Sunday, October 29, 2017
Very well, my friend. Not all deciders or decisions created equal?
Surely it is obvious as soon as broached. It is only common sense, after all.
But if there is one thing this work has taught us to suspect, it is common sense.
Point. Very well, we shall look at it. But it shouldn’t take long. There are decisions that matter and those that don’t. There are people of substance and those of far less substance. You see this every day. The caveat as always is that what you see may not be what you get, but that is a separate point that merely reminds you that your judgments are apt to be fallible. But the fact that you may misjudge does not mean there are no judgments to be made.
And, I presume, “judgments” in the sense of discernment, not of condemnation.
Of course.
- Condemnation implies a value judgment, a measuring of how far a given person or action or situation differs from the judging person’s norm or ideal.
- Discernment is exactly the opposite. It is a clear seeing of what is. Ideally, perfect discernment would precede and inform condemnation; that is, no one would condemn until he or she really, thoroughly, entirely understood what was being judged.
Once one understands, the heat tends to ebb from the condemning impulse. But perhaps the saying is too absolute to be entirely true. In practice one knows the difference between important and unimportant decisions in general, if not always in careful specific. To walk down this or that side of a street, to wear blue instead of green, to drive this kind of car instead of another – usually these are trivial decisions and of no great consequence. Once in a while they might be given greater weight by a specific circumstance, but in general, they do not produce decision-points that matter, because they are not decision-points that matter.
I had to think about that sentence for a second. I guess you mean, being themselves trivial in nature, they are unlikely to lead to more consequential choice-points.
Correct. Occasionally, trivial points are decisive, and you call the result coincidence, or chance, or “for want of a nail, a kingdom was lost,” but mostly, no, and we want to pursue the usual here, not the exception.
There are levels of decision that are in themselves significant but may or may not lead to important choice-points. To stick to externals for the moment, the choice of a career, for instance. For some people, their career may shape their whole lives; all their primary energies may flow into it. For others, it may be of much less importance in that their world centers on other things.
A career as mother, for instance, could be as much a real center of interest as anything else. The much-derided “homemaker.”
Or father. Many a person’s life centers in the family they emerge from and the family they create, and these are often very centered, oriented people. A person’s consuming interest in life might have nothing at all to do with making a living, or conducting a career, or raising a family – might indeed be entirely invisible to the world, and yet just as important. And this is true, but tends more toward the point about being careful in judging the lives of others.
Still moving toward matters of greater significance: Two types of very significant decisions may be one-time or, more usually, continuing. These are what to do, or what to be. (As always in analyzing, we are downplaying ambiguities so as to present distinctions more clearly.) These are the defining trends, in a lifetime.
What to do. Either a momentous one-time choice or an equally momentous but less dramatic continuing choice. A definition of action. In choosing any true either/or, one alters the path in a way that is not done by trivial or reversible decisions. Anything is of prime importance that, if done (or, alternately, undone) will have irrevocable consequences. However, the importance may not be noticed, nor perhaps ever assessed at its true value, either by the person or by others.
Such questions of doing may involve a choice of schools or jobs or relocations that result in unanticipated consequences, such as the people and other opportunities that arise as a result. The life one leads because of a move to Cincinnati may differ greatly from the life one leads if, instead, one remains in Detroit. That decision, to do or not do, may not be made out of a conscious intent to bring this or that result, but the result will follow.
People make significant decisions not consciously knowing what will ride on them. And here, you see, decisions of doing and decisions of being are much alike. Both flow as much from what one is as from what one decides.
You mean by that, I think, that what we are (known to ourselves or not) may have more to say about our decisions than we consciously realize. Our decisions may seem to us to be supported by this and that very logical, very rational reason, whereas in fact those reasons are closer to being rationalizations than causes.
And those occasions when your unconscious motivations tend to balance out present your real choice-points. This is when you affect your larger being, your probability-cloud.
So, free will v. predestination, then? Mostly our decisions could have been predicted by anybody who knew us well enough, but sometimes we can surprise them, and maybe ourselves?
You could put it that way. Mostly you are on a smooth glide-path, but sometimes you have to seize control, for only a minute perhaps, or perhaps for a long stretch, and choose what you want to do, what you want to be.
You have not yet addressed differences in substance among people.
This is conceptually simple, but people’s perpetual temptation to judge (to condemn) comes easily into play.
- Some people are weighty and some are not, you know that.
- Some are one-pointed, all of a piece; some are self-contradictory.
- Some are content to skim the surface of life, living the externals; others may scarcely notice the externals in their inward-dwelling life.
I would say you are working toward a distinction in gravitas, and these preliminary distinctions may tend merely to confuse the subject.
It is difficult to make the point, for lack of jointly understood examples. The externals of anyone’s life may be evident; the internals must always be inferred, which is a tricky business, rich with ambiguity and prone to error.
Let us put it this way. In any trade (to use a more understandable, external, example) you have master craftsmen, journeymen, apprentices, tyros. Right? In any discipline, be it scholastic or religious or philosophical or whatever, you have the same gradations. And in any sense of endeavor, the same. Well, no one who discerned clearly would put equal weight on the opinion or judgment or output of any two stages.
Even those being judged wouldn’t dream of setting different levels of experience and skill on a par.
That is correct. And it is exactly thus when we consider a given soul’s gravitas. Some are more weighty than others, as you would expect if previous experiences and decisions mean anything at all. This doesn’t mean these differences may be fairly and safely judged; but they do exist, and they do matter.