Vienna and the Danube

Vienna and the Danube

Vienna, the capital and the largest city of Austria, is recognized globally for its richness in innovation in music and fine arts. Being a major power of Europe during the middle ages, Habsburg empire turned the city into a major hub of culture from different countries of Europe. The city still today boasts its rich cultural heritage and has thereby been turned into one of the best tourist spots in Europe for cultural enthusiasts.

The city displays a lot of its grandeurs by two palaces made with lavish designs, by the Habsburg family named Hofburg palace and Schönbrunn palace. The later one being the dwelling place of the family during the summer boasts its beautiful garden and hundreds of rooms adorned with extravagant furniture and paintings. The family being a great admirer of arts, had the best among the contemporary artists and painters design the interior of their palace. Because the kingdom occupied a vast portion of Europe, the themes of the paintings also reflect the culture and tradition of various parts of the kingdom. Struggling Dutch sailor in the rough ocean of Netherlands, simple life of Hungarian farmers tending the cattle, altercation between the Catholics and Protestants, secularity of the Northern Renaissance with a village piper grabbing all the people’s attention away from the church; it seems that the history of the whole Europe has been captured in a frame in the form of a palace.

From the center of the city a walk towards the countryside will lead one to the foothill of Alps, a vineyard popular for Austrian young wine. The restaurant at the alley will be good enough for having a sumptuous dinner with Austrian traditional cuisine along with the taste of famous dry wine at the same time.

Vienna is also a treasure house of great architectural work symbolizing European history and culture, the most prominent of which is Art Nouveau that originated near the end of the reign of the Habsburg Empire. A display of pieces of architectural works as magnificent as Art Nouveau will be visible all throughout the city.

The modern Vienna like its predecessors is also a great patron of arts and music. In fact, Vienna is known as the city of Music in the world. While a large part of Europe is being dominated by modern rock or pop, the state Oprah house, one of the largest in Europe, is always crowded by a huge pack of audiences. So huge that, special arrangements are made by the local government for people to gather outside the house full hall room to enjoy the concert.

An integral part of Vienna from both commercial and recreational perspective, the Danube is a mighty river crossing the borders of dozens of countries in Europe. The town of Melk, easily commutable from the capital is the place one should visit to enjoy the serene beauty of the Danube. The newly restored Benedictine abbey standing at the valley is also a popular tourist spot. It boasts a huge library with an enormous collection of books of varied range of topics starting from ancient religious scripts to books on law, medicine etc. The library itself is a living example of how knowledge had been treasured by the rich civilization that happened to live in this part of the world.

Last but not the least, a major part of the arts of the mediaeval Europe has its root to Vienna; the reason the city is always filled with historians and music and art aficionados.

For anyone who is willing to learn about European civilization, Vienna, the beholder of modern European art and culture, is a must visit.    

-By Ahmed Mustahid

On ‘The Puzzle of Motivation’

In this video with the word ‘Puzzle’　in its title, the speaker Daniel H. Pink sheds light on the way of governing businesses; something apparently simple, but equally intriguing when thought about deeply. He starts his lecture with the humor of a lawyer, pretending as if he had been presenting a case in front of the juries.  

As an act of showing off his skill as a lawyer (no pun intended), he throws off a puzzle towards the audience. Being called the famous ‘Candle Problem’, created by psychologist karl Duncker, in this experiment the participant is given a box of thumbtack, a pack of matches along with a candle and is instructed to attach a lit candle to the wall without dripping wax on the table. It is in fact a cognitive performance test and is used to measure a person’s problem solving capabilities. Because everyone possesses some extent of cognitive bias and thereby not used to using things other than the conventional way, the problem seems to be a pretty challenging one. In the lecture Dan reveals the outstanding finding as observed in a series of experiments that, out of the two different groups, one working for a reward and the other not, the latter finishes the first every time, even though the latter is not working for the reward. This astonishing result is beyond anyone’s common sense to say the least and definitely the least expected possibility. All around us, we are only accustomed to the policy of incentive but the science clearly contradicts. Most part of the speech is on why something so counterintuitive, happens.

But before moving into the reasons, he decides to brush up on the candle problem again with a view to showing the infallibility of the theory. So he decides to present a simpler version of the candle problem where the thumbtacks are kept outside the box. The problem this time is fairly easy because the solution seems obvious as the box, left without any thumbtack inside this time, is a definite clue. And it has been found that in such straightforward problems the group with reward becomes the faster one. The speaker accentuates that reward as a form of extrinsic motivation is only effective for activities that require minimal cognitive skills. But as he points out, most of the works that we deal with in our professional life require great deal of out of the box thinking and asserts that rewards, instead of being a source of motivation, acts just the opposite, as a result of which much of the potential productivity is lost.

Even the assumption that policy of incentive, which the speaker terms as carrot and stick policy, might work in underdeveloped countries, where monetary benefits are supposedly much highly appreciated, has also been proved to be wrong by similar experiments carried on in those countries.

He thereby stresses on the importance of inclusion of the policy of intrinsic motivation in the work fields. The policy based on the natural tendency of human beings to govern lives in their own way, desire to get better at what they aim for and a yearning for serving something larger than life, if adopted will not only revolutionize the human workforce but will also act as an impetus for creating a better world, is what the speaker believes.   

 The vital concept that lies in the heart of this lecture is the theory of self-determination from psychology. The theory lies on the belief that it is the innate nature of a human being to seek for his own potential and be committed to mastering this inner force. He is driven by ‘inherent growth tendencies’ which acts as a stimulus to motivate him to achieve a goal. Due to these inherent qualities human being has topped the evolutionary ladder and flourished in the fields of arts, culture and science, while other animals that in many cases were blessed with superiority in strength and adaptation, could not.

But the major factor that plays role behind these inherent qualities to come into force is external. Social and economic factors play most of these extrinsic roles. As it has been seen in the lecture, science shows a clear distinction between the work that comes out of reward with limited freedom and the work that is the product of self-motivation rather than reward, the latter being much more efficient.

But anyone does not have to be a scientist to understand the reason behind ‘success’, which in fact is a feat achieved out of a lot of productive works connected together. And it is no secret that such a feat is achievable only by means of passion and love for what someone is doing. On this note, I will mention about the Wright brothers, credited to be the inventors of plane. Being two humble bicycle repairmen, they were driven by the passion and grit to study on their own and create something that no one before them could do, even though much of the researches had been going on Universities as elite as Harvard or Cambridge. In fact the world abounds with great people in wide arrays of fields but all converging at the same point known as passion, grit and determination.   

                                                   By Ahmed Mustahid