Book Review
Living without a Goal
by James Ogilvy
Currency Books, 1995
Review by Reg Harris
Copyright © 2003 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. This material may not be copied in any form without prior, written permission from the author.
Abstract
Living without a Goal is based on the thesis that our
mechanistic, goal-oriented paradigm for life no longer meets our
needs in the evolutionary, postmodern world. Ogilvy does not espouse
total goallessness as a rule for living. We do need goals, but not
the overriding, great "Goal of Life" that has been the paradigm in
the past. Goals no longer fit a world which lacks a "coherent
picture of historical progress," that is a movement in a direction.
We no longer have a unifying cultural map on which to locate, fix,
and understand our individual goals.
The result is a loss of absolutes, including absolute goals. We must
still have individual goals, but they can no longer be justified by
a cultural metanarrative. "We can no longer organize our lives by
hanging them on the Goals that were justified by religious or
political ideals."(72) In the end, Ogilvy believes that our reasons
for doing or being something have more to do with the integrity of
our whole life than on goals that lie outside the activity itself.
Such a "goalless" approach to life better fits our postmodern world
than the goal-directed approach which has served us until now.
Review
In Living without a Goal, James Ogilvy proposes that the
shift in our culture from a mechanistic paradigm for life to an
evolutionary paradigm for life has created a world in which behavior
motivated by long-term goals is no longer practical or desirable.
While the book is not specifically about work, its ideas relate
directly to work because it is so goal-directed. To support his
goal-free thesis, Ogilvy explores a variety of ideas, including the
obsolescence of absolutes, the lack of a coherent cultural map,
narcissism, self-actualization, sublimation and life as art.
According to Ogilvy, goals can actually hinder our development. When
we focus on a goal, we are presuming that we can accurately judge
our best interests in the future based on the limited knowledge and
understanding we have in the present. This leaves us little room to
evolve laterally or to take advantage of opportunities that are
outside the range of our goal-directed vision.
The fixed nature of goals also forces us to make our future skills
and insights conform to an understanding of life that may no longer
be valid or effective. We end up trying to force new ideas and
insights into a shape that conforms to our old worldview so that
they will fit our goal. Again, this has a narrowing effect on our
thinking and our options.
Finally, goals can also function almost like a drug, an escape from
an uncomfortable or painful situation. By focusing on a future goal,
we can justify tolerating a present situation that we do not like.
This allows us to justify inaction and indecision.
But Ogilvy's main problem with long term goals is that they just no
longer fit our model of the world.
We picked up this training in goal-directed behavior from the end of
the agricultural era, the era of large silos for storage, the era of
the industrialization of agriculture. This training in goal-directed
behavior, so logical and rational in days gone by, is no longer
appropriate to the nature of ownership and property in the
information age.(188)
What we need is a new paradigm, an evolutionary paradigm rather than
a mechanistic one. According to Ogilvy, mechanists produce with a
goal in mind, where evolutionists just produce, variation upon
variation. Mechanists believe that they can control the results of
their actions; evolutionists know that environmental selection, not
the creator's intentions, determines the relative success of their
creations. Mechanists want to impose perfect form on imperfect
matter, an approach that has now been discredited, while evolution
thrives without goals.
Ogilvy's discussion even brings into question the idea of
"self-actualization," which is a life-long goal of discovering or
developing who we "really" are. This concept might imply that the
self already exists as an entity, and that our goal is to uncover or
develop that self. This view forces us into the position of trying
to figure out what we are rather than allowing our "self" to evolve
naturally. There is an end – self-discovery – to which all of our
actions must lead rather than a continual evolutionary unfolding as
we grow and change.
Ogilvy's solution to the limitations and paradox posed by long-term
goals is to live artfully, evolving without the big goals.
…the artful incorporation of different elements in a postmodern life will be every bit as devoid of secure foundations in reality as a work of contemporary art is removed from the simple representation of a landscape. The old measuring rods for life…are as obsolete as literal representation in art. For, just as art has surrendered to photography the job of literal representation, so life has surrendered to technology the job of fulfilling simply definable functions with clearly describable goals. (181)
Living without a Goal challenges one of the major premises of our industrial culture: that we can predict and control our future by defining a long-term goal and working toward it. Ogilvy makes his point eloquently and convincingly, and along the way he provides a rich exploration of the philosophy of the postmodern world. The book is not only worth reading; it is worth digesting. It will stimulate the reader to reflect deeply on many of the basic assumptions on which we build our lives.