Extrinsic Motivation

When I think about extrinsic motivations the first thing that comes to mind is money. Money and extrinsic motivations go hand and hand. Extrinsic motivations are major concepts of today's world. With the lack of jobs and cash flow availiable, people are willing to do almost anything if they're getting paid. We mostly do if for the money, not the enjoyment. Notice I said, "we" because this relates to all the commom people.

 

After reading Drive, I heard on the radio that the state of Ohio was going to start a program targeting college students. This program is willing to give students a cash reward for attending college classes. The purpose of this is to try to reduce the number of students missing and skipping class. Most students are going to respond to this in a positive manner because of the external rewards they will receive. I obsevered this situation in two different ways. The first way was to offer a form of extrinsic motivation to these students, so they will be more willing to attend classes. In my perspective, the students will be compromising with the program for that matter. The second way is to encouragge students to attend classes, so that they will become college graduates and will stay in state to produce a more professional working class. At the end of the day the solution is still one thing, extrinsic motivation. Do you think extrinsic motivation is the main problem in today's society?

Whats Your Drive???

Drive has really changed my perspective about my motivational approaches. Although it took me a long time to decide what my internal drive was, it also forced me to think on a higher level. This thinking process made me question myself and the reason why I take interest in certain things. I had this weird feeling during the channels of this fiasco. Step by step I figured the desired answer. I have decided that my motivation will be fully based on myself, not the the external affairs that I receive from it. Like most people, I have a lot of external motivation, but challenging myself to do things because I love it or just because it's the right thing is going beyond my natural self being and I'm are molding a better person in the process. Are you up for the challenge.


This is the blog that has the correct date and time. Here is the link.
http://erika-whatsyourdrive.blogspot.com/2011/08/drive-yourself.html

Type X and Type I

Erika Dennis erika_dennis84@yahoo.com to me
show details 6:37 AM (14 hours ago)
Although Drive describes many factors of motivation, they also introduce two factors to describe people. These two factors are known as type X and type I. Type X behavior us encouraged " more by extrinsic desires than intrinsic ones" (pg. 77). Thus type represents motivation 2.0. Examples of this are people like Donald Trump. For example, Donald Trump may donate to a charity, but he is only doing it for publicity. Type I is the complete opposite if type X. It represents a good deed thar is done for personal and cultural effective gain. According to Drive, Type I " concerns itself less with the external rewards to which an activity leads and mire with the inherent satisfaction of the activity itself. (pg. 77). Examples like this would be people like Opera Winfrey.
The main goal is to upgrade from type X to type I. By doing so, we will "strengthen our organizations, get beyond our decade of underachievement, and address the inchoate sense that something's gone wrong in our businesses, out lives, and our world" (pg. 77). This transformation will not only be beneficial to our lives, but also to the entire world as well. We will also be producing a better generation of people who will be able to teach others. Type I teaches people to focus more on doing a good deed for the advancement of society, not just self gain. Although type X appears to be a better deal, type I always outperform type X in the long run. Pink states, "Intrinsically motivated people usually achieve more than their reward-seeking counterparts" (pg. 79).
If a person embodies type X factors, it is possible for them to become a person with type I factors. Although I would like to consider myself as this kind of person [type I], I know I have a tendency of letting extrinsic rewards obscure by vision of the main purpose. How is one suppose to transform to type I behavioral habits if they have the desiring need for external rewards such as money to maintain a sustainable living during hard times.

Mesoamerican Origins

If origins began in Mesoamerica, animal domestication would certainly be different. First off, the animals that would be domesticated would be different ones: rather than Eurasian and African animals, it would be the animals of Mesoamerica. That means that instead of having animals such as pigs, horses and chicken, to name a few, domesticated worldwide we would have animals native to Mesoamerica domesticated. So, that means that the animals domesticated would have been very different. Also, animals that have gone extinct in Mesoamerica would have had better chances of survival and those of African and Eurasian descent would have had less chances of survival.

