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Animal spirits (Keynes)
John Maynard Keynes in 1933
Contents
Use by Keynes
The original passage by Keynes reads:Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is the instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations, whether moral or hedonistic or economic. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits—a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.[1]
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When you are stuck with a model of mankind that is "extreme materialism" that is "matter only" devoid of any real spiritual reality, then the "Behaviorist Psychologist" have to find a way to explain as mere hormonal influence on human action. Keynes would have laughed at this notion, but it is a popular myth now.
Now let's explore a little further this notion of "unleashing Animal Spirits."
Earlier uses
Philosophy and social science
William Safire explored origins of the phrase in his 2009 article "On Language: 'Animal Spirits'":The phrase that Keynes made famous in economics has a long history. "Physitions teache that there ben thre kindes of spirites", wrote Bartholomew Traheron in his 1543 translation of a text on surgery, "animal, vital, and natural. The animal spirite hath his seate in the brayne ... called animal, bycause it is the first instrument of the soule, which the Latins call animam." William Wood in 1719 was the first to apply it in economics: "The Increase of our Foreign Trade...whence has arisen all those Animal Spirits, those Springs of Riches which has enabled us to spend so many millions for the preservation of our Liberties." Hear, hear. Novelists seized its upbeat sense with enthusiasm. Daniel Defoe, in "Robinson Crusoe": "That the surprise may not drive the Animal Spirits from the Heart." Jane Austen used it to mean "ebullience" in "Pride and Prejudice": "She had high animal spirits." Benjamin Disraeli, a novelist in 1844, used it in that sense: "He...had great animal spirits, and a keen sense of enjoyment."[2]Thomas Hobbes used the phrase "animal spirits" to refer to passive emotions and instincts, as well as natural functions like breathing.[3]
In social science, Karl Marx refers to "animal spirits" in the 1887 English translation of Capital, Volume 1. Marx speaks of the animal spirits of the workers, which he believes a capitalist can impel by encouraging social interaction and competition within her factory[4] or depress by adopting assembly-line work whereby the worker repeats a single task.[5]
Earlier and contemporaneous English use
"Animal spirits" was a euphemistic late-Victorian and Edwardian phrase used by English public school boys such as P. G. Wodehouse (born two years before the Etonian Keynes) who attended Dulwich College. Wodehouse and Arthur Conan Doyle were popular authors for public school boys in England before the Great War. Doyle himself used the phrase "animal spirits" in 1883, the year of Keynes's birth.Though a hard reader, he was no bookworm, but an active, powerful young fellow, full of animal spirits and vivacity, and extremely popular among his fellow-students.Two examples of Wodehouse's use of the phrase are in the 1909 book Mike (later republished in two parts as Mike at Wrykyn and Mike and Psmith). "Animal spirits" denoted an adolescent attitude to authority that resulted in energetically and deliberately acting on advice, opinion, or exhortation to the point of stretching the letter of any regulations involved to the limit. The aim was to maximise short-term disruption of what was considered to be 'normal' behaviour. Restoring equilibrium subsequently required a firm sanction from those in authority and possibly also a re-casting of the regulation to prevent repeats of the actions undertaken. The slang term of the era for this was 'ragging'.[citation needed]
— Doyle: The Silver Hatchet[6]
There was, as a matter of fact, nothing much wrong with Stone and Robinson. They were just ordinary raggers of the type found at every public school, small and large. They were absolutely free from brain. They had a certain amount of muscle, and a vast store of animal spirits. They looked on school life purely as a vehicle for ragging.
— Mike, Chapter XXXIX.
"Then what did you MEAN by putting it there?" roared Mr. Downing.Wodehouse uses antithesis in the latter example to make comedy out of Mr. Downing's astonishment; surely nobody could be less susceptible to "animal spirits" than the suave, debonaire Psmith? Psmith In The City (1910) was based on Wodehouse's own experiences in the 'square mile' and the theme is implicitly elaborated on in the financial environment of the New Asiatic Bank.
"Animal spirits, sir," said Psmith.
"WHAT!"
"Animal spirits, sir."
— Mike, Chapter LI.
John Coates of Cambridge University supports the popular English Edwardian public school intuition that qualities such as dynamism and leadership coexist with less constructive traits such as recklessness, heedlessness, and in-caution.[7] Coates attributes this to fluctuations in hormonal balances; abnormally high levels of testosterone may create individual success but also collective excessive aggression, overconfidence, and herd behaviour, while too much cortisol can promote irrational pessimism and risk aversion. The author's remedy for this is to shift the employment balance in finance towards women and older men and monitor traders' biology.
Contemporary research
Recent research shows that the term 'animal spirits' was used in the works of a psychologist that Keynes had studied in 1905 and also suggests that Keynes implicitly drew upon an evolutionary understanding of human instinct.[clarification needed][8]In 2009, economists Akerlof and Shiller advised in addition that:
The proper role of the government, like the proper role of the advice-book parent, is to set the stage. The stage should give full rein to the creativity of capitalism. But it should also countervail the excesses that occur because of our animal spirits.
— Animal Spirits, page 9[9]
Prosecution of Hillary Clinton.
- Archpriest Symeon Elias I remember so many people saying a few years ago that the HUNDREDS of positive things that have happened in the last two years COULD NEVER HAPPEN, it was over, we had lost. Indeed we had lost but it, most certainly, was NOT over. So excuse me if I view your cynicism now, like I viewed their cynicism then, you are not prophet and such cynical statement serve NO ONE, well.
- Victoria Westover My cynicism is actually frustration at the whole rabbit hole....I pray they get her, Huma, Carlos Danger, Slick Willy, The Podesta's and ALL of them.
- Archpriest Symeon Elias That's understood, and the previous cynicism I mentioned was the result of nearly a century of Marxist March through the Institutions and they WON, certainly a far greater reason for "frustration and discouragement" than your impatience. Reasons for cynicism NEVER justify the cynicism since it only produces fatalism and surrender. If one decides at the beginning that the effort can't succeed one empowers the very evil they claim to abhor.
Victoria Westover Slick Willy will slip away and the charm has rubbed on her now. I truly believe nothing will happen............same old stuff
- Archpriest Symeon Elias Not preaching Victoria or pointing character flaws, just a reminder of how faith and hope are necessary for the good to increase. So often people are fooled by false hope, as we all were for so long, for instance the decades of "voting for the lesser of two evils" etc., it was designed to beat us down and make us cynical.
Victoria Westover You are so correct, and I am once again educated about my cynicism and fatalism............The Lord God has corrected me several times and I remember, but the fault explodes once again. Maybe I shall remember this time. Thank you.
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