Survival, Social Life or Entertainment?

One of the most important factor in any undertaking is motivation. Without the right motivation we will never be able to be successful students or to learn something new. 

In spite of countless attempts, I have never successfully been able to explain to my wife why I have spend most on my life working on non-profit projects. (A black-belt holder in sarcastic wit, she refers to all such undertakings as "Non-brainer"-projects). And indeed, as the years has gone by with little or less financial gain to show for my enthusiastic efforts, the doubts have often overtaken myself; and, to some degree, the mind of my patient but sometimes less-than-enthusiastic bank-manager. Yes, why indeed? Why spend night after sleepless night on projects that has little reward to show, other than the personal satisfaction of creating a realistic 3D landscape or editing a documentary about child-soldiers in central Africa? What motivates us to such efforts? The question is not only relevant to myself and large number of people who spend their best years knitting dolls for their puppet-theater or recording experimental jazz in their garage. Birdwatchers, to name one but group, will gladly travel around the globe (and spend a fortune in doing so) and show deep satisfaction on catching even the smallest glimpse of their favorite Spotted Arctic Owl (or whatever). If such behavior is a mystery to you, then you fail to understand the passion of doing things the right way. 

Linus Torvalds, the Linux-initiator, proposes in the book "The Hacker Ethic", that our motivation can be divided into three basic categories: "Survival", "Social Life" and "Entertainment". Survival, is a self-evident category, of course, but more interesting perhaps, are the others; the second, Social Life, is fairly comprehensible too: we do things in order to gain approval from our social environment. To be understood, appreciated or even respected, is a basic - if not always readily admitted - motivation for most of us. We are social animals that to a large degree are bound by and to the social groups we belong. How others see us; our status and prestige is critically important when searching for a spouse, competing for a promotion or in simply playing the role of "good neighbor". It makes sense to be liked and to be respected by our peers. 

The next level, however, that of Entertainment, is more difficult to grasp. That we should do things simply for our own pleasure and entertainment, and not simply to maximize profit, is a concept that is harder to appreciate. But the fact is, that many of us put a lot of effort in our hobbies or  p a s s i o n s  which is a more accurate description. Yes, many of us sees values and meaning in creating art, music or computer programs, even without any financial reward what-so-ever. A teacher-colleague of mine spends most of her free time struggling with her brushes and colours, in a life-long ambition to master a certain sfumato-technique (introduced by da Vinci). So far, to my best knowledge, she has never sold a single canvas. And that excactly, is Linus Torvald's point: She does this for her own entertainment. In a very wide sense, mind you. Pekka Himanen, Torvald's co-author prefers the word "Passion". Such Passion can be a very strong motivational force. The american anthropologist Clifford Gertz would coin the phrase "Deep Play", in his classic monograph on Balinese Cockfights. And it is Deep Play indeed, when we do not care for anything but the outcome of our efforts; we do not look to the right or left, we simply care about the result.  (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Geertz)    

With the right motivation, we can learn a new language, we can climb a mountain or write a good Master's thesis. Himanen writes about how early computer Hackers like Steve Wozniak could work tirelessly with "...a sense of joy, of excitement", simply because they had the right kind of motivation. It was not about money or short term-profit. It was for the Love of doing things right. For the Love of doing it Great. 

Starting out on this Master, I think we should ask this very basic question: why are we doing this? What is our motivation? From where shall we find our inspiration when the going gets tough? I can honestly say for my part that IMKE represents a place where I can play, where I can entertain myself; a place where I can be passionate about really understanding Knowledge Communities and maybe create an elegant web-based learning program to booth. I don't really care about the financial gains or getting the best grades. I just care about getting it  r i g h t.  

Now, I just have to explain this to my wife.