English translation follows the German text.
Hallo.
Diese Woche habe ich ein paar andere Blogs gelesen, andere in dem Sinne, dass sie nicht der Massive Blog sind. Ich sage das nicht, weil ich Euch empfehlen möchte, andere Blogs statt dem Massive Blog zu lesen, aber wenn ihr schon den Massive Blog durch habt (und ihn weiter empfohlen habt), könnt ihr evtl. bei anderen Blogs reinschauen, die weniger massiv sind.
Warum ich das alles sage? Weil ich in einem anderen Blog einen Satz gelesen habe, der ungefähr lautete: "das Ziel ist wertvoller, wenn der Weg dahin länger ist."
Das ist nichts Revolutionäres, es wird häufig gesagt. Ich habe sogar diese Woche auch irgendwo etwas über ein Labyrinth als Bildnis für den Weg zu Jesus gelesen - dauert halt ewig, damit du zufriedener bist, wenn du ankommst. Diese Idee ist also relativ weit verbreitet. Hier mein Senf:
1) wenn der Weg ganz lang war, bist du glücklich nicht direkt, weil du das Ziel gut findest, sondern weil du endlich den Scheißweg hinter dir ist. Dein Glück kann also nicht auf die Qualität des Ziels konzentriert sein.
2) wenn der Weg ganz lang war, hast du ja das Ziel hart erarbeitet und du willst nicht denken, dass deine Arbeit umsonst war. Du willst das Gefühl haben, was verdient zu haben - und das Gefühl hat man auch - heißt aber nicht unbedingt, dass das Ziel an sich irgendwie besser ist als es gewesen wäre, wenn du schneller hingekommen wärst.. Wenn man auf "Nächster Blog" klickt und einen zufällig ausgewählten Blog zu lesen bekommt, ist der Massive Blog genau so gut, wenn du ihn als ersten zufälligen Blog bekommst oder wenn du ihn als 20.. Er erscheint besser, wenn du vorher 19 inhaltarme Blogs durchgelesen hast, aber er ist eigentlich genau so wertvoll. Nur unsere Wahrnehmung ändert sich.
3) (und alle Rhetorik-Fans werden schon im Voraus wissen, dass der dritte Punkt jetzt der letzte und wichtigste ist - vielleicht habt einige von euch sogar mit dem dritten Punkt angefangen. Falls das so ist, bau ich für euch einen Link zum ersten Punkt ein, damit ihr nicht wieder nach oben scrollen müsst. Zum ersten Punkt .)
Was übersehen wird, wenn man das von dem langen Weg zum wertvollen Ziel erzählt, ist was danach kommt. Wenn man einen kurzen Weg zu irgendeinem Ziel schlägt, hat man dann Zeit, andere Wege nach anderen Zielen zu suchen. Man hat sogar Zeit, zurückzudackeln und herumzugucken, ob es nicht vielleicht einen besseren Weg gegeben hätte - man kann auf dem schon schnell erreichten Ziel mehr aufbauen, mehr erreichen und mehr Wege gehen. Wenn man die ganze Zeit mit dem einen Weg beschäftigt ist, fehlt die Zeit, danach weiter zu kommen oder richtig zu prüfen, ob das nach einer kleinen Ewigkeit erreichte Ziel wirklich so gut ist, wie man denkt oder hofft. Man bildet sich folglich ein, dass er unglaublich wertvoll sei, rechtfertigt dies mit dem langen Weg und versucht, sich selbst zu überzeugen, dass das alles stimmt. Tut's aber mit an Sicherheit grenzender Wahrscheinlichkeit nicht. Bzw. die Logik ist durchaus verfehlt und es muss noch ein paar Gründe für den Wert des Ziels geben als der lange Weg, der - wie hier bewiesen (in nicht-mathematischen Sinne) - eher auf ein weniger gutes Ziel hinweist, denn er beeinträchtigt unser Zielqualitätseinschätzungsvermögen.
Bis morgen.
This week I've been reading some other blogs, other in the sense that they're not the Massive Blog. I'm not saying that because I want to recommend that you read other blogs instead of the Massive Blog, but if you've finished reading the Massive Blog (and have recommended it to your peers), then you might want to have a glance at other blogs which are less massive.
Why I'm saying all that? Because I, in one other blog, read a sentence, which approxiamately read: "the goal is more valuable when the path to it is longer".
That isn't anything revolutionary, it's often said. I have indeed also read somewhere else this week something about a labyrinth as an image for the path to Jesus - just takes ages, so that you're happier when you get there. So it's quite widespread, this idea. Here's my twopenneth.
1) if the path has been really long, then you're not directly happy because you like the goal, but rather because you've finally got the irritating path behind you. So your happiness can't be concentrated on the quality of the goal.
2) when the path has been really long, then you've worked hard for the goal and you don't want to think that your work has been for nothing. You want to have the feeling that you've earned something - and you do have this feeling - it doesn't mean though that the goal in itself is in any way better it would have been if you'd reached it more quickly. If you click on "Next Blog" and get given a randomly selected blog to read, then the Massive Blog is just as good, whether you get it has the first random blog or as the 20th. It seems better, when you've had to read through 19 content-light blogs before it, but it is actually just as valuable. Just our appreciation changes.
