what feels) good for us, and avoid what is or feels bad. Our human bodies may be incredibly complex, certainly compared to the simplicity of our oldest ancestors, and equipped with vast cognitive powers, we may be living in incredibly complex societal arrangements, yet our judgement what (not) to do…
