Choice Archives - Page 12 of 13

How UNreasonable Can You Be?

February 10, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 5 Comments

People of Accomplishment — (Photo credit: Celestine Chua)

There is general, though not absolute, agreement that being reasonable is good and being unreasonable is bad. Depending on how you define the terms, however, you can find more than one way to parse the differences between them.

I tried being reasonable; I didn’t like it. –Clint Eastwood

Some of the most awake and alive experiences of my life have occurred while I was trying to do things that were so outrageously unreasonable they seemed impossible to accomplish. Apparently, I like challenges. But that may just be part of my temperament. I was never particularly reasonable, even as a child—some might say especially as a child.

Some synonyms for reasonable are: sensible, logical, rational, moderate, mild, well-balanced, agreeable, and fair.

Some synonyms for unreasonable are: excessive, immoderate, illogical, irrational, extravagant, extreme, wild, and unrestrained.

A reasonable person is considered to be prudent and cautious, someone who avoids extremes. But reasonable can also mean mediocre, ordinary, average, and tolerable. And unreasonable can mean bold, daring, audacious, exceptional, and unexpected. An unreasonable person may keep going even after reaching reasonable limits. An unreasonable person may have unreasonable expectations—of herself and of others.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. [Or woman!] –George Bernard Shaw

Reasonable people tend to take fewer risks than unreasonable people take. Reasonable is often the safer course—but not always. Nor is it always the best course.

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Creativity and reasonableness often don’t mesh, since being reasonable requires a degree of cognitive inhibition, while some stages of creativity require cognitive disinhibition.

Certainly you aren’t likely to be faulted for being reasonable and for refusing to accept unreasonable demands, requests, or challenges.

But remember that when you aim for reasonable, then reasonable is probably the best you can hope to achieve.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? –Mary Oliver

Is Your Head Ready to Explode?

February 6, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Scene of the explosion of a ConSec scanner's head — (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You might have a head on the verge of exploding if you’re trying to operate under these two incompatible assumptions.

You have free will, and you choose whatever you do or don’t do.

You can’t do or not do a single thing without having a reason.

Our brains have been shown to be highly proficient reason-generating machines. It’s part of their hardwiring for survival. And we seem more than happy to go along for the ride without questioning the process or the result.

Here’s how it goes:

We turn something into a reason.

We act as if the reason has an independent existence.

We impute a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the reason we have created and whatever we do or don’t do.

Maybe we think we freely chose whatever we turned into a reason for a particular action or non-action. But if we have to have a reason in order to act or not act, the reason doesn’t really matter. We still can’t simply act. We still have no power. And ultimately, we still aren’t responsible.

There’s no point in arguing for free will all the while operating as if we live in a deterministic universe in which everything that happens is the result of something that happened before. The mental gymnastics required to maintain these opposing beliefs keep us stuck in the status quo, chasing our mental tails, and sometimes going to extreme measures to defend our lack of power and responsibility.

Which explains quite a lot.

Do You Believe in Reasons?

February 3, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 9 Comments

Scientific Explanation — (Photo credit: Wonderlane)

Consider these two groups of people.

One group (Group A) believes that reasons are real and that reasons cause things to happen or not happen.

The other group (Group B) believes that invisible intentional agents are real and that invisible intentional agents cause things to happen or not happen.

What’s the difference between these two groups?

Both Group A and Group B are very confident in their beliefs. But the degree of confidence we have about what we think or believe has no correlation with the accuracy or reality of the thought or belief.

Neither Group A nor Group B can produce a tangible example of a reason or of an invisible intentional agent because both are figments of the imagination.

Whether reasons or invisible intentional agents are causing things to happen or not happen, the people in either group are not responsible.

As a result, the people in both groups have very little power to make things happen or to prevent things from happening.

Meanwhile, the people in Group B are busy (wasting time, effort, and energy) trying to fight off or appease invisible intentional agents, and the people in Group A are busy (wasting time, effort, and energy) first turning the events, situations, encounters, circumstances, and conditions of their lives into reasons—and then trying to address the problems they perceive to be the result of the reasons they have created!

Each group also feels superior to the other group. If you believe in reasons you’re much more likely to be seen as sane—even reasonable—by others. But it makes absolutely no difference whether you believe in reasons or you believe in invisible intentional agents. The bottom line is that something else—not you—is running your life.

What Do You Want? redux

November 11, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 8 Comments

Right now. Right this moment. What do you really want?

It sounds like a simple question, but it’s often a difficult one to answer. So instead of answering the question what do I want? we answer a different question, an easier one, such as

What do I need?
What do I want that I think I’m capable of getting?
What do I want that’s practical?

Some of those might seem like reasonable approaches, but they sidestep the actual question.

Identifying what you want isn’t an excursion into narcissism. The fact that so many of us are unable to answer this question with any degree of conviction doesn’t indicate we’re selfless beings who aren’t concerned with our own wants and desires. To the contrary, the less clarity we have about what we really want in life, the likelier we are to settle for—even grab at—whatever gratifies our immediate, short-term desires.

