On Actions

Day 16

Still in Finland right now, and I haven't had a conversation with anybody in two weeks, so today I want to think a little about what to say. When I say, or write something, what considerations do I have for what I put down? What can I say, should I say, aught I not to say? I can of course say just about anything. I doesn't even need to be something that makes sense, because if what I say is nonsense then when it is read, heard, or experienced, then we can make sense of it. Nonsense then seems to be more of a phase then a catastrophe. I should say – whatever I want to say. There are very few actual limits there. It may certainly be that there are things I can say that I decide I should not say, such as certain insults, lies, or just badly timed interjections. I'm sure that there are things which I would never say, very mean things and very hopeless things that I can think but which are too rude or two depressing for me to seriously consider letting them escape my mouth. Thus I might read about them, but my manners are too strong to let them loose. The possibilities of my saying them are within the possibilities of the world, but without the possibilities of the world-lines that result in me appearing as the same person to myself. I think that perhaps if I said certain things that people might think that I said them – or would people think that I was drunk, insane, out of my mind, or something of that sort? After all, what do we ascribe the actions of a person on drugs to? Themselves – but it is very different if the person took drugs themselves with an idea of what they were getting into, or if they were forcibly drugged.

I had a grandpa once who, reportedly, while once in the hospital and very sick, was cussing up a storm, insulting and yelling at people. Yet, I never saw him raise his voice in anger any other day of my life. Who was the real person? I can ask the same of myself, for I have a temper. I'll raise my voice and cuss up a storm, and as a child I threw a few video game controllers hard enough to break them. Who is the real me? The guy who gets his stress out of the way by screaming at video games, or the one who spends an hour in the woods singing songs and thinking about the boundless sky? They are of course both me, and they are both things that I might say and do. They are two aspects of me, and I identify both of them as me. I think of myself as a person who can do both of those things, and who can shift faces as it were. We act differently with our friends, family, and coworkers, right? We can treat a customer politely while damning them in our heads for coming in two minutes before closing.

This is just to say that I can say two things at the same time – or rather, I can have two aspects going at the same time. Rather, I can have at least as many aspects as there are people watching me. There is always the internal aspect, but sometimes there are more, sometimes there are outside people watching me and thinking of myself as 'me', sometimes I'm drunk and not 'really me', or I'm 'drunk me'. Sometimes I'm angry, or grieving, or deliriously ecstatic. Sometimes I'm pensive, contemplative, or just gripping about something. What I say is prescribed by who I am. First of all is who I think I myself am, but secondarily is who I think I am seen as. If I'm a teacher in a classroom, then I have taken certain burden on myself. I should act as 'a teacher aught', and if I can't, then I probably wont be a great teacher. Of course, by definition, if I am a teacher then anyway I act is the act of a teacher, but perhaps it is not the act of a good teacher. A good teacher as seen by myself, the students, and the school admin might not be the same kind of teacher though, that I am.

It seems to me that we don't really know for sure what we 'should say', but rather that we often make it up as we go along. We don't always do this, and 'as we go along' can be a very long time. I've been struggling with what it means to be polite for a long time, and so while I have some idea, in other ways I still have just about no idea what it means to be polite, or how I should, or will, act in certain situations. When I'm calm I generally act polite, but when I'm super stressed out I tend to either act very polite, or not polite at all, depending on what sort of emotional back-brace I need to stand up straight at the time. It does seem though that what I should do is linked to two main drivers. The first is what I am doing – am I following a role, doing a duty, being a friend? Then I generally have a goal, and there are dangers and consequences for my actions. Then what I should do is act in a way so as not to have a detrimental result to my goal. This idea doesn't always have a lot of practical rules to it, but acts as more of guideline, a bit of advice. Sometimes it'll be wrong, and sometimes you'll need to act rude to achieve your goal – but sometimes, the majority of the time, I suspect that more and not less Politeness – whatever it is – is the effective answer.

The second driver for how I should act is self-identification. If once you learn that you can kill, or be killed, or that you will be mean, petty, spiteful, and only sometimes generous, then who you think you are changes. You learn something more about yourself, and should acts become a little closer to can acts. Sometimes this is good and grand, and you learn that you can be a hero or a saint. Sometimes this is a terrible truth revealed to you, and you learn that you are quite willing to do very impolite things to achieve your goal. The first and second drivers are really very close to one another, because they are versions of ethics, versions of X + Y = C, where X is the world, Y is at least one want, and C is an action. Lets look at a question – would you be willing to torture and kill someone to save a person you loved?

