08.23.07
On Choices
Essay Week 2007 runs from August 20 to August 24, 2007. Each day I’ll present a short essay on a topic of concern to me; as you may already have noticed, though, I have the option of including a pre-essay post giving updates on ongoing life events if necessary. Some of the elements in these essays may be controversial; I hope, however, that most will be well-regarded and at least read with an open mind. If you have anything to say about them, please feel free to leave a comment; I read them all, even if I may not respond due to time or other concerns. Today’s essay is a deeply personal one, as it deals with responsibility in giving or receiving advice on individual decisions.
As most of you know, in June, I chose to remove red meat and chicken from my diet. Since then, I’ve found myself in an odd position of having to defend my choice. I honestly don’t see why exactly my dietary concerns or the supposed motives behind them are of anyone else’s interest. Still, that’s not an acceptable answer to the people who question me. In the absence of an answer, people tend to project a motive upon me, a motive which may or may not be correct. I don’t mind so much, but it is particularly irritating when people project this motive on me before asking me and getting the non-committal answer.
Now, let me be perfectly frank. Some decisions need to be justified. I don’t want people making big important choices about stuff like the law or tax money without having fully thought out all the consequences. In actuality, it’s those kinds of choices which are completely irrelevant to this essay; the need for rational decision-making in those cases is self-evident. Rather, I’m considering personal choices such as diet or belief or even what clothes to wear. Choices which are only going to affect the individual doing the choosing.
At our cores, at the very bottom level of biology and biochemistry and neurotransmitters and brainwave activity, we really have no f%#$ing clue what makes people think. Seriously. The human mind is one of the largest and most all-pervasive enigmas in all of science today. There are some insights that we have, such as serotonin and endorphin levels having significant effects on thought processes, but in the big picture people get ideas and feelings and emotions through a process that we do not currently fully understand. Likewise, we have the ability to reason and think and follow chains of thought through a biochemical and neurological process that is a near-total mystery to us. That in no way means we should not keep researching this field– I personally find it to be quite fascinating at a high level– but it does mean one thing with regards to current philosophy and politics. We don’t know how we think, so we shouldn’t expect each other to think the same way.
And because we all think in different ways and in different patterns and processes, our choices are similarly affected differently. Let’s (hypothetically) do lunch: you and I go to a fairly nice sit-down restaurant and glance over the menus as the waitress gets our drinks. What do you order? What do I order? Why don’t we order the same thing? If, presumably, we are looking for the best food, there’s an objectively right answer, isn’t there? Well, there should be; after all, we’re both human, we’re made of more or less the same stuff. Shouldn’t we come at the same answer? So why is it that I order the fish but you order something different? Which one of us is wrong? Which one of us is right? Is there a right and wrong in this situation? Let’s say I order first when the waitress comes back. Did my decision affect yours? Did your act of electing to defer ordering affect my decision? Why didn’t we choose the same thing, if we were both looking for the “best” lunch?
People tend to put quite a bit of stock in the decisions and opinions of others. I personally chose to drop meat from my diet because I wanted to watch my weight a bit more (and it’s working, more or less); other folks choose similarly because they have a strong compassion towards living creatures, which I can sympathize with (even if that’s not my motive). Questions of diet, of faith, and of preference are (in my opinion) intensely personal and, while not above reproach– because anyone can decide self-destructively, or decide in a manner to cause harm to others– should be treated with a bit more reverence than they currently are.
In the current media-rich American society, discussions of anything which essentially boils down to personal preference or an individually-scoped decision invariably descend to shouting matches and constant trolling on both sides. Politics, in particular, seems to be the number-one example of this, and probably my biggest bugaboo in society. Politics at a high level is basically the practice of projecting your own personal opinions and preferences on other people, with disregard to and denigration of their own decisions. This is entirely separate from legislation and government, which is (in my opinion) the essential process of maintaining order and safety. Aphorically: Legislation outlaws murder; politics outlaws alcohol. Legislation is required; politics is reprehensible. The fusion of the two in current society is a sad indicator in the breakdown of the capacity for tolerance.
I was reading the other day about how Gandhi, during his London education, was enjoined by his mother to abstain from meat and alcohol. Mind you, this was in the 1880s and 90s. Gandhi found a Vegetarian Society in London, and joined up– launching his leadership career, to famous ends. The thing that struck me was that there was such a thing as a Vegetarian Society in 1890s London (it was in fact organized in 1847 and still exists in modern Britain); a congregation of like-minded people doing their own thing and not out proselytizing their personal point of view (though, to be honest, everyone has the right to say that their opinion is right; the big difference is bullying people into agreeing). You don’t see that today. The big “vegetarian societies” of the modern world are, in the public eye, represented by folks like PETA. I personally have no beef (no pun intended) with the motives behind PETA’s campaigns but at the same time I am quite disturbed by the overzealotry and extremist practices employed by a select portion of their membership. Even the actual Vegetarian Society has become a lobbying group (or at the very least has an arm of itself devoted to lobbying and corporate pressure).
The point is that an opinion that is a personal one, or a choice that is scoped solely around the individual making the decision, should be protected against unnecessary attack by polite society. Discussion of these choices should be permitted, encouraged, and at times even necessary; but at no point and under no circumstances shall an individual be made to feel less worthy or inferior due to a difference of opinion based on such individual-scoped choices. In such cases where these discussions take place, the goal should be understanding and co-existence, as opposed to the current predominant mindset of undermining and conversion. In short: Let like opinions congregate and dislike opinions co-cogitate, both in peace and understanding.