This past week, Scientific American online ran an article titled “The Problem of Artificial Willpower.” It was based on a research paper by Torben Kjaersgaard, who is in the Department of Sport Science at Aarhus University in Denmark. Kjaersgaard’s concern is the off-label use of prescription stimulants—such as Adderall, which is normally used in the treatment of ADHD, and modafinil, which is normally used in the treatment of daytime sleepiness caused by sleep apnea or narcolepsy—to enhance motivation. This might not have caught my attention had Kjaersgaard not also targeted coffee.
Kjaersgaard acknowledges that healthy individuals who use prescription stimulants—and/or caffeine—to enhance their performance report increased motivation as a significant effect. This is certainly not surprising. It’s also not surprising that it makes them feel good. What concerns Kjaersgaard is the ethics of motivation enhancement.
In this article I discuss ethical issues of motivation enhancement induced by currently available prescription drugs. I argue that medically enhanced motivation raises questions concerning the ethics of accomplishment and the value of human effort [emphasis mine].
Kjaarsgaard—and the author of the Scientific American blog post, Hazen Zohny—appear to believe that coffee drinkers may simply be masking “the meaninglessness of it all” until, “several thousand of those (caffeine) hits later, you find yourself middle-aged and struggling with a sense that you haven’t quite spent your life as you would have liked.” All because of…coffee.
Zohny wonders if we should really be “using substances that enhance our enjoyment and interest in…pursuits we would otherwise find meaningless and alienating.”
Might we end up leading deeply inauthentic lives, using pharmaceutically-induced willpower to waft through a life that otherwise means nothing to us?
Kjaersgaard is concerned that our lack of motivation for a task or a job is a symptom of a deeper problem, in which case instead of enhancing our motivation temporarily (for example by having a cup of coffee), we should instead stop and re-evaluate the course of our lives. Say what? I’m pretty sure my lack of motivation for some of the tasks I have to do is directly related to the nature of the tasks (I find them boring or otherwise unpleasant, but such is life) rather than indicative of “a deeper problem.” Sometimes it’s a cup of coffee that provides me with artificial motivation and sometimes it’s loud, upbeat music or a brisk walk. Should I give up the music and the walking along with the coffee? I was reassured to see that the majority of Scientific American commenters didn’t buy what Kjaersgaard and Zohny were selling, either, and so I went about my caffeinated life.
However, the next day I came across an even more over-the-top take on the subject in a Facebook post titled “Drugs that Make Us Feel Smart Are Ruining Our Lives.” Yes, that would be Adderall, Ritalin, and caffeine. The author reports that “college students feel amazing when they take Adderall.” He doesn’t object to the students’ use of prescription stimulants per se, but to the fact that the drugs cause these students to be “artificially interested in topics they otherwise wouldn’t care about.”
So instead of finding their true, authentic selves, they bend their will to ace exams they feel no passion for.
Well, I’m sure all colleges would be happy to allow students to take only courses they are interested in—and, of course, students already know what they are interested in at the time they enroll. But no; it turns out that “young people are meant to be discovering their true interests” while in college. So…wait, what?
This bizarre line of thinking is a wacky combination of Puritanism and New-Age nonsense, which is why it makes no sense and is insulting to boot. The idea that everyone not only has the luxury of discovering their “true interests” and spending their lives engaged in pursuing them (all intrinsically motivated), but also the duty to do so is ridiculous. This is the kind of first-world, made-up problem we ought to be ashamed of even entertaining. I would like to be pointed in the direction of any person, anywhere who never wants or could use some artificial motivation.
Mom, is your baby keeping you up at night? Instead of having that cup of coffee every morning, you might want to re-evaluate this whole parenthood thing.
As a former substance abuse counselor, I’m certainly not advocating the unfettered recreational use of prescription drugs. But the use of caffeine and prescription drugs isn’t really the issue.
One issue is that the authors of these articles want us to stop trying to make ourselves feel better, stop trying to “tolerate a long-term circumstance,” stop trying to make ourselves “feel up to the task.” Instead we should “experience the incongruity” and change our lives. This advice seems doctrinaire, heartless, and wildly unrealistic. What if the long-term circumstance can’t be changed?
Another issue is rampant insensitivity to the lives and experiences of masses of other people who are not like them. What about those who are unemployed, hungry, homeless, abused, enslaved, trafficked, live in the middle of a war zone, or are without the basic necessities we take for granted? Is it OK for them to do whatever they need to do to get through the day—and through whatever unfulfilling, uninteresting, possibly dangerous and/or backbreaking work they may be able to find? Or should they, too, be focused on discovering their true interests and true, authentic selves because settling for less would be a cop out?
