The Voice Beneath the Voice - By Nnamdi Okose

On Motivation

I recently came across an article on "Doing the right thing for the right reason" on Psychology today. The article is based on an interesting finding by Konrath, Fuhrel-Forbis, Lou, & Brown that people who do regular volunteer work tend to be healthier than people who do not. This seems a bit fantabulous but my purpose will not be to disprove the above finding as its truth or untruth will have no bearing on the crux of this essay. I think the mere fact that a study was undertaken to find a correlation between volunteering(Doing good) to health(living longer) is in itself instructive.


The above study no doubt raises the question of the imperative of doing things for the right reasons. And only for the right reasons. Doing things for the right reasons and not for the acclamation of the crowd or personal glory. This is truly difficult and complex indeed.

When I perform an act of charity, do I do it for validation or for the right reason of selfless service? When I put myself up for a position, what actually drives me? Is it a secret longing to lord it over others, a desire to amass riches or a passion to make things right? When I fall in love, is my reason the warm yearnings within my groins or something nobler?

This is called motive. Motive like an underlying current lies beneath everything we do. Why we join a fraternal organization or a secret society, why we go to church, why we go into politics and most interestingly why we lie or speak the truth.

There is always a motive. I once asked some friends indirectly whether they considered themselves honest and what honesty really did entail. In their answers, the elements that stood out were 'truth' and 'right'. All of them felt that honesty meant doing the right thing and speaking the truth. This is my own personal opinion too. But taking my friends' answers with the ever present nature of motive, something becomes apparent. In human life, even the virtues of 'right' and 'truth' must have a motive. Another interesting conclusion I have drawn from this is that when people say they don't have an ulterior motive, they always do.

Richard Maddock in an interesting research published in 2000 tried to develop an analysis and measurement of human motivations in marketing which he called Motigraphics. This will help in gauging people's buying behaviour and ultimately help companies sell products better. It would be nice to develop such tools for the purpose of politics, community work, Churches or perhaps brothels. We can find out the underlying motive why Bill Gates donates his money to Africa, why the pastor has decided to open a church and why the wealthy man's daughter makes a living at the red lights.

Such tools will unearth the puzzle of what actually motivated Hitler to kill the Jews or what motivated the suicide bombers who blew up the U.N building in Abuja. Or why Boko Haram is bent on Islamizing Nigeria.  Whatever the reason why the human being performs an action, he finds himself hiding, lying about or trying to conceal what his true intentions are. Let us take below the transcript of a 2009 interview of Congressional Candidate Doug Hoffmann on FoxNews on why he was vying for office.

BECK: Very good. Have you ever run for party before - for office before?
HOFFMAN: No, I haven't.
BECK: OK, why are you running now?
HOFFMAN: Well, I never thought I would be in politics, but Glenn, quite frankly, I was fed up. I was fed up with what's happening to our country. I was fed up with the out-of-control spending, taxes, government regulations on us and businesses, and I thought somebody had to step up and do something about it.
Now let us compare it with Goodluck Jonathan's declaration speech. For people who have not read it, most of the well crafted declaration is spent on reiterating that he he was making no promises.

Goodluck Jonathan:What I do promise is this - If I am elected President in 2011, I will make a covenant with you the Nigerian people to always do right by you, to tell you the truth at all times, to carry you along and most importantly to listen to you, fellow citizens in our communities and also those of you on this page. I do not want to win your affections by giving you promises of things I would do in the future which others before me have given and which have largely been unfulfilled.

In these two declarations of intent, we can infer that the motive is to serve. And this is the same with every politician who has come to hustle for the votes of people, the stated of inferred motive is to serve. But is this really their motive? Perhaps the best place to start seeking the answers would be in the words of Plato as summarized by David Brooks in an interesting article in New York Times, "Men want others to recognize their significance. They want to feel important and be part of something important" This means that most politicians run for elections due to personal motivation usually narcissistic.

Motive is really like a voice beneath the voice. The thing that drives us to succeed, to excel. And yet the silent accuser that belies our best intentions. I wonder why I am motivated to write this. For the applause of the reader or to educate? I wonder what has motivated you to get this far in this essay.