3) (and all fans of rhetoric will already know that the third point is now the last and most important - maybe some of you have even begun with the third point. In case that is true, I'll throw a link to the first point here, so that you don't have to scroll back up to it. To point one .)
It is often overlooked when going on about the long path to a valuable goal, that there is a time afterwards. If you have just gone a little path to some goal, then you have time to go on and look for other paths to other goals. You even have time to dawdle back and really look around and see whether there might have been a better way - you can build on the goal you've quickly reached, you can reach more and go on more paths. If you've been dealing with just one path the whole time, you've not got the time to go futher afterwards or to really check whether the goal you've reached after the best part of eternity really is as good as you think or hope that it's cracked up to be. As a result, you tell yourself, that it's incredibly valuable, justify it with the long path, and try to convince yourself that that's all true. With an amount of probability bordering on certainty though - it's not. Or rather: the logic is certainly wrong and so there should have to be a couple of other reasons for the value of the goal, other than the long path, which - as proven here (in a non-mathematical sense) - tends to point more to a less good goal, because it impairs our abilitiy to judge the quality of the goal.
See you tomorrow.
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I'm not sure whether I agree with you or not. On the one hand, Roberto di Matteo's goal in the 1997 FA Cup Final was probably not quite as good as Gerrard's second in the 2006 final. On the other, Gerrard's would probably not have been voted goal of the season if it had not been left so late. The waiting time/goodness of goal correlation is definitely a common perception, but I guess the jury's still out as to whether this perception is illusory or accurate.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. Want to clear a couple of things up. It's not just about goals as in football goals, is also supposed to refer to things-being-achieved in general.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I do see what you mean about Gerrard's goal being voted goal of the season, but I think your example's are somewhat unfortunate, because specifically in the example of football, a very quick goal also gets praised, as with Di Matteo, or with Beckham's 95/96 (approx.-not checked) 50yarder on the opening day against Neil Sullivan and the Crazy Gang.. Was also in the 90th minute but in terms of the season as a whole it was quite early. In fact, it's almost every year (if not multiple times a year) that one hears "I think that's the goal of the season already" in reference to a goal in August or early September. So it definitely seems to be possible for early goals to be perceived as very good.
Another point, again specifically relating to football goals, is that a late goal in football has a dramatic impact because it's close to the "end" - the end of the match. In general life, we don't have "ends" in the same way, so whether it takes you a month or 18 months to build the world's biggest sugar lump tower doesn't have the same dramatic impact, unless of course you get evicted the day after.
Thanks again for a great comment, and mabe some other people will care to join the debate. Anyone? You want some do you?
It looks like there's a horrible wrong apostrophe in there in example's, but it's actually the "are" that's wrong. That should be example IS somewhat...
ReplyDeleteCiao.
also wie ich es verstanden habe, ging es eher um eine korrelation zwischen "in das erreichen eines Ziels gesteckte Arbeit" und der subjektiv empfundenen Qualität des Ziels. Bzw. erkenne ich im Hintergrund mal wieder die Frage, ob es eine absolute Realität gibt oder nicht. Denn wer sind wir, um jemandes Glücksempfinden nach dem Erreichen eines hart erarbeiteten Lebensziels in Abrede zu stellen, bloß, weil es ein paar Schlechte Eigenschaften hat, die andere Ziele vielleicht nicht gehabt hätten. Im Deutschen gibt es den Satz: "Des Menschen Wille ist sein Himmelreich." Ich als gemäßigter Konstruktivist finde den ganz ok.
ReplyDeleteSchöne Grüße,
felix
verdammt. wie schlecht meine groß- und kleinschreibung da oben ist, ist kaum zu glauben. ich möchte mich dafür entschuldigen.
ReplyDeleteQuite so, M. LeStone. I'm always irritated by these bucket lists: what one achieves is far more important than what one fails to achieve. Would climbing Everest be diminished if there were a higher mountain just beside it? Is it diminished because K2 is the harder climb? Perhaps, but only a little, especially if esse est percipi.
ReplyDeleteHmm.. all interesting points. I think the idea that we should just leave people to be happy with what they've done and not tell them they're actually rubbish has some merit, though the focus here seems to have been mostly on how people perceive their own achievements. Whilst we can happily let eggs be eggs (in this context anyway, more on this in an upcoming post) surely we also have the right to look at things other people have achieved and it would be nice to be able to compare them, if for example, we want to award a nobel prize or an oscar. Then we clearly give the nobel prize (or equivalent) to the guy who went up everest, because it's the biggest one we've got, which makes him better than other people, even those who've taken three times as long to go up Snowdon. Although that said, anyone who takes that long to get up Snowdon probably has some sort of disability which makes any kind of mountain-climbing quite commendable. Maybe it's another case of swings and roundabouts.
ReplyDeletereplying to michael:
ReplyDeletenice move to counter my argument of constructivism by using constructivistic viewpoints. i was a bit too much focussed on the individualistic view on constructivism, but of course, what people believe to be "absolute reality" is made up by the intersection in lots of individual constructs of reality. Which makes most people think, that K2 is harder to climb than Everest. (actually this "fact" could be made up by a conspiracy of people that only have climbed k2 and failed on climbing everest, just to diminish those peoples achievement that have climbed everest. you have to be careful what you believe as a constructivist.)