Societies in the Americas would have been better physically. That is, they would have been healthier and they would have been able to develop immunity to more diseases, as did the Africans and Eurasians in reality. Those of the Americans would have had much better chances against the European conquerors and perhaps could have been the conquerors of the world and history could have had been written much differently, with a hint of Mesoamerican culture.

Irrelevant

I've tried and tried to apply the content of Drive to my senior project and myself and I am just about ready to give up. This does not make any sense to me. I've written about how according to Drive the project I want to do will not work. However, I am not convinced. This book isn't for me. None of it makes sense. I have lived my whole life and have done fairly well. What drove me to do so? No, not myself. Everything came from extrinsic motivations: either positive or negative. When people doubt me, I make it goal to prove them wrong. When people help me, I make it a goal to make them proud. I feel that I have never done anything that I wanted because I wanted. I don't feel that I have ever motivated myself. I've heard of the concept before and tried it; but, it wasn't me. The book Drive, instead of aid me, put a big brick wall in my path and confused me. I don't know what to do.

What do I do?

I do not know what I want to do. I cannot decide between entrepreneurship and conducting an experiment. According to Drive, if my motive with entrepreneurship is to make money, then it will be of poor quality. However, though I am driven by making more money, I also would like to help others better their lives by learning them to make more money. I also am thinking of conducting an experiment. I have read books on the effects of exorcize on education and am genuinely interested in conducting an experiment of my own. This would not acquire me any money, simply satisfaction. Drive, is convincing me to pursue this rather than entrepreneurship. However, I am not yet sure. Knowing myself, I know I am driven to do very well when money is involved. Those task, though, have always been manual work. So, my goal is one of two things: do both projects or find a way to combine the both. Any suggestions?

Humans Evolving From Mesoamerica?

What if humans evolved from Mesoamerica? Wow according to Diamond that would have affected so many things, for example, he mentions in page 159 the the major five domestication mammals (cows, sheep, goat, pig, and horse). Well these important mammal were not necessary found in Mesoamerica. He does mention the African Elephant but as you might have read form the reading, the African Elephant was captured and tamed but could not be domesticated, so both Africa and Mesoamerica had issues with animal domestication. With that being said, I believe the definition of a domesticated animal is: “...defined as animal selectively bred in captivity and thereby modified from its wild ancestors, for use by humans who control the animal's breeding and food supply.” (159).
Mesoamerica, I believe, would have been a harder place to start human evolution. Why? Honestly well Mesoamerica didn't have much large animals that could provide much of anything and the animals that were available were small or too hard to capture. Also Diamond, mentions how many animals change in size through out evolution. Yes they change size but they didn't get bigger in Mesoamerica in fact they got smaller in size that wouldn't have help us either.
Also in Mesoamerica, the animals were not use to humans, thus making them not aware to avoid the enemies, humans. The very few animals that were available in the island were being taken advantage of. Since the evolution of animals and humans would have been similar then I believe animal domestication would have taken longer to acquire. What do you guys think?

Geographical Determination

Jared Diamond is guilty of geographical determination. The entire book talks about how certain people were lucky enough to live in the places they lived on the map because that had an over advantage over the rest of the world.

He says that European settlers had an advantage in Africa because the Cape of Good Hope (where Europeans first landed) has the similar distance from the equator as Europe did. This gave the European invader an advantage. They were able to grow the same crops that they have been growing in Europe for centuries and raise the same animals they have been raising for centuries. Another example he uses a lot is the way New Guinea was different from Europe. It is on a different Latitude from the rest Europe and wasn't able to grow the same foods as the Europeans. The only native plants they had was bananas. Bananas need a certain type of climate that is completely different from that needed to grow wheat and barley. They also didn’t have the same animals need to help them plow their farms. Those animals couldn't survive on the island, due to the different line of latitude. Finally, he talks about the east-west alignment. Due to this factor, plants and animals from the Middle East could grow and be raised where it shared the same line of latitude. To this day, most plants and animals, that live on that east-west alignment are relatively the same. In conculsion, Diamond is guilty of geographical determination.