There are many possible sides to this. Are you a hero because you did was was necessary to rescue them? Are you a villain because you did terrible things? Does success matter or not – what if you did the terrible deed and failed, or did the terrible deed and succeeded, would you feel any differently about them? What if the terrible need is known – or unknown? Do consequences matter or not, next to the rescue? What would the rescued person think of this, would they be willing to be a part of, the reason for, this act? There are no clear answers, or at least, they are only clear if you know a lot about yourself. If you know who you want to save, and you know the price you will pay for the possibility of saving them, then would you pay it? How far would you damn yourself for the sake of another, or what are you willing to give up? At the end of the day, the most important person to judge your actions is yourself. Often we have touchstones, people whose opinion we value and whom we think of as wise and good. Listen to them, because you have judged them to be wise and good. Yet, at the heart of it lies yourself. Wisdom is only advice, only a guideline. You may damn yourself just as much by inaction as by action, and vise-versa. My only advice is – Gnothi Seauton, know thyself, and do not betray thyself.

For our third and final section, we have the question of what you should not say. This is of course much related to what you should say, and can be thought of as just a version of that. So, the same rules apply in general. Since we arrived at the personal vision as important to day, here then I want to talk a little about myself. Or, at least, my intentions toward writing. What I want to write is clear and obtuse enough – I want to write whatever I want to write. I'm shouting into the void here, screaming at the world in my little way, knowing not what I do or why I do it, not down to the ground. I'm simply jumping in the well and trying not to drown, hopefully by coming out the other way. Yet, when we write or speak, we often write or speak in fear. If I speak about racism, ethics, physics, society, ideas, anything at all – then I think it likely that someone will disagree with me. I think it likely that someone will think that I am wrong, or rude, or deluded, or crazy, or mistaken, or hold any number of a thousand negative attitudes towards what I write or what I do. To what extent should I listen to them?

If I stand on my beginnings, the I say that I believe everything. Everything is real, everything is made up of truths, and everything can fit into the world somehow. Everything I run into is understandable, and everything can teach me something. The praise or the blame can both light my way. Yet again and again I find that I am human. I listen more to some than others, I ignore and pass by much, I am ignorant and savage – I can be kind, or I can be cruel. I am not, precisely, one thing or the other, and I hold all possibility within me. People often think of possibility in a positive light, as opening up doors and revealing truths, but possibility can just as much be dark, full of doors closing off , full of weeping and pain that never seems to end. We may walk through the valley of shadows and no fear death – but sometimes, life is pain. “The heart out of the bosom was never given in vain; 'Tis paid with sighs a plenty and sold for endless rue.”*

Yet, while possibility always allows for danger, in turn it allows for salvation. Life is sometimes pain, but life is always hope. If I focus on the good things that possibility suggests, it is because I see enough misery in my daily life. There is always something tragic, and there is always someone who finds my very existence offensive. There is always suffering for every living person, and there is always a hand crying out for help. I do help, sometimes, but my spirit can only handle so much. I am not a particularly strong person I think, nor do I run along the roads of life and joy. I stumble, I pause, I wander and sometimes end up in places that look very like the ones I left. Sometimes we can fly on a faerie path, under hill and over dale past mountain, but othertimes we have to take that steep and stony road. I just keep trying, just keep walking forward in my own personal way, inch by inch. I do not know what to do, bt I know that I do not want to do what I am told.

There are always people telling you what to do and what to think. This is not enough – I decide. Mine the burden and the price. Actions have consequences, and sometimes mine have bad ones jut as much as they have good ones. If one thing seems constant, it is that opinions cause offense. Yet, is opinions always cause offense, then offense alone is not enough to change an opinion, if you are to have any firm opinions to stand upon. We are buffeted by the waves, but we ourselves are waves, and equal to them. We are pushed, but there is also a reaction – we push back.

Just as I do not know what I am doing, I do not know where I am going. I know not the direction of this wave, or what strange shores it shall touch upon. I think that there are very few things which I, ultimately, aught not to do. These aren't particularly based on eternal truth, a social purpose, or a nihilistic chaos. They are based on – me. I aught not injure without cause. I aught not be controlled by another's pain. I aught not to deliberately destroy trust. I aught not to be silent for fear of what may happen. I aught not to hold back just because someone wanted me to. Someone is always some person, and while among all men are strangers and friends,lords and servants, older sisters and younger brothers, lovers and teachers, ancestors and enemies, to me – so am I to them. Friend of all my friends, and foe of all my foes. “For all your days prepare, and meet them ever alike; When you are the anvil, bear – when you are the hammer, strike.”** What do you do when you are blade in-between, buffeted about?

*When I was one-and-twenty by A.E. Housman

**For all your days prepare by Edwin Markham