Self-Gratifiers and Self-Starters:
Two (Possibly Questionable) Views on Life by Dr. Jan Garrett This version: January 22, 2002. Below are descriptions of two views frequently found in our society. You might find it revealing to ask yourself whether you know anybody whose "philosophy" is described below or whether you agree with either of them entirely or partially, and if not why not. Although the view of the aggressive self-starter is somewhat more coherent than the view of the self-gratifier, coherence does not guarantee truth.
The Self-Gratifier
Consider this web site on Excuses.
This list of excuses reminded me of the worldview communicated by contemporary commercial advertising as described by Richard Lippke in his article "Advertising and the Social Conditions of Autonomy," Business and Professional Ethics Journal 8 (1989).)
1. Whatever is worthwhile is easy and gratifying.
2. Consumption of material things is the key to the good life. Consumption provides persons with standards and expectations against which to judge not only their own lives but also the institutions that shape and mold their lives.
3. Consumption decreases or cures boredom, powerlessness, and lack of self-esteem.
4. Alcohol and cigarettes are accompanied by fun; fast foods with nutrition.
5. More and new products are always better.
6. A business is excellent to the extent that it pleases consumers.
7. Our society is great because it provides us with a wide array of consumer objects to chose among.
8. Large corporations care deeply about and feel indebted to consumers.
9. We should let advertisers show us how to live the good life.
10. Social relationships are competitive and defined in relation to consumption--a person is a loser if others have more of the latest products than he or she does.
11. Above all, you do not want to be a loser.
12. Racial disharmony, poverty and social oppression are mostly made up by troublemakers and do not require much attention from us.
The ordinary experience of commercial advertising conveys the following lessons about method, which we can sum up (crudely) as "logic sucks."
1. There is no need for clarity, rigor, precision, patience, honesty, or the courage to face one's faults.2. It is quite all right to accept emotional appeals, superficial reasoning, and minimal evidence for claims regarding consumption choices.
3. We have a right to expect that important information about our lives will be entertainingly presented in a way that we can passively absorb.
4. Success in communication consists in persuading the audience in any way that works.
[End of my indebtedness to Richard Lippke]
As soon as we try to relate this view a bit to economic realities, the following propositions emerge. Note I say "emerge"; I do not say they logically follow or are fully defensible. They may even be inconsistent at points with the beliefs of the self-gratifier already mentioned. Indeed, they are only slightly more reflective than the original set of propositions.
1. To buy things you may have to get a job and accept orders from corporate managers.We can call the preceding view the view of the self-gratifier. The following view is quite distinct from that view, yet clearly it belongs to the same world.2. You need not concern yourself with ethics, except when it relates to your firm's profit margin, just as you need not concern yourself with social problems outside of your work life.
3. Your civic duty is to be a loyal worker and a continuous consumer.
4. Some people inherit wealth and need not work but that's all right since their parents had the right to give their wealth to whomever they chose.
5. When you get a job, you voluntarily surrender your right to make choices on the job except in the interests of your employer. (But you do get paid and you can buy and consume things.)
6. When you get a job, you voluntarily surrender your privacy since your employer has the right to spy on you and make sure you are constantly contributing to the interests of the shareholders. You do not mind because you are lucky to have the job and an income in order to buy and consume things.
7. Your employer may terminate your employment at will but since you are no crusader for social justice this is unlikely. Job loss may occur through no fault of your employer, but you will probably find other employment because firms like workers who will not ask moral questions and will do as they are told.
8. You may have to put in long hours but it's all right because in the hours that are left you can still buy and consume things.
The Aggressive Self-Starter
Call this the worldview of the entrepreneur or self-starter.
1. The successful person is the one who accumulates capital and develops great deal of clout in the economic world.
2. This person must be willing to work hard and delay gratification.
3. This person must constantly improve his or her cleverness and be alert to seize every opportunity to extend personal influence and power, which is capital in the metaphorical sense and expands in much the same way as capital in the technical sense.
4. This person must be willing to leave others behind in the dust, but be cautious so as not to give them a chance to blame him directly for their failure.
5. People are not equal; those who are unwilling to delay gratification cause their own loss of power and opportunity.
6. Once they have lost in these ways, they are fair game for the unequal bargains that those who have delayed gratification can impose upon them.
7. Because they normally have not inherited the wealth they need to pursue their self-gratification without labor, they can usually be "persuaded" to work for those who have capital under conditions that are especially lucrative for the latter.
8. Because the self-gratifiers are short-sighted and lazy they cannot be trusted to work hard without constant supervision and fear of painful consequences.
9. There are basically two types of people: the self-gratifiers who need supervision and domination, and the entrepreneurs or self-starters who do not.
10. There are, of course, extreme self-gratifiers who cannot be rendered useful even under supervision or surveillance. At best they become homeless vagrants and at worst violent criminals. If you tend to their wants, they just become worse.
[Comment: While this may sound a bit like what we sometimes hear from racists, it is not strictly speaking a racist view; it could be part of a racist view if the speaker or author equates the self-gratifiers with one particular race and the self-starters with a different race.]
11. Apart from the self-gratifiers and self-starters, there are a few exceptions. These are the egalitarians (or socialists or communists or liberals or do-gooders) who are trying to confuse things by denying this natural division of humankind between self-starters and self-gratifiers.
12. These egalitarians mistakenly believe that the self-gratifiers can be empowered, but in fact they can only be "empowered" if they become what they are not, i.e., self-starters. This is impossible because they lack the character traits associated with being empowered, while the self-starters have them.