Economic development -- Social aspects; Social evolution; Social problems; Work
To adjust rightly this intricate mutual activity requires consciousness,
and consciousness involves pleasure and pain. The whole field of
distinctively human activities is under this law. We have a vast fund of
energy, a vast field of exercise, and a constantly increasing
consciousness of this exercise. Meanwhile the income of man, as a
separate animal, remains the same. He has, as before, the pleasure of
the intake, the attainment of the means to his separate welfare. He has,
beyond that, his share of pleasure in the larger collective intake also,
the gratification of his social desires; but he has, pre-eminently, the
pleasure of action; of the conscious expression of energy.
This is the largest field of human delight, but has not been so
recognised. We still commonly associate pleasure with impression, with
things we are to get, to have. Whereas, in fact, our pleasure depends
far more largely upon what we do.
Closely derived from this basic assumption is our general theory of
return as an incentive; what we may call the Pay concept. This was one
of man’s earliest generalisations. He observed the excito-motory action
of the individual beast; under the influence of hunger or fear he acts;
not influenced, he does not act, sleeps in the sun, and accumulates
energy for the next jump.
The beast, seeing his dinner running before him, ran after it; having
caught his dinner, he ceased to run. Seeing his enemy running behind
him, he ran away from it; having escaped from his enemy, he ceased to
run.
“Aha!” cries that astute observer, Early Man, “Exertion depends on
pleasure before you or pain behind you!” and he forthwith produced his
grand primeval generalisation of Reward and Punishment.
This is still exclusively held by almost all of us. We have used it to
account for all human actions, with the bitter conclusion that “every
man has his price.” We have spread and lengthened and deepened it to
cover our waxing field of action, till out of its logical extremes we
have built both Heaven and Hell.
It was a tremendous concept for the early brain to achieve, and it was
true—as far as it went. These two forces do modify action. They were
very strong upon individual animals, and they act upon us yet—to a
degree. That is, there are still some of us so near the plane of
individualism as to be readily and strongly influenced by these agents.
The error of early man lay in not observing other forces even then
operative; and the error of modern man lies in not observing that these
others have grown continually, and the primal ones have dwindled in
proportion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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