Quirky

by Melissa A Schilling

  Franklin’s early exposure to Puritan philosophy had sparked his quest to understand humanity’s purpose in the world and later his pursuit of “moral perfection.” However, it would be a mistake to conclude that Franklin’s idealism was strictly a result of obedience to a particular religion. Franklin’s beliefs did not adhere closely to any branch of orthodox Christianity; instead, he cultivated his own more general principle around the value of living a virtuous life. Franklin’s ideals were centered on constructing a better, more humane society because moral behavior served the public good.20 Religion played a valuable role, in Franklin’s view, by helping people pursue a virtuous life who might not otherwise do so. As he noted in a letter to Thomas Paine,

  You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous life, without the assistance afforded by religion; you having a clear perception of the advantages of virtue, and the disadvantages of vice, and possessing a strength of resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common temptations. But think how great a portion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced, inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes habitual, which is the great point for its security.… If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?”21

  Shortly before Franklin’s death, Ezra Stiles, the Calvinist president of Yale College, wrote to him and asked if he would clarify his religious position. Franklin responded with the following:

  Here is my Creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we render to him, is doing Good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this.… As for Jesus of Nazareth… I think the system of Morals and Religion as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw… but I have… some Doubts to his Divinity; tho’ it is a Question I do not dogmatise upon, having never studied it, and think it is needless to busy myself with it now, where I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.22

  Franklin would continue to work until his death at the age of eighty-four. During his lifetime he was known as the greatest American writer, scientist, and diplomat.

  FRANKLIN’S STORY ILLUSTRATES SEVERAL different functions that idealism serves in the innovator’s pursuit of her ideas. One of the most important is the powerful intrinsic motivation idealism can provide, inducing the innovator to exert exceptional effort toward solving problems even if she receives no obvious benefit from doing so. As noted previously, many of the projects in which Franklin invested considerable effort were to benefit society—he received no obvious rewards except perhaps an enhanced reputation. He donated even his technological inventions (such as Franklin stoves, lightning rods, and bifocals) to the public good instead of attempting to profit from them personally.

  Although there are many books and articles on idealism as a philosophical concept, remarkably little research has been done on the role that idealism plays in human motivation. An exception is work by the psychologist Steven Reiss, who has made influential contributions to our understanding of intrinsic motivation (among other subjects). He developed a multifaceted theory of intrinsic motivation by conducting one of the first large-scale, cross-cultural empirical studies of this subject. By assessing survey responses from six thousand people from four continents, Reiss identified sixteen basic psychological needs that are deeply rooted in human nature. Every individual has these sixteen needs (or desires), but people differ in how they prioritize them. One need is idealism, which he defines as the need for social justice and the desire to help others or improve society.23

  According to Reiss, individuals are motivated to seek a “set point,” or what Aristotle called “a moderate mean,” in the individual motives—that is, most people seek a moderate degree of status, a moderate degree of social contact, a moderate degree of idealism, and so on. However, people vary significantly about where each of those set points lie; some motives will be much more important to some individuals than others. For example, people who have a particularly high set point for idealism would be likely to pursue idealistic goals with greater frequency or intensity than people with a lower set point. They will, in all likelihood, expend considerable energy responding to this motive, occupying energy and time to such a level that it causes them to disregard motives that other people find more important, such as the desire to interact with one’s family or the desire for tranquility or leisure. Franklin tended to neglect his family, his comfort, and even his health while pursuing his ideals. He spent long stretches of time away from his home and family, and even in his eighties, plagued with gout and kidney stones, went on numerous arduous trips on behalf of his nation.

  Idealism as an intrinsic motivator is aptly illustrated by Dean Kamen’s persistence in developing innovations that have social welfare benefits, even if they are unlikely to be profitable. For example, Kamen developed a form of the Stirling engine that can generate electricity using any source of heat, such as burning methane from cow dung, and used it to run another of his inventions, the Slingshot, which can purify any liquid into clean drinking water. However, although both machines have been proven to work, Kamen has not found a commercial partner to manufacture them. As he notes, “The big companies long ago figured out—the people in the world that have no water and have no electricity have no money.” Kamen adds, “If you include all the money we’ve spent on Stirling, and all the money we’ve spent on the water project, it probably is in the area of $50 million. And I’m a little company, and that’s a lot of money. But I believe in it. I just believe in it. It might fail, but you’ve got to try. Look at the state of the world.… It’s a mess. What if we can fix it?”24

