Integrity

INTEGRITY

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.      11-13

ABSTRACT:  Integrity is defined and discussed.  The barriers to living with integrity are enumerated, and illustrations are given for the consequences of failures of integrity, both for the individual and for others in complex, interdependent societies.  Reasons for these failures are explored, along with methods of improvement.

KEY WORDS:  integrity, responsibility, conscience, self-interest

It is very satisfying and gratifying to live in a way that is true to one’s own values, ideals, and beliefs—to live with integrity.  This both expresses and confirms one’s values, ideals, and beliefs and allows one to more fully and deeply understand and appreciate those values, ideals, and beliefs through repeatedly observing them and their results in one’s own life.  One of the consequences of not living with integrity is losing respect for oneself, which then lowers one’s self-esteem.

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines “integrity” as “an unimpaired condition: soundness; firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values: incorruptibility; the quality or state of being complete or undivided: completeness.”  We respect people who live with integrity, who believe in themselves and are true to themselves and what they believe in (even if they don’t agree with our particular values).  

“Completeness” implies being a complete person, with all of our strengths and weaknesses, all of our wonderful and not so wonderful traits.  “Completeness” would call for knowing oneself fully and completely and accepting it all, without having to divide oneself into “good” and “bad” parts.  Any forced suppression of self (i.e., feeling forced not to be who we really are, as opposed to feeling that we are choosing freely from among the many satisfying ways that each of us can be) results in unhealthy incompleteness and resentment on our part.

“Firm adherence to a set of ... values” is necessary for integrity, and in this case you embody this set of values.  You have a set of values about existence that indicates the relative importance of various activities, the purpose of life, and the rules that you believe should govern conduct between people.  You are the living example of your values and the only one who can clearly and completely illustrate them and represent them in the world.

Having integrity means to stick to what you believe incorruptibly.  If you have integrity, you do not change your stand or your beliefs just because someone else wants you to, or because it would be to your immediate advantage to do so.  If you do not believe in stealing, and you are in a situation in which you could easily take someone’s valuable property without being detected, you do not all of a sudden change your values and take the property, rationalizing that while most of the time you are against stealing, this opportunity is too good to pass up.  

Having integrity requires that we do not distort the truth for our own advantage.  We view ourselves and others objectively, and we are not hypocritical—for example, criticizing others for drinking too much but attacking anyone who accurately points out that we drink too much ourselves.

A person with integrity can tolerate whatever comes with relative ease, including the events in her life and her own emotional reactions.  She can feel battered by external events or by her own strong emotions (such as shame, guilt, or disappointment) but through these experiences is able to stay relatively centered and on an even keel and does not vary significantly in how she views reality, treats others, or carries out responsibilities.  She can be counted on by others in good times and bad times to be the same trustworthy, responsible, and caring person.  The feelings, perceptions, and choices of persons without integrity tend to flow purely from self-interest, so their moods, viewpoints, and behavior will have relatively less consistency or continuity.

If part of integrity is not losing sight of the truth, not changing one’s values based on immediate opportunities, and not being pushed too far off balance by various emotions, then integrity would imply being relatively constant in mood (since emotions can be regulated and reasons for them understood), relatively constant in viewpoint (from seeing the truth and the totality of the situation and from not getting pushed off center by emotion, circumstance, or others’ opinions), and relatively constant in behavior (since having a relatively constant view of reality and managing emotions adequately will tend to produce similar behavior choices over and over in similar circumstances).  A person with integrity acts autonomously and consistently in accordance with her principles, sometimes regardless of negative consequences.  She takes into account the input of others but makes her own decisions about the issues and is not swayed by over-emotionality, loudness, repetition, or manipulations.  She readily perceives the self-serving and unsupported nature of many assertions by human beings about reality, as well as the ad hoc and circumstantial nature of societal customs and beliefs.