Flora in the Middle East and the Americas

Diamond would say that the three most important aspects of flora in the Fertile Crescent are that they were easy to plant, store, and provided a lot more calories then the plants of New Guinea. The plants of New Guinea took a lot of time and energy to grow, they could not be stored because it would rot within a couple of days and it didn't provide the same amount if calories or protein as the cereal plants of the Fertile Crescent. Those three aspects encouraged domestication. If the plant was easy to plant, that meant they could grown more food to feed more people. If it could be stored for a long period of time, then people would had longer lasting food supply. If it provided more energy, then people could be able to do more. These three aspects led to the advancement of the Middle East a lot quicker then in New Guinea or any other part of the world.

If these aspects were to be true in Mesoamerica, domestication would only exist in one area of the American continent (not all of it). The reason for this would be because of the north-south longitude. The northern part of the Americas could not grow the same foods as those in the southern parts of the Americas because they had a radically different climate. Overall, the doestication of plants and farming would happened in the Americas at different times and with different plants.

I Think He IS

I do believe that Diamond is a geographic determinist. Throughout the book he makes the case that, a person’s future is based on the location that person was born. If someone was born in Australia during the 1800’s, they would live with primitive tools and a basic lifestyle. Whereas, if that person was born in Europe during the same time, that person would be a part of a complex society with many advance tools.

Diamond also shows this is by convincing the reader that Europe won history. He shows that the majority of the world was conquered by some European country at some point in time. This determines the fate of the people in the location that was conquered because the Europeans could have completely whipped out the natives or just forced their beliefs on them. This could completely change the future of the natives.

Diamond is a geographic determinist. With these arguments he makes throughout his book, he is basically saying that it does matter where someone if from. The location of your birth will determine your future.

The Importance of Livestock

Had humans evolved and spread from Mesoamerica rather than Africa, things would be so much different. The livestock would be different as well as the domestication of the animals. On page 160, Diamond lists the major five species of big herbivorous domestic mammals and mentions that the top five are sheep, goats, cows, pigs, and horses. What I noticed was that it says that these animals were found either in West and Central Asia, Eurasia, and North Africa. These animals were and still are very important because they provide so much. For example cows produce milk, cheese, and meat and pigs can be eaten as well so as far as those animals, they are very important.

Horses were very helpful when it came to humans spreading. Humans domesticated these animals and they turned out to be very useful. It would've taken much longer for humans to spread around the world without the help of horses, mainly. The reason it would've been different had humans evolved in Mesoamerica is because horses weren't found in that area of the world. Everything would've been much slower. If humans started spreading from Mesoamerica and moved west to Eurasia and Africa, it would've been harder for them to domesticate these animals. It would've taken them much longer to begin working with crops if they didn't have domesticated animals because these animals have been proven to be very helpful with crops. For example cows provide the plants with very good fertilizer. Of course Mesoamerica had animals of their own such as llamas and alpacas but even then, it would take longer for them to spread. Humans who evolved in Africa, of course, had a difficult time at first with getting food since almost half of Africa is dessert, but once they stumbled upon the Fertile Crescent, they were good to go. With all this being said, one can only say that had Mesoamerica been the new Africa, the whole spreading around the world process would've been slower, animal domestication would've been more difficult, and it would've taken longer for societies to develop.

Guilty

Starting off the book, Diamond stress his importance for Yali's question of "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of out own?" (14) He could have easily stated that the reason was because they weren't resources properly and therefore they didn't domesticate animals nor plant crops. But then he would have written an enormous book. I believe he is guilty. Throughout the book all he talks about is how geography was the reason that the Africans weren't the ones that dominated the world because they sure did have an advantage over everyone else because all other people originated in Africa.

Climate was the biggest problem for why Africa wasn't able to produce crops as easily as the Eurasians. It all has to do with the geography of Africa if I would have been located on a more fertile place in the world then it would have been Africa that dominated the world but it wasn't that way. Half of Africa is a dry desert and nothing can grow there and he few places that can grow things can't handle the production of wheat or barely. Like Diamond says, "...Nor could food productions spring up spontaneously in deserts remote from sources of water for irrigation..."(93). Saying this he means that some places it was impossible for there to be a crop production because of the land. And the land is like that because of it's geographical location.