But it’s impossible to be truly satisfied if you don’t know what you really want.

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman talks about this phenomenon of answering an easier question than the one that was asked.

If a satisfactory answer to a hard question is not found quickly, System 1 [the unconscious] will find a related question that is easier and will answer it. I call the operation of answering one question in place of another “substitution.”

Substituting an easier question for the question, what do I want? has consequences that can be deadly—or at least deadening. If you can’t allow yourself to identify what you want in life, you diminish your possibilities dramatically. You lose touch with yourself. Your view of the world becomes narrower. You settle for less. And maybe every once in a while you’re kind of unpleasant to be around.

Could you want something that’s impossible (or seems impossible) to have? Of course! Wanting isn’t synonymous with having. The act of wanting something won’t somehow magically bring it into being, no matter how hard you wish for it. On the other hand, if you don’t even know what you want, then you’ve pretty much guaranteed you won’t go after it. It’s unlikely that everything you want will be impossible for you to have. So why not be honest with yourself and acknowledge what you want, whether or not you think you can have it?

When you ask yourself this question, throw reasonableness out the window and try answering the hard question instead of an easier one. If you keep doing that, the hard question actually becomes easier because you don’t have to keep censoring yourself. If it turns out that you want impossible, improbable, barely imaginable, or highly unlikely things, congratulations! You’re already a winner.

30 Days

Here’s a simple exercise to help you uncover what you want:

For 30 days, preferably consecutive, write “What I really want” at the top of a blank page and then list 15-20 things that you want right then and there. They can be small, medium, or large; material or ephemeral; practical or pie-in-the sky. Don’t put an inordinate amount of thought into creating your list. Write down whatever occurs to you. Repetition is the key. Date your list. At the end of 30 days, you’re likely to have a pretty good idea of what’s important to you and what you want. If not, do the exercise for 30 more days.

Clarity

September 22, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 6 Comments

After I finished clearing out my garage three weekends ago, the path ahead (my path, that is) suddenly became so much clearer.

The garage clearing was the culmination of a purging and cleaning process I started at the beginning of May. I went through every room and every closet or cupboard in my apartment, getting rid of things I thought I’d still be holding onto when I died, things I’d never, ever considered letting go of before. A few times I woke up in the middle of the night imagining the contents of a closet and thinking, “That can go, and that can go, and that can go.” The next day, all of it went. Into the garage.

I amassed so much stuff to give away it filled a quarter of my garage. I couldn’t park my car in there during the hottest month of the year. Animal Humane came to pick it all up in July, and I haven’t missed a thing. In fact, I keep finding more stuff to let go of. Now I keep a box in the garage for items I’m finished with. Once it’s filled, I drop it off at Animal Humane.

The whole thing started spontaneously one Monday when I glanced down the hall into my bedroom, noticed something, and asked myself why the heck I still had it. One thing led to another, momentum grew, and soon I was tackling areas I’d been avoiding for years. I even replaced all the shelf liner in the kitchen cabinets. I got rid of the contents of three two-drawer filing cabinets—and the cabinets. I tossed decades worth of personal journals, donated eight or nine bankers boxes of books, gave half a dozen flower pots to a neighbor, and found new homes for drawers full of art supplies that need to be used, not stored.

Just Do It!

It felt great to lighten the load. It also felt great to attend to all those nagging things, large or small, I’d been noticing several times a day (again, for years) that needed fixing or changing. I took care of all of them. I had a whiteboard in my office, and as soon as I thought of something or noticed it, I wrote it down. Had I been putting off making an appointment or checking something out? I put that up there, too. Sometimes I’d take care of something so quickly the ink from the dry erase marker was still wet when I erased it.

I had expected it would feel good to have accomplished so much. I had expected to feel a sense of satisfaction. What I didn’t expect was how much clarity getting rid of all this stuff would create in my life. I’d like to believe that if I’d known, I would have done it much sooner. But no one can see into the future. I don’t think I would have believed it if anyone had told me it would be like this.

Last winter, I came across this quote from Krishnamurti:

We think that through choice we are free, but choice exists only when the mind is confused. There is no choice when the mind is clear. When you see things very clearly without any distortion, without any illusions, then there is no choice. A mind that is choiceless is a free mind, but a mind that chooses and therefore establishes a series of conflicts and contradictions is never free because it is in itself confused, divided, broken up.

I wrote this post about it in February, but only now am I really getting it. Only now do I see that having all these messy, undone, or unfinished things taking up space in my head actually creates confusion and distortion. Suddenly, there are very few choices I need to make. I’m not having the usual mental debates about what to do or rationalizing why I’m doing or not doing something. The path ahead is clear. That doesn’t mean it’s easy or guaranteed. But it is clear. Clarity is a game-changer. It’s also a huge payoff to get for doing nothing more than taking care of business.

30 Days

Just Do It!

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