If we act with integrity, our values, ideals, and beliefs will be visible to others through our actions, so that they know where we stand and know what to expect from us.  It would not be “integritous” to hold secret our values, ideals, and beliefs and to demonstrate other values, ideals, and beliefs in our public behavior.

We generally associate integrity with positive cultural values, such as dependability, honesty, and reliability, but each individual’s set of values, ideals, and beliefs is somewhat different, and it would seem theoretically possible to uphold and adhere to, with integrity, a set of values, ideals, and beliefs that are different from the cultural norm.  However, if in doing so we were to harm others, then somewhere inside us we would empathically experience that harm, which itself would harm ourselves.

Having integrity means that if you “believe in” being trustworthy, carrying out duties dependably, and doing a job properly, then you are committed to reliably carrying out the assigned tasks and the responsibilities that you have accepted.  If you are a crossing guard, then you will be at your post every day at the right time, and you will pay attention to all pedestrians and cars during your entire shift.  If you are a train engineer, then you will pay attention to the track ahead, to the signals, and to your train’s warning lights and gauges without distraction, even when the train is to some degree on automatic pilot.  If you are the pilot of a plane, you will attend to your plane’s position and condition every minute, in case the plane’s computers miss something or suddenly fail.

Having integrity sometimes requires standing on your own and being yourself, even when some others do not agree with you.  This is especially true when a group of which one is a part is violating one’s own values, ideals, or beliefs.  We usually admire those who can stand against harmful behavior by a group, but it is another matter to do so oneself.  A young man who believes in the dignity of all people but whose friends openly demean African-Americans faces an immediate integrity crisis.  A young woman who gives in to being who her mother wants her to be, to the exclusion of her true self, will face a chronic integrity crisis. For both of these individuals to have integrity and respect themselves, they must stand up for their beliefs.

Not having integrity, then, has to do largely with being false— denying the truth, pretending to be other than who we are, being hypocritical, and not living according to our stated values.  Our challenge is to face who we are and work toward accepting who we are, while at the same time expressing our true selves in the world and having the courage to face whatever rejection or hurt that we fear others will give us if they do not like who we are.

If we are willing to listen to ourselves, most people know when they are violating their own integrity by acting falsely or out of accord with their values, ideals, and beliefs.  This is not conscience but rather an awareness that one’s self-concept and self-image are being violated, so that one is not portraying in behavior what one has claimed about oneself.  This is usually troubling and can be taken as a signal to oneself to more clearly choose how to act—whether to get back into accord with one’s values, ideals, and beliefs or to violate them for some specific reason or with some identified excuse. 

Integrity is often abandoned through hypocrisy or inconsistency. It would be a loss of integrity to say that you believed in loving and comforting yourself while at the same time criticizing and wounding yourself.  It would be a loss of integrity to use your cell phone for calls and texts while driving a train, when you have sworn to make the passengers’ safety your number one concern.

Pros and Cons of Having Integrity and Acting with Integrity

Having integrity gives us the satisfaction of living by our values, ideals, and beliefs, so that we take pleasure in noticing when we express those values, ideals, and beliefs in how we approach life and how we treat others.   Acting with integrity also relieves us from the possibility of feeling duplicitous (hiding, deceiving, or keeping secrets from others) and as if we are betraying our values, ideals, and beliefs by not acting in accord with them.

Others appreciate our integrity, even when they don’t agree with our particular values, ideals, and beliefs, and they particularly value our dependability (assuming that dependability is one of our values).  Others also know that “what they see is what they get” with us, that we are not hiding secret values, ideals, and beliefs that they will be surprised or unhappy to see later on.  They value the assessments and judgments of a person with integrity, since they can have relative confidence that those assessments and judgments will be made without bias.

The major disadvantage of having and acting with integrity is that we are revealed to the world and risk negative reactions from others, especially if our expressed values, ideals, and beliefs are different from those of others.  A person with integrity values acting with integrity enough to tolerate these occasional negative reactions, hoping that he can help others to understand his viewpoint and possibly to benefit from its insights.

