It’s hard to answer this question. If we could define a “passion function” for an individual, we should expect it to have some peaks corresponding to the “driving passions” and then we could compare the peaks between different people. But it’s very well possible that the majority of people never had the occasion to “measure their peaks”. Let’s suppose that my passion function has an enormous peak for skying, but I was born in Morocco, or that I have an enormous peak for physics but am forced to study economics to work in my family’s business. And this doesn’t take into account the possibility of a variable passion function (which I think is the actual case).
But if you instead mean: “People don’t plan their lives around or taking into major account their driving passion(s)” then I’m inclined to answer yes, my guess is that external factors play a bigger role in shaping people’s lives.
If you don’t know your passion you don’t have one yet. Its not like there is a pleasure center in your brain tagged “skying” that is all plugged up and ready to go if only you would some day go to a place with snow. You may have a disposition to a certain type of passion that could be fulfilled by a number of different criteria.
You may be right, I was speculating quite a bit. To be honest, I would be interested to know if some research has ever been made on the subject, i.e. roughly speaking “passion space configuration”. I really don’t know if the hypothetical “passion function” has some very localized peaks or is generally smooth (or has both large plateaus and sharp peaks!). The only evidence I have comes from myself and it points in both directions, i.e.:
a) I hate pretty much every sport involving coordination, except for tennis (sharp peak hypothesis)
b) I like pretty much every tabletop and card games, some more, some less, but with a small variation between them
The “plateau hypothesis” could explain no passion ⇐ the level of the plateau is low.
The “sharp peak hypothesis” could explain no passion ⇐ you never reached the small region were the peak is situated.
Is it possible that may people—perhaps even the majority—just don’t have a driving passion?
It’s hard to answer this question. If we could define a “passion function” for an individual, we should expect it to have some peaks corresponding to the “driving passions” and then we could compare the peaks between different people. But it’s very well possible that the majority of people never had the occasion to “measure their peaks”. Let’s suppose that my passion function has an enormous peak for skying, but I was born in Morocco, or that I have an enormous peak for physics but am forced to study economics to work in my family’s business. And this doesn’t take into account the possibility of a variable passion function (which I think is the actual case).
But if you instead mean: “People don’t plan their lives around or taking into major account their driving passion(s)” then I’m inclined to answer yes, my guess is that external factors play a bigger role in shaping people’s lives.
If you don’t know your passion you don’t have one yet. Its not like there is a pleasure center in your brain tagged “skying” that is all plugged up and ready to go if only you would some day go to a place with snow. You may have a disposition to a certain type of passion that could be fulfilled by a number of different criteria.
You may be right, I was speculating quite a bit. To be honest, I would be interested to know if some research has ever been made on the subject, i.e. roughly speaking “passion space configuration”. I really don’t know if the hypothetical “passion function” has some very localized peaks or is generally smooth (or has both large plateaus and sharp peaks!). The only evidence I have comes from myself and it points in both directions, i.e.:
a) I hate pretty much every sport involving coordination, except for tennis (sharp peak hypothesis)
b) I like pretty much every tabletop and card games, some more, some less, but with a small variation between them
The “plateau hypothesis” could explain no passion ⇐ the level of the plateau is low. The “sharp peak hypothesis” could explain no passion ⇐ you never reached the small region were the peak is situated.
Edit: found a better example for a)