  Idealism also serves a role in helping innovators to maintain their focus on a long-term goal, helping them make choices among the demands competing for their attention. Such goals become an organizing structure, helping innovators to maintain a clear vision of the future and to prioritize their efforts. The goal is often more important to the individual than any personal benefit, explaining why individuals willingly sacrifice money, time, or comfort in their pursuit. For example, all of Elon Musk’s seemingly disparate ventures are organized around his higher-order goals of addressing the problem of Earth’s finite resources and making humans an interplanetary species. As he noted in a 2007 interview, “When I was in college and thought about what are the things that would most affect humanity, the three areas seemed to me to be the internet, transitioning to a sustainable energy economy, and space exploration. So after doing a few internet companies I basically turned to the other two elements, and decided to focus on the space exploration problem personally and fund some other folks to help solve the sustainable energy problem with Tesla and Solar City.”25 In Chapter 2 I described how Musk spent $100 million of his own funds to found SpaceX and continued to plow his own money into the company despite several spectacular rocket failures. He pursued the venture relentlessly, even when he was on the verge of bankruptcy, mired in a difficult divorce, and close to a nervous collapse. He has also resisted the urge to take SpaceX public, despite the fact that it would restore a massive amount of wealth to him personally, because the board of directors of a publicly held firm would undoubtedly force him to make changes in the company that would improve its profitability at the expense of its chances of reaching Mars. As he wrote in a letter to his SpaceX employees, “Creating the technology needed to establish life on Mars is and always has been the fundamental goal of SpaceX. If being a public company diminishes that likelihood, then we should not do so until Mars is secure.”26

  Anyone who thinks that Musk’s fundamental goal is profits hasn’t been paying attention. As Musk’s mother puts it, “He’s just determined to make things better.”27 Musk has risked his own wealth in pursuit of h
is goals multiple times, in ways that most profit-seeking entrepreneurs would never dream of. As Musk notes, “Most people, when they make a lot of money don’t want to risk it. For me it was never about money, but solving problems for the future of humanity.”28 He explained the source of his motivation in a 2014 interview: “I’m much more inclined to say, ‘How can we make things better?’ And a lot of my motivation comes from me personally looking at things that don’t work well and feeling a bit sad about how it would manifest in the future. And if that would result in an unhappy future, then it makes me unhappy. And so I want to fix it. That really is the motivation for me.”29

  Having lofty superordinate goals gave these innovators a drive and single-mindedness that helped them avoid getting caught up in other interesting problems. The archetypal creative person as described in many textbooks finds nearly every problem interesting and is at risk of accruing more projects and interests than can be realistically brought to fruition. Innovators such as Kamen are inordinately successful in part because of their extreme dedication to a particular cause. As Kamen put it, “I don’t work on a project unless I believe that it will dramatically improve life for a bunch of people.… I do not want to waste any time. And if you are not working on important things, you are wasting time.”30 Kamen’s work on the iBot, a unique wheelchair that would give rise to technology later used in the Segway, was motivated by his desire to positively transform the lives of the disabled. The iBot not only climbs stairs but it can also balance on two wheels and rise to bring the occupant face-to-face with others who are standing. As he explains, “People don’t understand… when you lose the ability to walk, mobility is only a piece of what you’re missing. You lose dignity, you lose respect, you lose access, because of stairs and curbs. Well, this thing will walk up and down stairs, up and down curbs, it lets you look people in the eye—it’s a really big deal.”31 When people remark on the fact that he wears exactly the same clothes every day, he responds, “I always wear work clothes when I’m working. But if I’m awake, I’m working.”32 It comes as no surprise that Kamen, the rumor goes, has not taken a vacation since he was fourteen years old.

  Even Franklin, who had broad talents and interests, and many opportunities to take on new roles, always returned to his focus on how he could best contribute to creating a prosperous and egalitarian nation. Notably, the innovator studied here who was least idealistic—Edison—was also noted for his lack of focus. As Randall Stross explains, “[B]y temperament, he tended to flit from project to project. Most were minor in ambition and were left in an incomplete state. This had been his pattern when he was working in the field of telegraphic equipment, and the phonograph’s own serendipitous invention came from a tangential observation that had led away from the original project. He did not impose upon himself limits to his inventive excursions. He would strike off the main path, follow an interest, then branch off from that path, and then from that one too.”33 Stross notes that this is why Edison failed to commercialize the phonograph, one of his most important inventions.

  The extreme focus of idealism also occasionally works against an innovator. Tesla’s superordinate goals were to devise a mechanical means for doing away with all physical labor so that humans could spend more time in creative endeavors, and to create a global wireless communication system that he believed would end war. After all, if all people could talk to one another, he reasoned, they would be likely to work out their differences in less destructive ways. However, Tesla’s projects required significant funding. Had he been more strategic in the development of his innovations, bringing his more readily commercializable inventions such as his numerous lighting systems or remote-control applications to market, revenue from these products might have helped fund his grander long-term ambitions. But “details” such as finance were distractions that Tesla could not be bothered with. Once on the scent of a meaningful step toward his superordinate goals, he was like a bloodhound and could not be deterred. An excellent example is Tesla’s 1901 deal with J. P. Morgan. One of the wealthiest and most powerful financiers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Morgan was a large and imposing man, with piercing eyes and a beet-red, bulbous, lumpy nose, a problem caused by a condition known as rhinophyma. His appearance could be unsettling to people. He was also a terse and gruff man who did not suffer fools lightly and had little patience for small talk or flattery. Despite being wary of Tesla’s reputation as a “visionary,” a term not meant as a compliment in the early twentieth century, Morgan agreed to give Tesla $150,000 to build a ninety-foot-high tower to transmit communications across the Atlantic, and he also purchased a significant share in Tesla’s lighting patents. Morgan wanted the tower to be able to report yacht races, signal incoming steamers, and send Morse code messages to England, but he also saw the more immediate commercial potential of the lighting technology. Tesla purchased a two-hundred-acre tract at a resort community known as Wardenclyffe-on-Sound in Shoreham, Long Island, to build his tower. The primarily wood-framed tower would extend 186 feet above the Earth and 120 feet below it. The design included a 55-ton steel dome-shaped top that made it look like a giant futuristic mushroom. A brick laboratory would stand at its base.