The other major cost of having and acting with integrity is that in order to act with integrity, we may sometimes have to do things that we wish we did not have to do, such as doing one’s homework even though one is tired or carrying out a promise even though one would prefer to be doing something else at that moment.

If we have integrity, then we notice when we are tempted to act in contradiction to our values, ideals, and beliefs, and this self-awareness alerts us to the immediate choice we must make between acting with integrity and serving our own immediate interests.  Hopefully our commitment to integrity will be sufficient in most circumstances to allow us to maintain that integrity!

Problems From Failures of Integrity

Not acting with integrity can stem from hypocrisy (claiming to be reliable and to have integrity even though one does not), inconsistency (usually from putting one’s immediate needs above carrying out one’s duties), or fear of others’ reactions, as noted above, but it can also be the result of being unorganized and therefore unable to act consistently.

Consequences for others of one’s lack of integrity can range from minor (taking care of things but often not on time) to catastrophic in cases where crashes of buses, trains, or planes, with many injuries or deaths, occur because of neglect and lack of attention.  Other recent and significant problems resulting from lack of integrity include college classroom cheating, cheating in sports, the fairly widespread practice of  teachers changing students’ test results in order that the class meet state or federal standards for achievement, and, of course, corruption in government.  Crashes of buses, trains, or planes usually are caused by operators losing focus and attention to the road, track, or surroundings, often because there seems to be “nothing happening” and because of boredom in these fairly routinized occupations.  It takes great concentration and determination to maintain attention when bored, and those who carry out these tasks with integrity are certainly to be congratulated!

Classroom cheating has grown exponentially with the availability on the internet of pre-written essays and papers on many, many subjects and with the development of tiny electronic devices (i.e., cell phones, cameras) that can copy for later sale or transmit test questions or answers to others in the same room or outside.  The failure here is the loss of belief that education is meaningful (so why not cheat, when the goal is not to learn but simply to pass) and the refusal to take responsibility oneself for one’s abilities and performance (to pass or fail on one’s own merits), instead justifying cheating by the fact that in many of today’s relatively meaningless and routine jobs, training has little to do with performance and by the belief that if one doesn’t cheat, one will lose out, since “everyone else is doing it.”

Teacher cheating has ballooned recently as society puts more and more pressure (partly unfairly) on teachers to “make” children learn, including government standards that threaten teacher job security of students fail to learn enough.  Teacher cheating is the product of fear of job loss, fear of embarrassment, and perceiving (justifiably or not) that the standards are not reasonable and therefore need not be honored if it means losing one’s job.

Cheating in sports is societally sanctioned, and we make no efforts to control it except by penalties during the game for being caught breaking the rules.  There is no moral pressure on athletes not to cheat (except for using performance-enhancing substances), and many sports fans want their athletes to cheat if that is what it takes to win (and thereby to verify the manhood of both the athlete and the fan).  Due to the pressure to win and the hope that players have of “advancing to the next level,” the attitude among athletes is that cheating is morally OK, that every advantage must be taken in order to win and to look good.  When actually facing opponents on the field of play who are cheating, it takes a great deal of integrity not to do so oneself.

Government corruption (bribery, embezzlement, vote selling, etc.) results from incumbents viewing elected positions or bureaucratic employment as opportunities for personal enrichment rather than opportunities to serve one’s fellow citizens.  Corruption will continue until enough people insist on integrity in those they vote for, instead of looking the other way or tolerating corruption as long as those corrupt actions benefit them personally

It has come to light recently that a large number of scientific research reports prove to be false or unsupported when other experimenters attempt to replicate them.  This is certainly troublesome since we have come to depend on scientific advances in many areas and since basing behavior on actually groundless “findings” can have negative consequences for the public.  There are few attempts to replicate findings anyway, because researchers get far more fame and recognition for the initial finding itself than for the more mundane replication.  Acting with integrity would require that researchers report their findings with the caveat that the findings should not be trusted or used in real life until confirmed through replication.  For the scientific field itself to have integrity would require that the system of rewards for researchers be redesigned so that replication would be expected and rewarded.  For the media who spread the word about these initial findings, to have integrity would require that they append a verbal notice to every such report of the unreliability (unreplicated nature) of the findings.

