Neoteny

[arisbe]

If our work does not feel like play, then we should ask ourselves whether we are in the right job. Our zest for life may have been suppressed, but genetically it is still there inside us, smoldering away beneath heavy layers of negative learning. It is not easy to strip off those layers –we are all so sensitive, especially when younger, to criticism, mockery, and punishment – but it can be done. If we can find just one area of activity where we feel the throb of uncrushed enthusiasm, we may be able to intensify it and expand it, until it blossoms into an exciting form of personal expression. It is there, lying dormant, waiting to be developed, because it is an essential part of what it means to be a human being. --Desmond Morris

A discussion of God in another journal led to my scrambling around the net for the Neoteny theory I vaguely recalled from Sir Alister Hardy's Gifford Lectures. This article looked worth posting a link to, and I read it more carefully to find a good quote to link from, zeroing in on the closing paragraph. Not a bad one for a fellow looking for a job!

Comments

[amade.livejournal.com]

Speaking of that "jobs should be fun" thing, I have observed that Americans are basically Puritans at heart when it comes to work ethic. Well, that also applies to American Christianity in general, too.

Basically, the thought process is, "if it's fun, something must be wrong with it." If life is good and enjoyable, then we must be sinning, somehow.

Even though I'm aware of this, I still find it hard to accept the "work should be fun" principle. Since music/singing is so pleasurable to me, I constantly question whether or not this is a frivolous persuit, and shouldn't I be doing something "less fun" as a career. (And that's not to say singing isn't damned hard work - it certainly is. It just happens to be hard work that I *LIKE* to do because it's pleasant.)