Positively Natural – Pt I
THE CASE FOR POSITIVE INTEREST
An Austrian rebuttal of Summers et al, in four parts
THE TIME IS OUT OF JOINT
Over the years, any number of psychological experiments have been conducted in order to validate – or at least to give a veneer of academic corroboration to – a truth already well established by practical experience; namely, that we humans must continually struggle to overcome our basic animal instinct to seek instant gratification of our wants.
Seen from a different perspective, it is just this capacity for forward thinking that underpins, even defines, our very humanity. As such, the idea that the phenomenon represents a major facet of our behaviour much should not be in any way controversial.
In order for us to deny ourselves the pleasure of the moment, we generally need some form of reward – or at least the prospect of one – in return for our abstinence. The reward can, of course, be the negative one of not being punished and it can clearly also take spiritual rather than purely material form.
It hardly needs to be said that that last motivation – essentially the promise that we shall have cake for tea if we are good little boys and girls in the meanwhile – is by far the most prevalent one in everyday operation.
If we start from this simple, human premise and if we concentrate on how the real-world individual is likely to act rather than rushing to lose him in a faceless mass of abstract mathematical symbolism, one very important corollary soon follows; viz., that the widely perceived and highly persistent requirement for a measure of compensation to be given for undergoing the psychic discomfort of deferring the satisfaction of our wants and desires is the fundamental source – the ontological root, we might say- of the phenomenon of interest.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
