FIFTH WAY OF WISDOM
Arthur M. Jackson
Copyright 2001, 2003, 2006
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FIFTH WAY OF WISDOM: Strive to make the best choices possible.
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Can an individual actually make a choice? What does it mean to make a choice? Why does it matter if one makes the best choices, rather than the worst choices?
As previously discussed in the examination of the "I" it is my position that individuals make genuine choices. These are made out of their knowledge, understanding, their physical make-up, and the conditions of the moment. One's choices determine whether or not they achieve a Sustainable Belief that their Life Has Meaning; therefore, choices are of the greatest importance. However, since knowledge and understanding are always key components of choices it is essential to bring as much knowledge as possible to every choice.
Part of the issue of choice is addressed by the Third Way of Wisdom: (Seek to understand). Another part is addressed in "Organizing for an Enlightened Community" where a specific structure, Choices Are Us, is proposed so it would be available to help in this process. It is the first priority for a Wisdom Group and/or a Center for the Practical Application of Wisdom to provide all the help possible for each member to achieve congruency and be able to make the best choices possible. Congruency does not require that all of one's ideas about the universe are correct. It does require that individuals strive to make the best choices. This includes replacing current ideas/beliefs with better ones when they are discovered. (Better in terms of their congruency with other well supported ideas.) Also, making choices that are congruent with each other is part of what is necessary to help each person become an Enlightened Person. In order to make the best choices our current ideas about the "I" need to be improved. New ways of looking at the "I" are needed. Some ideas for better understanding the "I" have been presented earlier. However, those ideas that relate more specifically with choice making are discussed here in more detail.
[p. 2]
In order to make the best choices it is essential to discard the concept of free will and correct the errors involved in the way determinism has been applied to the individual choice issue. One way to better understand the need for these changes is to examine the "I" as it relates to the free will/determinism issue. Both of these concepts have been pernicious and destructive to individuals and to society because they prevent persons from making the best choices. The foregoing occurs because of the assumptions about the "I" imbedded in the free will/ determinism concepts. As one moves toward better definitions of the "I" one can sidestep these negative aspects of the free will/ determinism concepts. When determinism has been applied to human choice it has traditionally resulted in a belief in predestination and fatalism.[1] Predestination and fatalism say one cannot actually make choices, or in any way effect what happens because everything has already been determined. This belief is truly immobilizing. Belief in predestination and fatalism leads people to make lousy choices.
Early science tended to support the foregoing interpretation because it was widely believed that everything could be known and predicted. Science replaced the all-knowing, all-powerful God with the inextricable, unavoidable Laws of the Universe. Until the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics was adopted scientists recognized that human beings live in a deterministic universe, i.e., everything is caused. Therefore, it seemed reasonable to assume that every behavior of every human being was as predictable and necessary as predestination/fatalism required. What got overlooked was, What does determinism actually mean as it relates to human behavior? The question could not be properly framed in earlier times because of the underlying assumptions about determinism, the universe, and human beings. Early scientists were not in a position to recognize that human beings are the ultimate reference system. Also, they hadn't yet discovered chaos theory (that the behavior of complex phenomena are not fully predictable), and fuzzy logic (which shows that when the universe is analyzed in terms of dichotomies; i.e., Aristotelian, "yes"/"no," logic, error is introduced which can lead to erroneous answers.)
The primary negative aspect of free will as it relates to human choice is that it promotes confusion about choice and individual and societal responsibility. Free will is supposed to help individuals recognize that they freely make their own choices and can therefore act as they choose. This idea is certainly a step beyond the idea of being a puppet totally controlled by outside forces, the traditional interpretation as to how determinism applies to human beings. However, because it denies the reality of cause and effect it almost immediately moves into the domain of the irrational. This happens because it functions within a realm not open to study or experimentation since cause and effect are denied.
When free will has been applied to human choice it has traditionally resulted in belief that an evil act = evil person = need for punishment. Because punishment is used, even capital punishment, guilt or innocence is of critical importance in a traditional society. This is demonstrated by the following quote: "...[Torture] was an authorized means of gaining a confession [during the Middle Ages] at a time when confessions suddenly became crucial. The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 had outlawed the older judicial practices of establishing guilt, such as duels, oaths, and ordeal, so that henceforth a legal conviction required either the testimony of two eyewitnesses or a confession ." [2]
The idea of confession and establishing guilt are key issues that anyone seeking to develop an Enlightened Community or become an Enlightened Person must address. I have written on this elsewhere, but feel it is necessary to address it again here. Once one is able to put aside the misleading focus of the free will/ determinism debate and look at the critical issue of choice, one has a totally different perspective on guilt and confession. It can be recognized that knowledge and understanding are key issues in interpreting these ideas. To me guilt is only important in terms of what changes need to be made to ensure that people make better future choices; i.e., that they do not repeat, or better yet, do not commence anti-social/ asocial, hurtful, harmful behavior. The foregoing considerations include what changes need to be made in the person and what changes need to be made in society.