All of these failures of integrity (and morality) depend fundamentally on the hope that one will not be caught (and embarrassed or punished, depending on the actions), but more sadly also on the lack of concern that people have for their fellow citizens.  Every improper action that we do affects others.

How To Have Greater Integrity

As noted above, not acting with integrity can stem from putting one’s immediate needs above living with integrity (with or without a hypocritical excuse, claiming to be reliable and to have integrity even though one does not or has it only episodically), from fear of others’ reactions, or from simply being too unorganized to act consistently in accord with one’s values, ideals, and beliefs.  Increasing one’s integrity can be approached in several ways, if one cares to do so.  (Not everyone will want to act with greater integrity, but it is unlikely that such a person would have read this far in the essay!  If one is unconvinced about the need for acting with greater integrity, then consider again the benefits and costs of having and acting with integrity identified above, and make a choice about whether integrity is important enough to tolerate the costs.)

To change or grow, it helps to have a vision of what change would look like.  Pick someone whom you admire for his or her integrity (or several people), and get a clear image of what you would like to become with respect to integrity.

Be clear about what your values, ideals, and beliefs are.  (Values are the characteristics of yourself and others that you admire and feel good about—e.g., honesty, loyalty, helpfulness.  Values, in this context, are not things that you value, like family or soccer, although loyalty to family could be a value and playing your best soccer every minute could be a value.  Ideals are your picture of how people can live the best lives.  Many ideals will be restatements of your values but perhaps with more emphasis or with a higher standard.  “Honesty” might be a value; “being honest all the time” could be an ideal.)  (This exercise will also give you a chance to notice if any of your ideals are so idealistic as to be unrealistic and therefore not helpful in practice or with regard to realistic growth on your part.) 

Give this some thought, and write down your values, ideals, and beliefs, even if it is just some notes rather than a full description.  If you can’t identify them, think about what makes you feel warm, secure, and good when you watch other people’s behavior and when you experience other people’s behavior toward you.

Then, consider whether you are living in accord with your values, ideals, and beliefs.  Think about the details of your daily life and how you express (or don’t express) your values, ideals, and beliefs in practice.  You can then identify ways in which you would like to better represent your values, ideals, and beliefs in your behavior.  Write these down, too, specifically, such as “since treating those I love with concern and compassion is an ideal for me, I will work on being in a better frame of mind when I get up in the morning, so I can greet the rest of the family in a positive way” or “since one of my values is personal responsibility, I will stop making excuses for when I mess up.”

If  there are specific barriers for you to acting with greater integrity, such as lack of commitment, lack of organization, and fear, consider some changes.  If you are not fully committed to having and acting with integrity, so that you do act with integrity sometimes but not all the time, it means that you do not perceive the positive benefits of integrity to be worth giving up the option to do what you want sometimes instead of acting with integrity.  Since you value this option more than your integrity, you will continue to abandon integrity when you want to, even if you pretend to others that you have integrity.  They will eventually perceive your duplicity.  Perhaps at some point in the future, with more experience, you will decide that integrity is valuable enough to give up the option to act without integrity for your immediate gain.

General disorganization is due either to lack of mental capacity for greater organization or secret desire to have the option to get what one wants using the excuse of disorganization.  If one lacks the mental capacity for greater organization, then one must be satisfied with what one has, or develop some compensating mechanisms that will support greater organization, such as keeping a notebook with a calendar with one at all times and doing one’s best to write down dates and obligations every time they become known, as well as to refer to those notes every time a new commitment is asked of one.  These notes might usefully include a description of behaviors that one wants to do again in the future in the same circumstance (such as refrain from arguing further when discussions become shouting matches), since writing these down may help one to remember them, and reviewing one’s notebook will provide reinforcement of these commitments to oneself.