On page 180 Diamond asks this question, "What is it about the Americas an Africa that made the spread of food production more difficult there than in Eurasia?" Diamond tells us that because Eurasia had a Fertile Crescent! That is the main reason for why they produced so much crop that spread rapidly. And this is an example of Diamond stressing that is was the geography of Eurasia that made is the most dominate influence of the world. The food and animals that we have today are only here because the geography was go good in Eurasia and that allowed for them to explore more parts of the world to spread this "knowledge" of things.

To end the book, Diamond states that, "...it was due to accidents of geography and biogeography--- in particular, to the continents' different areas, axes, and suits of wild plant and animal species." (401) There he pretty much tells us directly that it was geography that shaped the world. So in my eyes he is guilty as charged.

The New Africa

Africa is were we say everything started out. But what changes would have happened if instead of Africa it all started in Mesoamerica? How different would things be? I've thought about this for a while after having read the question. And I have come to the conclusion that not much would have changed.

The only thing different would have been the animals. There are different types of animals in Africa and Eurasia than there are in the Americas. But still I don't believe that could have made a difference because Diamond says that animals evolved alongside humans and so whatever animals were there were the ones that would have evolved with the human.

Eurasia would have still been dominating because they still would have had the animals like horses and cows and others that would have really impacted their community. The Americas wouldn't know much about civilizations while the Eurasians would have.

It stared in Africa and it still didn't become the dominating county so why would things if it all stared in the Americas. The fertile crescent would have still been on the other side of the world so it still would have been hard for them to produce crops even if they did have the animals to do so.

Livestock

The animals were a big part in why Eurasia was the champion of history. The livestock not only provide a way of transportation but also food and some even milk. Once the people had domesticated the animal they could use it to help the grow crops an with the help the could produce more food to feed more of the community. They even had food to feed all the animal that they domesticated.

Livestock are important because if they ate the animal that itself produced a lot of nutrition. If the people only ate fruits and vegetables then they wouldn't have been as strong as they were. Also they could use the skin of the animal as clothing or even to build a tent. It was important that they stay warm during cold temperatures in order to live.

The livestock were the muscles! Yes, before the animal they had to use the human but if you think about it, how much could a person really do? Of course the animal was stronger and could handle more labor than a person can. That is why with animals they were able to produce more and more crops to feed more and more of their community.

The written language was important for the people but it didn't get them more food and muscle power it just allowed them to communicate. Although communication was important, at the time, the livestock was far more useful and necessary for life.

Would things be different?

I doubt that it matters a whole lot whether human evolution began in Mesoamerica or in Africa pertaining to animal domestication. Diamond writes in pages 168-175 the reasons for there being only 14 ancient species that were domesticated were: Diet, growth rate, mating habits, disposition, reactions to danger, and social hierarchy.
In class we discussed that had humans evolved in Mesoamerica as opposed to Africa, then the animals of African descent wouldn't have evolved alongside humans and therefore wouldn't see them as a danger. Thus, it would have been much easier to domesticate some of the animals from Africa. However, I don't think that the presence or absence of humans would have a drastic affect on the African animal's reaction to danger or their nasty disposition. There were 51 species in Africa that could have potentially been domesticated, but many had an instinct to panic and try to get away (such as gazelles) or to always be aggressive and unpredictable (such as buffaloes) . Yes, this could have been in part the fault of human's hunting, but there were 50 other species whose hunting contributed to these species's nasty dispositions or instinct to panic. So if humans had slowly moved from Mesoamerica to Africa, the animals there would still be impossible to domesticate.
It also wouldn't have mattered whether humans evolved in Mesoamerica or Africa first because they would have still domesticated plants around the same time as the real course of history. In Mesoamerica it wouldn't make sense to domesticate plants because they didn't have very many to choose from and those they did have would either take too long or not produce enough for everyone. Since they couldn't take that first step and domesticate plants, they wouldn't have anything to sustain an animal's diet. It wouldn't be until they got to Eurasia and found plants that could be easily domesticated, that humans could begin to domesticate animals.
I think there wouldn't be much change in how societies would develop over the course of history if they had evolved in Mesoamerica or in Africa, because in either situations they would have to wait until they reached Eurasia to begin to domesticate animals

Isn't it obvious?