[p. 3]
It seems to me that confession also has a role in Science of Ethics. Confession by the individual must be an essential part of the change process for making better choices in the future. However, it would not be a confession in a legal sense, "If you confess that you stole the money (whether you did or not is not important to us), we'll give you a reduced prison sentence." Or, a religious sense, "You did a bad thing, therefore, you are a bad person." It is a confession in a therapeutic/social sense. It explores all the steps -- beliefs, mental/physical conditions, inadequate social support, etc. -- that led to making that choice. But most important it requires the clear recognition as to why that choice was a mistake and how it formed a barrier preventing the person from moving toward achieving personal power and a Sustainable Belief that their Life Has Meaning. The individual involved must understand the ways in which their behavior was self-destructive. And, they must have available whatever tools are necessary in so far as social and personal resources allow -- whether educational/ therapeutic/ medical/ social/ etc. to change whatever led to the choice. This must lead them to be "reborn" so they can subsequently avoid such mistakes.
The individual's guilt would only be important in terms of achieving complete understanding of society's and the individual's responsibilities for the choices and what would be necessary to sidestep similar choices in the future. Death, or any punishment for that matter, could never be the sentence for a "guilty" individual. Any pain inflicted on the individual could only be the incidental pain that growth and change might require.
In current society choice and guilt are tied together. Guilt is considered to be important in order to ensure that the person deserves the punishment assigned to them. Confession is considered to be important to guarantee that they are guilty. Western tradition has demanded punishment when individuals are disobedient. This comes directly out of our dominant/submission "tribal" propensity. As a result, numerous problems have been introduced into the process of dealing with persons in a democracy -- in a society of equals -- who break the law, or rules in general. The importance of knowledge/ignorance in effecting choices has been misunderstood, and more specifically society's responsibility for the knowledge/ignorance of its citizens has not been understood. As a result, anti-social/asocial choices have been dealt with in ways that are frequently counterproductive to society and to the individuals involved. The foregoing issues combined with current adversarial theory -- in which the individual and society are seen as inherently in conflict -- work together to help produce today's serious problems.
The combination of utilizing the social practice of punishment and the model of adversarial relationships has produced a situation that will not be easy to improve. The person placed under arrest usually feels obligated to do anything they can -- hide the truth, lie, bribe, flee, intimidate witnesses, behave violently, etc. -- to avoid being found guilty. Everyone has been exposed to the idea that they can personally benefit from doing things that harm others. It is widely believed that there is nothing wrong with making such choices if one can be sure they won't get caught. The more alienated the individual is from society and/or functioning out of their alpha male/alpha female power drive, or us/them propensity the more they are likely to succumb to such behavior. In all these cases when an individual is not able to self-correct to avoid making bad choices then the society must work to bring about the necessary changes.
[p. 4]
The free will concept makes choice and responsibility somewhat mysterious. Choices just sort of happen (freely!). At the same time responsibility has no intellectually meaningful definition. However, as previously indicated the definition of responsibility that comes out of Western moral theory about the nature of human beings tends to equate choices that harm others with being bad/evil. In addition it equates behavior that is considered bad/evil with the need to be punished. The foregoing theoretical considerations provide the foundation upon which all of our basic societal institutions rest. The theory is nonsense. However, it has practical effects that are detrimental to both individuals and society. This theory leads to the assumption that persons are responsible for their choices some of the time; but not all of the time (not when they were ignorant of the effects of their behavior, insane, under unusual stress, under the influence of drugs -- when they were not capable of premeditated intent). It considers society to be responsible for the individual's choices none of the time. When the individual intentionally harms others, or is considered to be responsible for choices that harm others, they are thought to deserve punishment: fines, prison, death, etc. It is this moral theory that provides the mechanism used to hide society's side of the responsibility for an individual's choices.
It is also the moral theory based on free will that spawned the fatally flawed adversarial system. It incorporates the idea that the individual and society are inherently in conflict. It encourages belief in the idea of the individual against society, and society against the individual. The foregoing belief is made easier because our alpha male/female drive that promotes dominance/submission interactions and our us/them feelings play out as adversarial relationships. For the alpha male the short answer would seem to be that such drives must be surrounded by feed-back mechanisms to ensure that the person does not act against their own long term self interest by destroying their support group. And of course this requires that the members of the support group are feeling their own personal power and not only enthralled by the achievements coming out of their leader's power. This issue requires maximum study and thought. This drive often produces pressures that pit what is best for the individual against what is most desirable for the group. This phenomenon will be a key problem to overcome in some persons to help them become Enlightened Persons and in producing Enlightened Communities where all persons work together in a cooperative manner. To properly focus the us/them propensity it is essential to help persons -- the younger the better -- to realize that their true allegiance is to their species-- to all human beings, including themselves -- and more specifically to help perpetuate that species in such a way that all persons achieve a sustainable belief that their life has meaning. Any other loyalty must be subservient to that.