  However, to achieve Tesla’s true ambitions—develop global wireless communication, establish international peace, and defeat Guglielmo Marconi, who was also competing for primacy in wireless communication, albeit with lesser technology—required a much larger tower than the one required to fulfill the Morgan deal. Without consulting Morgan, Tesla abandoned the plan for the modest-sized transmitter and began designing a six-hundred-foot-tall tower that would be able to wirelessly transmit communications and energy around the world. The project that Tesla envisioned would cost $450,000—much more than what Morgan had agreed to. Eventually, Tesla believed, the tower would be at the center of a “World Telegraphy Center” that would include a model city with homes, stores, and buildings to house roughly 2,500 workers.34 As Tesla told the newspapers, “Wardenclyffe will be the largest operation of its kind in the world.”35 Months later, Tesla went to Morgan to request more funds to complete his much larger tower. He began by pointing out that a plant with a radius of activity twice as large would cost twice as much but earn twelve times as much. When Morgan asked if Tesla had developed the lighting enterprise, Tesla responded that he had not. Then Morgan asked Tesla to verify that he had not, in fact, completed a transmitting tower and had run out of funds, which Tesla affirmed. The outraged Morgan then raised his voice to a dull roar: “Get out, Mr. Tesla!” Morgan was well-known for using expletives, so he continued the outburst with a torrent of curses.36 The stunned inventor slipped quickly out of the office. As noted previously, Tesla would never raise enough money to complete the tower. Despite the fact that Tesla had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the project, it was torn down for scrap by a landlord to whom Tesla owed $19,000.

  Curie understood the difficulty of pursuing science as a fervent idealist while attending to pragmatic concerns such as finances. She had little interest in material wealth and lived a moderate lifestyle. She repaid her scholarships, believing that the money should be available to others. She also gave away most of her first Nobel Prize money to friends, families, students, and research associates. She never patented the radium-isolation process so that the scientific community could advance it freely, telling Pierre that “Physicists always publish their research completely. If our discovery has a commercial future, that is an accident by which we must not profit. And radium is going to be of use in treating disease.… It seems to me impossible to take advantage of that.”37 She also insisted that monetary gifts be donated to the scientific institutions she was associated with rather than accepting any of it herself. She and Pierre also often refused awards and medals. As Einstein described her, “Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the only one whom fame has not corrupted.”38 As she wrote in her autobiographical notes, “Humanity… surely needs practical men who make the best of their w
ork for the sake of their own interests, without necessarily forgetting the general interest. But it also needs dreamers, for whom the unselfish following of a purpose is so imperative that it becomes impossible for them to devote an important part of their attention to material interest.”39

  ANOTHER POWERFUL ASPECT OF idealism is the way in which it provides a level of ego defense, helping the innovator to persevere in the face of harsh criticism that many people would find decimating. Idealistic innovators believe that the goals they are pursuing are extremely important and intrinsically honorable and valuable, so they are better able to disregard harsh judgment or failure as merely transitory burdens to be endured. Franklin’s ability to withstand the Wedderburn attack, the possibility of being jailed, and slander in the press is one example. Einstein’s story provides another. Einstein suffered discrimination both because his university professors did not like him (and thus did not support his efforts to get an academic job after his graduation) and because he was a Jew during a time when European society was rife with anti-Semitism. His ideas on relativity were initially ignored. However, Einstein was undeterred. He continued to write his pathbreaking articles in physics even though he did not have an academic post, and evidence eventually emerged that supported his ideas. As he wrote, “The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Without the sense of fellowship with men of like mind, of preoccupation with the objective, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific research, life would have seemed to me empty. The ordinary objects of human endeavor—property, outward success, luxury—have always seemed to me contemptible.”40

  Jobs’s intense beliefs about the importance of precise and beautiful design, reliability, and ease of use in computers led him into frequent conflict with those around him who thought that cost, compatibility with other computer systems, or other practical concerns were more important. But these intense beliefs are also what made Jobs so zealously pursue the exceptional design and intuitive user interfaces that made Apple’s products remarkable and earned the company intense brand loyalty from its fans. Jobs’s metaphor of the computer as a “bicycle for the mind” helps us gain insight into his vision: