Purposive Drift

Freedom is the recognition of contingency

Jonah Lehrer, the author of my current favourite book, "The Decisive Moment" ("How We Decide" in the USA), also has an excellent blog, "The Frontal Cortext". In a recent post on business books he concludes with a point that regular readers of Purposive Drift will recognise as theme dear to my heart:

"The larger point, of course, is that humans are terrible at acknowledging the (omni)presence of contingency and chance. We like explanations that cut across situations and aren't subject to randomness, and so we psychoanalyze personalities and come up with elaborate theories of personality. Alas, these explanations often get the causality of behavior exactly backwards - who we are and what we're like often depends on where we are and what we are doing. I've always loved this short quote from Richard Rorty: 'Freedom is the recognition of contingency.'"