A third issue is their attempt to impose their belief system on other people. I was glad to see quite a few commenters call out the author of the Facebook article (as did I) on his assumption of the existence of a true, authentic self. I offered the possibility that one’s true, authentic self might be a caffeine fiend. Several others agreed with me. (One person said his true, authentic self wanted to be someone else.)
When a commenter asked what I would consider “evidence” of what I referred to as the vague and nebulous authentic self, someone immediately suggested he read Candide.
Instead of obsessing over finding our true, authentic selves, we might be better off trying to be kinder to each other, cutting each other more slack, and working a little harder to level the playing field for the people, both in our own neighborhoods and on the other side of the world, who would be more than happy to trade their problems for this imaginary one.
And I will most definitely not be giving up coffee anytime soon.
Brava, Jocelyn! Thanks for your insights here! Every now and then we see an iteration of the “I gotta be me!” imperative. I so appreciate your analysis of this contemporary research that feels Puritan and also New Age at the same time. (Unexpected linkage, but oh, right on to observe it!) Leaves us with your closer which Kurt Vonnegut would endorse, I am sure-“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
Impressive article. I don’t drink coffee, but if I did … I wouldn’t give it up, either!
Glorious, lovely, beautiful article! A delight!
Kjaersgaard suffers from an extreme case of Ivorytowerism. His lack of curiosity and awareness of how the majority live is patent.
Some people spend decades trying to discover their authentic selves, which is as fruitless and, anyway, as
impossible as trying to crawl up one’s own fundament.
Regarding my article: The problem of artificial willpower. Please note that:
1. Kjaersgaard never mentions caffeine in his paper and I state clearly that his focus is on ADHD and wakefulness disorder drugs. The coffee scenario is meant to just illustrate to readers who’ve never tried ADHD drugs (i.e. the majority) how it’s possible for some substances to alter our experience of what we are doing in a positive way. It is merely meant to help the reader envision or relate to the otherwise abstract notion of motivation enhancement, and how we can use it to get into something that we otherwise find dull.
2. You say: “I’m pretty sure my lack of motivation for some of the tasks I have to do is directly related to the nature of the tasks (I find them boring or otherwise unpleasant, but such is life) rather than indicative of “a deeper problem.” But this is not the issue raised at all. As is clear in the article, the worry arises only when we are talking about a lack of motivation associated with our broader life’s pursuits (a career, major, lifestyle), not daily tasks here and there. It’s only in these contexts that regular use of motivation enhancers might lead to tolerating a long-term circumstance that you possibly ought to not tolerate.
3. “This advice seems doctrinaire, heartless, and wildly unrealistic. What if the long-term circumstance can’t be changed?” As I state in the article, we can envision scenarios where individuals may consciously choose to do things that they would otherwise not rather do for very good reasons – and that in these scenarios, why not enhance our enjoyment of the task? But I think it’s also important to ask why people are sometimes forced to do things they’d rather not do. Surely in some cases it will be because of unjust social forces. In such cases, motivation enhancing drugs may act as pills for placating one’s sense of oppression. And while that doesn’t mean that using them would be ‘unethical’ for the person in anyway (they’re just doing what they need to to get by), it’s still an issue we ought to think about and be wary of.
4. The notion of an ‘authentic self’ is wholly incoherent. It is never mentioned in the article. However, people can still live unfulfilling lives that do not interest them or mean much to them – in that sense, we can speak of ‘inauthentic lives’.
Hazen,
Thank you for your comments and clarifications and for our email exchange.
In regard to the mention of caffeine, point taken. Leading with the example of coffee riles up all the coffee drinkers, as you have probably discovered.
In regard to your second point, I understand that the overall discussion is not about daily tasks here and there, but I think this is a bit of a slippery slope. I don’t advocate tolerating adverse situations or circumstances—far from it—but many times people do not recognize or cannot identify alternatives. And feeling bad about it (experiencing the incongruity) won’t by itself help them figure out what they can do.
As to point number three, eliminating the injustices in the world that keep people from meeting their basic needs is a monumental task. Of course, we should work to eliminate them, but war, poverty, hunger, slavery, disenfranchisement, etc. are not new and are not going away anytime soon. I don’t think preventing people who are already suffering from placating their sense of oppression would to do anything but create more suffering.
Re: the notion of an “authentic self” being wholly incoherent, I wholeheartedly agree. 🙂 But other coverage of Kjaersgaard’s paper does specifically refer to authenticity and the idea of an authentic self, such that the concept appears to be an integral part of his argument.