domingo, 31 de dezembro de 2023

O verdadeiro valor da vida, a inter-relação entre conquistas científicas e a moralidade no legado académico

 


Como fiz há um ano atrás, vide post acessível no link acima, volto novamente a citar o Miguel Esteves Cardoso, que ontem escreveu na página 11 do jornal Público o seguinte:
...Ser rico é poder poupar tempo e depois esbanjá-lo. Poupa-se tempo pagando aos pobres para fazer as tarefas que comem o tempo a toda a gente: as tarefas cronófagas. Os ricos compram, com o dinheiro que têm a mais, o tempo dos pobres, que são obrigados a vender o tempo deles, para ganhar o dinheiro suficiente para sobreviver. Parece que estão a entregar e a receber dinheiro, mas o dinheiro é para disfarçar: estão é a trocar tempo. O rico compra tempo ao pobre e o pobre fica sem ele...”

Compare-se esse interessante texto, com um estudo (sobre a compra do tempo e o aumento da felicidade) que envolveu mais de 6000 pessoas em vários países, que divulguei em Julho de 2017, email abaixo, e também com aquilo que antes disso já tinha sido dito pelo Ex-Presidente do Uruguai, vertido no referido email, tendo a esse na altura anexado um outro email, não menos interessante, de Outubro de 2016, sobre como pretendem os académicos ser lembrados, depois que o tempo das vidas deles tiver acabado. 

PS – No presente contexto talvez valha a pena revisitar o post “Porque é que uma vida com significado é impossível sem sofrimento?” https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2022/07/porque-e-que-uma-vida-com-significado-e.html



De: F. Pacheco Torgal
Enviado: 26 de Julho de 2017 7:57
Assunto: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences__"Buying time promotes happiness"

Abstract: “Around the world, increases in wealth have produced an unintended consequence: a rising sense of time scarcity. We  provide evidence that using money to buy time can provide a buffer against this time famine, thereby promoting happiness. Using large, diverse samples from the United States, Canada, Denmark, and The Netherlands (n = 6,271), we show that individuals who spend money on time-saving services report greater life satisfaction. A field experiment provides causal evidence that working adults report greater happiness after spending money on a time-saving purchase than on a material purchase. Together, these results suggest that using money to buy time can protect people from the detrimental effects of time pressure on life satisfaction”  https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1706541114

Strangely, a few years ago, José Mujica former President of Uruguay (2010-2015) made a brief statement that accurately reflects this finding "when we buy something, we are not paying it with money we are paying with the time of our lives and its terrible to waste life losing freedom"



De: F. Pacheco Torgal
Enviado: 27 de Outubro de 2016 8:26
Assunto: Honor in the Academic Profession: How Professors Want to be Remembered by Colleagues

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/612675/summary 

60 physicists of all ages working at a range of U.S. universities were interviewed in person by the author about multiple aspects of their careers, including the scientists’ aspirations, assessments of their achievements and failures, and conceptions of future and “immortalized” selves. Interviews from which the present work was drawn averaged 90 minutes in length...For the present work, attention is focused on a specific question asked of the respondents: “How would you like to be remembered by your colleagues?

desires to be remembered by colleagues on principally professional terms increase as institutional prestige increases. By contrast, desires to be remembered on principally personal terms increase as institutional prestige declines...As age increases, desire to be remembered on principally professional terms declines; and the desire to be remembered on principally personal terms intensifies. What is more, as age increases, the percentage of scientists “not caring” about how colleagues remember them increases. The percentage of scientists not caring about how their colleagues remember them, combined with the percentage of those desiring remembrance in personal ways, is particularly striking in the eldest cohort, where the attenuation of professional emphases is most pronounced. Great scientific achievement—even in an era of modern science—has been connoted with “unlocking the mind of God”(Paul, 1980).    In an absence of great achievement, morality preserves a route to salvation, identifying

 how people can orient themselves to the “good” (Stets, 2010). In addition, it always marks sacrifice, as though to say: “Look at what I gave up, so that others could prosper.” By invoking claims to a moral status, a scientist—relegated to a location peripheral to the major activity at the center of science—provides an excuse as well as an explanation for not having fully realized one’s own ego. Remembered as “being good” by others in the profession thus becomes compensation for comparative failure...Morality, because it is the embodiment of virtue, is a protected status.