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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.
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.