If your disorganization is due to a desire to use it as an excuse for selfish actions, then change will occur only when you decide that you will get more out of life by giving that up and acting with greater integrity.  Once again, this will come down to doing what you believe will be best for your life in an overall sense.

The most common cause of acting without integrity is fearing the reactions of certain others if one acts in ways that are consistent with what one really believes is right or best.  No one likes to be rejected or criticized, and sometimes acting with integrity leads to rejection and criticism just for being different and because of the challenge that one’s difference poses to others’ morality or integrity.  If one refuses to join in with bullying, for example, when one’s acquaintances are bullying someone, one’s withdrawal from the bullying is a tacit if not overt indication of disapproval, and this may well be responded to with criticism or even with some violence toward oneself.  It is easier in such a situation to appear to go along with others’ behavior and avoid their rejection or criticism, and it is harder to act according to one’s position that bullying is harmful and therefore not acceptable.  An even more difficult situation would be a forced religious conversion, when the penalty for refusing is death!

In most such situations, however, the costs are not life-threatening but one does risk loss of friendship or support or being left out of a group.  The bottom line is deciding which is worse—one’s own internal shame or guilt for not living according to what one believes is right and proper, or the negative reactions of others.  If the consequences are life-threatening, then perhaps we may be excused for going along with things and not expressing what we believe, but in most cases, it is feasible to act with integrity and simply tolerate the rejection or criticism.  If we can support ourselves with our good self-esteem, then the fact that others cannot accept certain aspects of us becomes a nuisance to be dealt with, rather than a crisis of identity and

hurt feelings. Standing up for what you believe in may result in having different friends, hopefully friends who value your integrity.  Occasionally acting in accord with one’s values and beliefs causes some change in others’ behavior over time, and feeling that one has stood up for what one values and believes in is a very gratifying feeling.  We cannot realistically act with integrity consistently without bringing about some negative reactions, but you may prefer to take those risks and to accept that “you can’t please everybody all of the time.”

Think about some of the situations in which you would like to be true to yourself and to what you believe.  Consider the likely consequences and how you would feel in each circumstance.  If you can tolerate the negative consequences, and it is clear to you that you would feel much better about yourself if you did act with integrity, then you are in a position to have greater integrity and to take some risks in acting with integrity and expressing more of your true self in public.

If you can’t quite bring yourself to act with integrity in some specific circumstance, it may help to consult with someone whom you view as having integrity.  Talking things over with someone who understands is usually helpful and may give you the perspective to take a risk.  People who act courageously usually have some fear, so don’t let the presence of fear automatically stop you!

Since people in general admire and have greater trust in people with integrity, if you act with integrity, you will be contributing to the lives of others and making it possible for the various groups that you are a part of to function better.

Being yourself with integrity is the crowning glory of one’s efforts to be oneself and to have good self-esteem.  Having personal integrity is expressing your true self in the world and being consistent with your beliefs and with who you really are. Being yourself fully and freely and feeling good about it will bring great joy to your life.

essays\integrity

Means Versus Ends

MEANS VERSUS ENDS

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.   1-14

ABSTRACT:  Psychological aspects of the means versus ends issue are explored.  Taking responsibility for our actions is urged.

KEY WORDS:  means, ends, means vs. ends, morality, selfishness, self-servingness

The means vs. ends issue can be stated as the ambivalence that we have about taking actions that benefit some (usually us) while doing harm to others or the world.  Most of our actions do affect others, often harming them to some degree, but so many of these negative consequences are assumed to be trivial that we generally don’t frame the question as means versus ends unless direct taking of human life is involved. 

Every action that we take affects the world and therefore other people as well in some way, however small.  Every piece of litter, every electricity-generating wind machine used, and every lump of coal burned affects the environment and other people, but since we look at them as only actions in the moment, and we don’t see immediate negative effects, we incorrectly judge that there have been no effects. 

