Re: [Futurework] Why men succeed at work

[Selma Singer]

---- Original Message ----- From: Barry To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2003 1:54 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Why men succeed at work   Barry wrote: I suspect the desire for power (either positive or negative power) is a function of one�s personality and as such is determined, like intelligence is determined, by the interplay of genetic and environmental influences.   Selma:   Although that was your opening statement, Barry, you went on to explore influences on the individual, for the most part. I have no quarrel with most of what you said, but I would argue that all of what happens to an individual happens within a cultural and social-structural context that sets out the values and reward structures within which individual personalities develop.   At the end of your post you wrote:   The question, then, becomes whether it is possible to engineer a society in which people are rewarded for non-capitalist and/or non-power seeking (referring specifically to negative forms of power) behaviors. And, if so, what would such a reward structure look like? To explore this question, we would need to look carefully at how children are raised in Western society as well as at larger societal mechanisms (such as workplaces and governments). One fruitful place to start such an enquiry is with the Dunedin (NZ) Longitudinal Studies. Anyone care to comment? Selma:   There have been human societies in which the structure was such that behaviors were encouraged that were completely different from what we see in capitalistic societies, or, for that matter, the state-socialist societies that existed under the Sovets.   I have written at length here about some of the ideas that we might use from these societies.   We have to work at the individual levels, especially through the socialization process from the instant of birth as well as the institutional levels to begin to minimize the things we don't like in our existing soceities and to try to introduce and/or maximize the things we like or would like to see.   Selma       Barry R. B. Stennett DWS Consulting, Inc. P.O. Box 49106 Athens, GA 30604