"In short, Europe's colonization of Africa had nothing to do with differences between European and African people themselves, as white racists assume. Rather, it was due to accidents of geography and biogeography-in particular, to the continents' different areas, axes, and suites of wild plant and animal species. That is, the different historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate."(400-401)

Ultimately I believe that simply with the presentation of this quote a guilty verdict can be drawn in the case of determining whether Jared Diamond is guilty of geographical determinance or not. Second of all, I believed that that is what the book was meant to explain. Throughout the entire work, Diamond blames geography. He spends most of the book narrating the differences between the conditions within the different continents. The biggest and best example of geographical determinance that he gives is that of the different rates of advancement in the Polynesian islands. Here he spends an extensive amount of time describing the different geographical elements of each of the islands and the way those elements affected whether one society became more advanced and was the conquerer or the conquered. I believe there isn't much to discuss about this topic because Diamond is obviously a geographical determinist.

It all comes down to alignment

What determined history and the fates of humans on different continents was geography, as Diamond makes clear. However, the most important factor within the geographical category was the alignments of the major continents. Eurasia and its early inhabitants had an advantage over Mesoamerica and Africa because it is lined up in an east-west axis instead of a north-south one. This leads to remarkable differences in determining which region can spread its people, animals, and crops faster or at all. Diamond explains that, "Localities distributed east and west of each other at the same latitude share exactly the same day length and its seasonal variations. To a lesser degree, they also tend to share similar diseases, regimes of temperature and rainfall, and habitats or biomes"(p.183). With this said, it should be clear to many of why Eurasia received the better part of the deal in geographical terms to be able to sustain faster advancin early societies. In Eurasia farming just had to begin spontainiously in one place, such as the fertil crecent, and from the spread to other places east and west of it and the plants that were farmed spntainiously could survive in those other localities. However, when it comes to Mesoamerica and Africa, they too have areas that are est and west of each other but to a much lesser extent not enough I believe to compete with that of Eurasia. Their alignments from north to south bring about the complication for farming to begin spontainiously in ares north or south of each other due to the differences in climate, day length, and seasons. Perhaps the idea of farming could spread but not the plants because they wouldn't survive since they are used to those specific factors and how they play out in their specific areas. Once the idea arrived to a different location, the process of domesticating local plants had to begin over and over again unlike in Eurasia where the same plant could survive.

Plants are food and food is needed for life. Hence, it makes sense that animal domestication in an area would most of the time come after there was food to feed those animals. As for language and writting, these can only come once a society has become a sedentary society in which some produce food and other have time to develop such systems. Sedentary societys can only exist once there is enough food grown to feed many and in order to produce enough food, animal help is needed. This means that farming is the root of civilizations. Aparently, the east-west alignment of Eurasia spread farming faster, which made societies or civilizations spring up faster.

The Price Paid for Mastery.

So all this talk about mastery didn’t necessarily start this year; I still remember stepping into Susan’s class sophomore year and her telling us that at least 10,000 hours are required to be a “master” at something. I did a bunch of different calculations just for mere curiosity (Intrinsic motivation at its best!). But, all this talk of “mastery” resurfaces in Pink’s book. He says “mastery” is a very tough thing to achieve with lots of hard work and dedication required for it to happen. What I want to do is to emphasize just how hard that road can sometimes be, with nothing else than examples from musicians (Oh yay! Otilio’s talking about guitars again). The first musician I wanted to mention was Tom Morello (a celebrated guitarist), who started practicing the guitar avidly when he was studying at Harvard. He practiced for 8 hours a day everyday (coincidentally, according to Susan’s 10,000 hour idea 8 hours a day means “mastery” in 3.5 years). Well Tom Morello graduated from Harvard with a bachelor in Political Science; however he soon became a male stripper shortly after moving to Los Angeles in order to support himself. Since then however he has done numerous thing including working with Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, pursuing a solo career as the “Night watchman”, and his new band Street Sweeper Social Club (he was also included as a character in Guitar Hero 3).