Typical vignettes for discussion of means-end issues involve provocative choices between various negative outcomes (which person or persons to save and which to let die), but in the real world, all of our actions affect others and the world, so perhaps it would be more productive and far-reaching to deal simply with the decision-making process, whether or not we would traditionally have categorized the issue at hand as means-end or not.  (Another view of this might be that we should add all decisions to the means-end category, since they all should command our attention and none are truly simple.)

The usefulness of the typical between-a-rock-and-a-hard place means-end examples is to hopefully make us more aware that choices matter, that no matter what we choose to do, there will be consequences.  The insights to be gained from means-end discussions are that choosing to take any action leads to negative consequences of some type (as well as, hopefully, the desired positive consequences), and that there are negative consequences both for others and for ourselves in addition to any positive outcomes for ourselves or others.

To take the use of missiles or drones in war as an example, by using missiles or drones we may keep some of our soldiers from dying by keeping them off of the battlefield, but (a) it inevitably results in some civilian “collateral” damage deaths; (b) repeated use of drones removes some of the horror of war from our awareness and therefore makes us a bit more callous about war and about the lives of people in other countries; (c) it makes wars cheaper and therefore more possible to conduct; (d) it does not lead as effectively as occupying territory to cessation of fighting; and (e) it may lead to more wars in total (and more of our soldiers dying), since the immediate and visible cost of wars has been lowered.  Human beings usually opt for the immediate positive benefit (saving our own lives or money) over negative consequences in the future, even though the total of those negative consequences may be great enough to outweigh the immediate positive result.  This is the essential dilemma of these choices, and the only way for our decisions to be different would be for us to adopt a decision-making routine that we disciplined ourselves to use in every case that would help us overcome our immediate benefit bias.

Drones may also be used to “assassinate” persons whom the U. S. presumes to be enemies, working with or for Al-Quaeda, for example.  This usually occurs in countries in which the U. S. does not have a military presence and is done as a convenience.  In other words, we can kill someone we want to kill in someone else’s country without ever “being in” that country.  It could be argued, as above, that this may save some of our soldier’s lives, but the negative effects are that (a) it weakens the sovereignty of all nations; (b) it suggests to other countries that they need not police their countries for these persons, since the U. S. will do it; (c) it makes clear to other countries that they are free to do the same on U. S. soil (assassinate those whom they view as enemies without setting foot in the U. S.); and of course (d) it may well kill innocent civilians, just as in an active war zone.

In society and in all of our personal choices, we would do well to recognize and take seriously all of the results of our choices, even the indirect and future results.  There are prices to be paid for using drones to kill, and we will pay them, even if we decide that the pluses outweigh the minuses.

To use some other illustrations about choices that have both positive and negative consequences, making credit easily available in our society (a means) has had the predicted and desired effect of boosting consumer spending (the desired end), as well as providing income for credit care companies, but it has also created a society in which saving is unpopular, family financial stability is weakened, and millions more people are going to suffer in retirement in the future (all generally unanticipated and undesirable ends).  Is the convenience of credit cards worth these other consequences?  It’s far too simple to fall back on the “people are responsible for themselves and should make better decisions” excuse.  Since large numbers of people in fact don’t take adequate responsibility for themselves when immediate versus long-term consequences are their choice, and since those who make these bad choices will end up being a tax burden on the rest of us, perhaps we should re-think our credit policy!

We have eliminated the military draft, a supposedly desirable thing, since it frees up more citizens to do other things with their lives without interruption, but this means has also created a non-volunteer armed forces, so that most of the population has little personal idea of the sacrifices and dangers of armed conflict and is therefore much more willing to allow the government to go to war, since they don’t have to be in danger themselves.  (All of the lip service honoring of veterans these day has a self-serving component as well, as people thank their lucky stars that they didn’t have to fight.) 

This effect is augmented by the tendency lately for administrations to borrow most of the money for a war, rather than increasing current taxes to pay for it, so once again, citizens don’t see any immediate negative consequences for themselves of the country engaging in a war.  Borrowing has allowed the government to engage in a war (which sometimes no doubt is in the national interest), but it has also had the effect of making citizens think that they will not have to be financially burdened by a war (which is false since they will eventually have to pay for the borrowing).

