The Possibility of Reward


One quote from Robert Shiller’s Finance and the Good Society that I believe describes the journey to success very well is “Nature has built into our brains a tendency to savor the possibility of future rewards, and to put ourselves in a position where such a possibility is real.”(P139) Although my grades were high during High School and I was fairly involved, pursuing an education at a top university was something that I never really thought about. In my mind, I would go on to pursue a career in the IT field and pursuing a college education at an elite university did not seem valuable for me. It was thanks to exposure from my college counselor and various teachers to college graduates from a similar background as me that my view of pursuing an elite college education changed. Being exposed to their advice allowed me to gain reassurance that someone like me could go on to pursue a degree at a top university. This reassurance is what allowed me to as Shiller puts it “savor the possibility of future rewards” and change my overall goals towards success. I do recognize that success after High School is not just about attending a top university and that a career in a trade or specialized field like IT is very respectable. On the other hand, under my circumstances I recognized an education at a top university would be the best form of success in terms of challenging myself and cultivating my capabilities. Often, in order for people to be able to put themselves on track towards the goal that benefits them the most they often need some assurance that it is achievable.
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Comments

  1. jdoutMarch 4, 2018 at 5:48 PM

    Very interesting; pls sign your work.

    I appreciate your use of the word capabilities: are you thinking of Amartya Sen's theory of capabilities? here is a short definition from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

    The capability approach is a theoretical framework that entails two core normative claims: first, the claim that the freedom to achieve well-being is of primary moral importance, and second, that freedom to achieve well-being is to be understood in terms of people's capabilities, that is, their real opportunities to do and be what they have reason to value. The approach has been developed in a variety of more specific normative theories, such as (partial) theories of social justice or accounts of development ethics. It has also led to a new and highly interdisciplinary literature in the social sciences resulting in new statistics and social indicators, and to a new policy paradigm which is mainly used in development studies, the so-called ‘human development approach’. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/capability-approach/

    For an intro to Amartya Sen's thought, see his article: Sen, “Capability and Well-being,” in Nussbaum and Sen (eds.), The Quality of Life, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1993), pp. 30–53.

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