The foregoing is just one example of the idea discussed elsewhere that our species is in the process of remaking itself by altering behaviors that once had value, but now get in the way of achieving a Sustainable Belief that one's Life Has Meaning. This is especially true of the genetic propensities that support adversarial relationships. Instead of being adversaries, I see the needs of the Enlightened Community and the Enlightened Person as being totally congruent. Human beings are social animals. To be their best self they need love and the acceptance of other people. Individuals will sacrifice up to and including their life for the good of their community. The goal of a Science of Ethics would be to make such sacrifices few in number and justified when they occur by building societies such that what is good for the individual is good for the community, and what is good for the community is good for the individual. The foregoing is the definition of an Enlightened Person and an Enlightened Community.
When there is a problem such that a choice does not achieve the foregoing effect my claim is that this results from ignorance. The solution requires knowledge. Finding the proper knowledge is the joint responsibility of the individual and the community. Evil act = ignorance = need for knowledge (for society and for the individual). Current religious theory allows society to avoid any accountability. Because society's responsibility is not recognized there are limited mechanisms for correcting societal errors and improving social and individual choices. In my model there is a totally different moral theory. For me all choices are based on knowledge/ignorance. Harmful choices, erroneous choices, etc. come out of ignorance. I believe, that a physically and mentally healthy, socially connected person will, normally, learn from their mistakes and improve their behavior.
[p. 5]
My model of choice assumes that everyone is always, all the time, under every circumstance responsible for every choice they make or fail to make. This means that their choices had reasons and until these reason can be learned and ways found to impact them positively the person is a threat to themselves and others. At the same time the community is always, under every circumstance responsible for every choice of every member of the community. The community provides the environment in which the individual grows from helpless embryo to self empowered mature adult. This environment plays a critical role in who the person becomes. The community provides the memes, the information, and the wisdom that forms the individual's initial world-view and way of interacting with their surroundings. The community establishes priorities for research and expanding knowledge. When the society recognizes no responsibility for its choices and how these choices relate to the choices of its members it has no means to evaluate what it is doing and determine when and what changes are needed. Such a society demonstrates its inadequacy and need for change. Since ignorance is the problem, knowledge must be the solution. And the society is 100% responsible for working to correct these deficiencies.
Unless the "I" is more fully understood, it is not possible to develop a meaningful/ useful definition of choice and responsibility -- as discussed before. Such an understanding of the "I" opens the way for finding solutions to each specific problem. This use of the "I" concept is probably one of its greatest potential values.
Traditionally when the statement, "I make choices" has been examined the focus was on the "choices" rather than the "I." Mostly this was because everyone thought they knew what they were talking about when they say, "I." The error of this assumption is demonstrated by the fact that most members of every society still think that people have an immortal soul (that the "I" is unitary and eternal). If they had even a glimmer of understanding of what the "I" is they could not possibly accept this error.
If the "I" concept discussed here is adopted by society it seems clear that the free will concept would be discarded and the interpretation of determinism applied to human choice would be corrected. Then the harm produced by past definitions of free will/determinism can be corrected. It would be recognized that human behavior is caused, and at the same time it would be understood that individuals make choices. These two ideas are not in conflict. Furthermore, it can be seen that it is absurd to consider that any given behavior is predestined. Neither science's Laws of the Universe, nor the God hypothesis provide the Ultimate Reference System necessary to make fatalism and predestination meaningful concepts. Human beings turn out to be the Ultimate Reference System and predictability does not exist as predestination/ fatalism would require. Human behavior is not predictable for several reasons, one of which is that every choice is made by a different "I." As a result each choice is a unique event and science can't predict unique events. Also, it is ridiculous to think one is not responsible for any individual choice. Lack of responsibility would mean severing choices from the laws of cause and effect. There would then be no way to utilize knowledge in order to improve the situation. I hope the ideas presented here make it clear that persons are responsible for their decisions in a way free will/determinism never realized.
However, being responsible for one's choices does not mean being punished for those choices. Rather it requires the person to change so as not to be a threat to self and to others. And an important point to understand is that the "I" can change and be changed. And a better "I" makes better choices. There is hope for anyone. Also, it is clear that society bears responsibilities that have not been acknowledged. Whenever there are mechanisms in society for judging people and their behavior, and then rewarding or punishing them, more care must be taken to ensure that the judgments and societal actions are congruent with the real world. Societal decisions must be constantly monitored to ensure that changes are made when incongruencies between goals and results are discovered. It becomes clear that there is a societal responsibility to help persons change their "I" so as to achieve a Sustainable Belief that their Life Has Meaning. The foregoing will benefit all of society because the more Enlightened Persons there are, the more everyone will be helped to become more loving, more productive, more fulfilled.
