[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-576318-105":59,"doc-detail-576318-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","fleeing-tension-an-essay-on-zipfs-principle-of-least-effort-and-classical-education","Fleeing Tension - An Essay on Zipf’s Principle of Least Effort and Classical Education","","Explores how Zipf’s principle of least effort can be reformulated as a psychological principle of reducing expectable tension, then extends it to education, self-knowledge, and classical learning. Argues that humanist, especially Greek-based, education represents an expensive “evasion” that builds enduring mental structures, whereas social shifts away from classical curricula enabled cheaper tension avoidance. Frames paideia as disciplined endurance for psychological tensions and links tension-evasion to cultural decline.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":15,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/fleeing-tension-an-essay-on-zipfs-principle-of-least-effort-and-classical-education/576318/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/fleeing-tension-an-essay-on-zipfs-principle-of-least-effort-and-classical-education/576318.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Jiven","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-20","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":19},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"How is Zipf’s principle related to work and effort in the document?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The text explains that Zipf’s principle describes an aversion to work where people seek paths that avoid even harder work in the present or future. It claims this regulates biological and human behavior toward least effort.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What does the document mean by “least average rate of expectable tension”?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"It revises Zipf’s idea to treat tension as psychological work demanded by future effort. The document further refines it toward perceptible tension to address how perception can be reduced or distorted.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"Why does the document claim classical education is an “expensive” evasion?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It argues that paideia requires decades of solitary study and reflection to channel energy into structuralization—building mental systems for memory, assessment, and anticipation. This is contrasted with cheaper evasions that quickly misdirect attention or replace recognition with delusion.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},576318,1792453388,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":14,"category_name":15,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":19,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":34,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":144},1099513958607,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/100002390cf8733938c?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1778829742770036399","DOI: 10.51845.36.3.6  \nFleeing Tension by  \nFleeing Classics  \nby Mark Adair  \nI f we didn’t expect today’s work to  \nease tomorrow’s, we wouldn’t work much.  \nThis simple principle regulates human behavior and all biological action.  \nG. K. Zipf, linguist and statistician, carefully studied our aversion to work and published his important conclusions over seventy years ago in Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort (1949) . Before that, he had been known for Zipf’s Law, a mathematical relationship between two linguistic quantities. He had discovered a universal tendency to communicate with the least effort, this tendency regulating the proportions of words used by a language community. Attesting to its validity, in 1965, Benoit Mandlebrot, the complexity theorist and developer of fractals, appropriated Zipf’s Power Law to make the Zipf-Mandelbrot Law, a probability relationship still used in modern complexity science. Zipf’s later book on Least Effort generalized his Power Law, showing that people, animals, plants and even machines, in pursuing their purposes, seek the path of least resistance.  \nThat people work hard all their lives seems to contradict Zipf’s thesis. The contradiction, however, is only apparent. However hard we work, that work, as Zipf pointed out, avoids even harder work in the present or future, work such as living hand to mouth or enduring shame. This capacity of living things to anticipate, or expect, future work-demands made Zipf refine his theory into the principle of least average rate of expectable effort.  \nTo harmonize Zipf’s principle with depth psychology, we can revise it into the “principle of least (average rate of expectable) tension,” tension being a demand for psychological work. This revision implies a basic need to reduce the most expectable tension in the shortest time. However, the human power to obliterate perception calls for a further refinement (and an apology for its ponderous title): the principle of least average rate of expectable perceptible tension.  \nThe threat of this principle’s corrosive tendency spawned paideia, the heart of humanist education: academic discipline  \nto build endurance for psychological tensions.  \nIn a sense, the work of mental growth—education—is itself an effort to minimize or evade expectable tension and work, and therefore obeys Zipf’s principle. However, deep learning and classical education also represented society’s best defense against the mental death and social annihilation that universal tension-evasion breeds. That defense is self-knowledge.  \nAristotle’s guiding educational principle, like Plato’s, was to make not only good citizens but, nota bene, good philosophers, thinkers heedful of self-deception. Their creed was unpopular because it burdens people with the obligation to cultivate their minds. It shames those who would not or could not contemplate and reflect, delay gratification, or acknowledge unpleasant realities. It imposes a tension few willingly bear. A humanist education rooted in classical languages was once the most emphatic public endorsement, and enforcer, of this obligation. Its pedagogical regimen for mental growth taught moral perseverance and warned against the tension-dodging delusion of omnipotence.  \nThe decline and fall of classical education signify a hidden group hatred of the tensions affiliated with the higher powers of the mind; they express social and historical tension-evasion, a thirst for inertia, and entropic decline.  \nBut isn’t our aversion to work ordained by entropy? I concede that we enrich our minds for the same reason we ignore or distort distressing realities: to  \nevade tensions, or at least our awareness of them. Yet all evasions are not equal. Some are cheap: the effort they require—the few neural depolarizations required to momentarily misdirect attention—is trivial compared to the magnitude of the tensions (such as panic or self-loathing) they instantly obliterate. Paideia is expensive: ","cbCaibjOTg8vnfOQ","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaibjOTg8vnfOQ","pdf",91220,"English","# Fleeing Tension by Fleeing Classics\n## Zipf’s principle and least effort\n## Revising the principle for psychological tension\n## Paideia and humanist education\n## Cheap vs. expensive evasion and mental structures\n## Decline of classical curricula\n## Tension, envy, and social responses","[{\"question\":\"How is Zipf’s principle related to work and effort in the document?\",\"answer\":\"The text explains that Zipf’s principle describes an aversion to work where people seek paths that avoid even harder work in the present or future. It claims this regulates biological and human behavior toward least effort.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the document mean by “least average rate of expectable tension”?\",\"answer\":\"It revises Zipf’s idea to treat tension as psychological work demanded by future effort. The document further refines it toward perceptible tension to address how perception can be reduced or distorted.\"},{\"question\":\"Why does the document claim classical education is an “expensive” evasion?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that paideia requires decades of solitary study and reflection to channel energy into structuralization—building mental systems for memory, assessment, and anticipation. This is contrasted with cheaper evasions that quickly misdirect attention or replace recognition with delusion.\"}]","Fleeing Tension - An Essay on Zipf’s Principle of Least Effort and Classical Education | PDF",1792029540,11]