what really motivates people?

     Its conventional wisdom that if you want to get a person to do something then you have to offer them a reason to do it. This reason most often comes in the form of a reward or a payment of their services. As far as the history of mankind goes, this has not always been the case because at various points in time we have even gone so far as to tell a person that they have to do something just because someone else says so. There are many dark times in history where people have been held against their will and forced to do things that they did not want to do but for the most part the general contract between two parties is such that if you do this then you will get that. But is that the way that the most impressive things have been accomplished in the past? Is that what got Einstein to create the Theory of Relativity, or what inspired Beethoven to write his famous 9th Symphony? Was it merely the promise of a reward, a payment for services rendered that produced such exponential leaps forward in our culture? 

     For the longest time I think that people truly believed even to this day that the best way to motivate a person is to offer them a reward. Writers like Daniel Pink have referred to this approach as the carrot and stick approach. The carrot being the promise of reward and the stick being the threat of punishment. If you do what you are supposed to do and you do it well then you are rewarded with this carrot that you want. But if you do not do what you are supposed to do or if you do not perform to the required standards; then you are poked or hit with the stick. If you look at the way businesses are set up then you can see that this is the exact philosophy that they have employed to run their businesses. They pay you do do your job and they punish you if you do not do it well enough. This has led to an economic environment where people just do jobs to survive and to pay their bills rather than doing the things that they truly enjoy doing. 

     If as a child you truly enjoyed building furniture but were led to believe that the only way that you could make a good living and provide for a family was to be a doctor; then a pragmatic mind would choose to be a doctor foregoing doing what they love. The greatest things that we have been able to do as a race have come out of the pure desire to do so; an intrinsic need for self fulfillment. Charles Darwin did not create the Theory of Evolution because someone was paying him to do so, and Plato did not write The Republic just for a paycheck. These great men and thinkers were able to accomplish what they have accomplish because of the inner drive to fulfill themselves and leave the world a better place than they found it. People have a need to do things, make things, fix things, and be useful. Inside every person is a drive to do something. There is a passion in some area and in some field that has not been nurtured and given the opportunity to flourish.

Are tanks more valuable than schools?

     Common sense would dictate that in order to insure the survival of your species you would aim to get as much knowledge as possible and build for the future. However as it turns out we do not place as much value in the future as we do in studying the past. It has been said many times that history repeats itself and that man is just doomed to make the same mistakes that he has made before. Even if that is the case it should not be what we use to decide how to move forward. Granted there is wisdom in learning from your mistakes but i am given to believe that this can only work up to a certain point. If we are constantly looking backward, how are we supposed to see what is coming towards us. The human species has in the past been a slave to many character flaws such as greed but in my opinion that is just a product of economics. If you do not have enough to feed your self and your family then it is only natural to want to secure this protection for yourself. Because of this need to procure protection we get things like war where one side is simply trying to ensure its own survival. If for some reason early human beings lived in abundance as far as the eye could see then what would be the motivation for war? Why pillage and plunder when you have more than enough to eat and to feed your family right in front of you? There would be absolutely no reason to fight wars except for the occasional psychopath who loves killing without rhyme or reason. Studying and modeling your behavior on a history like this which occurred under vastly different circumstances than today is similar to the the British being ready for WWI at the start of WWII. A completely different set of circumstances are bound to present themselves wherein there is no clues from our past on how to handle them at all.
     It seems to me that our civilization has its priorities mixed up when it comes to the value of work. Why is it that the highest paid among us are not the teachers; those who instruct our young ones and hold the keys to our future as a species. It would certainly be much more conducive to the progression of our species if we focus our efforts on the future as opposed to the past. Our future lies in our children and their children who will inherit a world that was scared by the primitive wars of their ancestors. It is in our best interest to make sure that they will be orders of magnitude more capable than we are or our parent were. The only way to do this is to invest in our education with the same fervor that we hunt down terrorist after they attack our home. Why isn't a college education both mandatory and free? How do we expect to produce productive members of society when something as essential as higher learning is only accessible if you can afford it. Should we not be educating people from all walks of life in hopes that we can find more Albert Einsteins and Leonardo Da Vinci's? Don't we want to benefit from the promise of a more advanced future? If we do then education should be the number one priority of every advanced nation on Earth; especially one that claims to be the best among them. Instead of spending our money on military advancement we should be investing in our school system. The job of being our Teacher should be the highest paid profession in our society; so much so that only the best and brightest have the opportunity to do such important work. Instead of Ivy League grads wasting their talents on wall street they should be competing for middle school and high school teaching jobs, eager to imprint their mark on the next generation.