[p. 6]
If the matter is analyzed from the foregoing perspective it seems to me that a better way is provided in dealing with the major concerns of society. A clearer understanding of what is involved in making choices will provide new answers in the areas of: law, courts, jails/prisons, punishment, and the human behavior related to the foregoing, as well as religion, child rearing, schools, government, economics, employment, corporations, entertainment, news media, war, culture, philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, psychology; i.e. in all areas of human endeavor.
Now, returning to what it means to say, "I make choices." As indicated a choice is made based on the relevant components of the "I" and the universe at the moment of decision. Some of these components relate to the actual nature of the physical body making up the "I," some to knowledge (or ignorance), some to understanding (processing), some to immediate outside influences, some to how well the organism is functioning (has it been traumatized in some way that interferes with processing information, therefore, increasing bad choices).
From the foregoing analysis it seems clear that persons can only make the choices they make. But, what does this mean? At one level the statement is a truism. One point that is essential in understanding this issue is the realization that an "I" is a construct made up of myriads of parts as previously indicated. All these separate parts interact in complex ways, with feedback loops, etc. to keep the system functioning and to make choices. This complexity provides the "I" with a potential that goes beyond the visions of even the most imaginative mystic. Current science, philosophy, and religion are a long way from understanding how decisions actually are made. Information theory and computer science provide some tantalizing hints. Current brain study points out some amazing suggestions. Philosophy provides some useful speculations. Nevertheless, understanding of this issue is just beginning, particularly in a practical way that can help people make better choices. However, now it can be seen that this is an area that can be fruitfully studied and that demands greater attention by all parts of society.
Therefore, even though the key mechanisms involved in choice are not known, the key facts are understood. First, in order to improve choices everyone should be taught so they can recognize and experience their personal power. If our best knowledge were used persons would not be taught that they are helpless entities controlled by forces beyond their influence. At the same time persons obsessed to seek power over others by their alpha male/female propensity would be helped to find ways to free themselves from the destructive elements of this drive. This ability to learn and change is the key factor for a Science of Ethics. An Enlightened Community does not use shame, blame, guilt, punishment, etc. Its prime concern is helping as many individuals as possible achieve a Sustainable Belief that their Life Has Meaning. Another critical factor is knowledge. First, there is knowledge of the choice process and the essential steps to follow. It is clear that people can make better choices by learning how to examine issues in more depth, living congruent with reality, focusing on the most important matters, avoiding being influenced unduly by irrelevant issues, leaving time to integrate major factors before making the final decision, getting the help of others who are good problem solvers, etc. Second, there is knowledge about how the universe works and therefore the best way to achieve the outcome one desires. As part of the latter process it is important to have social structures because we can't hold all the relevant factors in our heads at the same time even if we know them on a good day. (See "Other Support Organizations -- Choices Are Us.") The help of these groups is most needed when particularly important choices are being made that may exceed the abilities of the individual concerned.
[p. 7]
In making choices, as in all human behavior, it is essential to understand that there are no perfect choices -- ever! "There are no unmixed blessings." "Every cloud has a silver lining." All choices produce both positive and negative results, and it may not be obvious which is which for decades, if ever. Our goal is to maximize the benefits and minimize the disadvantages. The foregoing indicates that George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's philosophy of "dialectics" is a simplification of what really happens. Even though this is the way our brains tend to process memes[3], in reality there is not just thesis, antithesis, followed by synthesis. Rather, any cause produces multiple effects. And every effect has multiple causes. From a human perspective some of these effects are beneficial (positive) and some are harmful (negative). The more knowledge we have about the circumstances involved and the more control we have over it, the more favorable can be the outcome. However, there is no way that any cause can produce only positive (or, only negative) effects because in a multidimensional universe some aspects are to a given person's advantage and some are in opposition to it. But of even more importance we never know the long-term effects of any choice at the time it is made. So, if we try only to make choices that have positive effects, we'll end up only making forced choices, and spending most of our life in limbo, and our choices will be worse, not better. Therefore, it is essential that we make our best effort and then pay attention so we can apply corrections as we progress in order to steer around negative spots as they become visible. Unless we realize that these hazards must appear we will not be alert to recognize them as early as possible -- when we are most likely to be able to have success with corrective action.
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GO ON TO SIXTH WAY OF WISDOM .
1. Predestination/fatalism: everything we do is already known and determined by an all-knowing God, or the Laws of the Universe; there is nothing that can be done to change one's choices.
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