Personal Values and Commercial Enterprise
Work is one of the most important parts of the lives of most people within modern societies. As much as almost anything else in our lives, work and our vocational identity define who we are and determine how we live. Success, in and of itself (i.e. virtually without reference as to what realm success is achieved) is pursued and congratulated. Great financial success is one of the most common hopes of the average person, with the particular means of achieving it substantially just a road to that end. Albert Einstein (and many others) worried that this overemphasis on "acquisitive" success robbed the spiritual value or community-mindset that corresponds to genuine satisfaction in life. Twentieth Century psychologists like Nathaniel Brandon and Abraham Maslow and sociologists like C. Wright Mills have written extensively about the over emphasis of success instead of value to others or to society in modern industrialized parts of the world. From the perspective of psychological fulfillment, the acquisitive impulse or, more generally, the extrinsic motivation for achievement is unlikely to provide lasting contentment. Instead, Gandhi, Einstein, Brandon, and Mills (among many others) suggest that success that is intrinsically motivated is the only route toward evolved or self-actualized long-term genuine contentment.
In terms of motivation, one can pursue the exact same vocational goal for intrinsic reasons, (such as a genuine fascination with the subject matter...
Certain occupations or short-term vocational or professional goals can be valuable both intrinsically and extrinsically, in which case, it is possible to pursue them for reasons and according to motivations that Gandhi, Einstein, Brandon, Maslow, and Mills would view positively and it is possible to pursue those same goals for the philosophical antitheses of those reasons. For a ubiquitous example, medical schools are filled with several different types of students, in terms of their motivation for studying medicine. Typical intrinsic reasons for enduring the Hell of medical residency include the desire to contribute meaningfully to the lives of others in need and a life-long scientific orientation toward or fascination with science or academic research. Typical extrinsic reasons for enduring medical school and residency include the social status of a medical doctor, a high salary, and a license plate to boast one's occupation to the world.
It is relatively rare that a person's motivation for becoming a physician is exclusively intrinsic or extrinsic; it is almost always some degree of both. On the other hand, at the extreme ends of the spectrum, it very well might reflect only one dimension. For example, Salman Khan, founder of KhanAcademy.org, began that enterprise after the you tube videos he produced for a niece went viral. He left his highly-paid position as a hedge-fund analyst to work fulltime developing a…