The next person I’d like to mention worked with either Marilyn Manson or White Zombie, maybe even both (frankly I can’t remember). But I do remember the words he said, he spoke to Guitar World magazine about his experience as a struggling guitarist trying to “make it”. He spoke of his living conditions, he lived in a cramped small New York apartment filled with cock roaches and working dead end jobs on the side; he also said that anyone should expect to live like this for at least five years before the band they play in gets truly recognized. Anyways, the point is that “mastery” really is a tough thing to accomplish, and the road leading to it is definitely not something that should be taken lightly.

Guilty as Charged

I certainly believe that Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, is a geographic determinist. Throughout the book Diamond defines/judges a person's future as to where that person is from, where he/she was born.

Diamond tries and in many cases, brain washing us into: believing that Europe, just because it was a very advanced country- in many different aspects, won history. What those that even mean?

Well, throughout our school carrier, our geographic teachers have taught us of European colonization and conquer-ability through a major part of the world. The culture, the religion, their land property, the future of these people who were "conquered or colonized" by the Europeans drastically changed, for they were "brain washed", influenced, by these "superior" individuals.

I personally think that Diamond is a geographic determinist, I had given plenty of thought to this, and the conclusion I came up with was: by him repeating himself throughout GGAS; saying that the location of someone's birth shall determine someone's future, not where one's from.
And to me, that is very strong statement to say, but he proved his point on his book. The idea that if the Europeans "won history" is still very unclear and undefined to me. I do think this book was one of the most important books in history, but I shall read in depth the idea of Europeans gaining victory over history.

Livestock and it's importance

Animal domestication is very important for us and as been for many many years. The author of Guns, Germs, and Steal, Diamond, lists the top five herbivorous domestic mammals, which were mainly found in West and Central Asia, Eurasia, and North Africa. These animals where and are very important for us to this day, they have made our lives easier in so many ways and we've found so many uses for these animals: sheep, goats, cows, pigs, and horses.

These animals help us provide for our families and others, they've helped us survive throughout rough times. We've found many different uses for cows, goats and sheep. For example, they all produce milk, that contains the calcium and other vitamins we need. Their meet is not only very delicious, and nutritional, it's also a great source of protein. When we eat the meat we feel full, more than what we would feel if we only eat wheat and fruit. The fat of the pig might not be very healthy, for it has plenty of fat, but it sure kept us full as well. These animals are very easy to take care of, we didn't have much trouble domesticating them. Also, since all they eat is herbs, their excrement is used as good soil fertilizer, which is only helpful for us.

The skin of the cows, sheep and goats where very valuable as well, we could use their skin as clothing and blankets. As, we keep finding new ways of using these animals that didn't have to be fed meat (other animals); the number of these animals kept increasing. As well as our increase in technology. The use of fire to heat up the meat and cook it, also finding new ways of using their milk. We now use cow and goat milk, and other dairy products that are very profitable.

The horses are exceptionally important in our animal evolution and our human evolution. These animals have helped us in battles in the early days. They were a sign of power in many places. For example when the Europeans went to places like Mexico and Perú, they were viewed very differently. The Aztecs where frighten of these "monsters". Nevertheless, they were useful to carry out messages to other places, since technology wasn't as advanced as it is now.

Nevertheless, if humans started spreading from Mesoamerica and little by little moved west to Eurasia and Africa, it probably had been quite difficult to domesticate the animals specified above. Growing crops would have been a very slow process if we were to do it manually without the help of these animals. And to not mention animal domestication would have become very difficult.