We have greatly broadened the entertainment available to us (a seemingly desirable end), but this has also decreased the population’s activity level and made them more passive and dependent on fantasy wish fulfillment than before (an undesirable end).

We have made great strides in drugs that affect our feelings and reduce pain (both legal and illegal!), but this means has also resulted in a population that believes that it shouldn’t have to feel pain and is therefore less able to tolerate difficulties and deal with adversity.

Means vs. ends comes into play with respect to waste products and the environment in so far as we want certain ends (clean environments, warm homes, inexpensive transportation, plastic products, inexpensive manufacturing), and we have always been willing to use means that resulted in using up the world’s resources and creating polluting waste products and environmental impacts that we didn’t have to deal with or pay for.  Now those waste products and environmental impacts are having enough impact (which will get even worse if we don’t do something about it) to make us realize that the means that we are used to using are unacceptable and that we must find other means to achieve those same ends, if we can.  Human beings don’t like to be restricted or confined by limitations, and so we struggle with our dilemma of not wanting to give up our unacceptable means even though we can see their unacceptable impacts.

In global warming we finally are facing up to how millions of individual “no effect” actions add up to quite notable and sometimes dangerous effects.  Perhaps those who resist the idea that human beings are affecting the weather by their actions are resisting partly out of a wish not to have to recognize the fact that every one of their actions has an effect.  People used to simply throw out their garbage in the street and tolerate the stench that resulted.  Now we cart it all away, so that the homeowners and businessowners don’t have to “be affected,” but it is carted somewhere and piled up into true mountains of waste, or incinerated which adds to global warming, or dumped in the ocean which changes the species balances and temperature of the oceans.  Wind turbines are cited as “sustainable,” but they slow down the global flow of air, no matter how little that is for each turbine, and this has an effect on the global weather pattern.

We have been able to employ these look-the-other-way “solutions” to our impact on the environment only because the planet is huge, and we do not directly observe the consequences of our actions.  For tens of thousands of years, there were not enough people on the planet to overwhelm the natural decay processes inherent in the rest of nature, so human waste did not build up, but now there are enough people that their bodily waste products along with their energy uses and manufacturing waste products are rapidly adding up to something quite significant.

THE ISSUES

As stated above, it is more useful for us to focus on the total array of benefits and negative consequences of all of our choices and not just those more traditionally labeled as means-end issues.  The primary difficulties in all decisions, besides distinguishing accurate from inaccurate information, are that (1) we are biased toward immediate as opposed to future consequences and (2) we are biased toward making too much of the desirable consequences and too little of the negative consequences, because we are biased toward the option that we want to take even before we consider all of the consequences.

Even if we decide to make better decisions by identifying without bias all relevant factors, we still have no calculus with which to accurately weigh up the pros and cons to see how they balance.  We have no table to assign some sort of number to how much a child’s life is “worth” in contrast to the life of an older person or whether a lifetime of mild guilt will be less or more important than giving up something we want right now in order to “do the right thing.”  The best we poor, limited human beings can do is to make as clear and honest a comparison as we can and then accept the partly rational and partly emotional “reading” that we get in our minds from that.

THE SOLUTION

The solution here is to learn how to make better decisions—in particular to discipline ourselves to consider as objectively as possible all of the consequences of our actions, for ourselves and others, both positive and negative, both immediate and deferred, before making a choice.

In order to make the best choices among all options, it may be essential to force yourself to consider solutions that you don’t like.  Human beings have a strong innate drive to procreate, but clearly it is going to be possible within the next hundred years to have so many people on the planet that many will starve and crowding will increase the suicide rate.  Considering this as a real possibility (instead of refusing to consider it by stating as an article of faith that “science will find a way to feed us all, no matter how many people there are,” may be crucial to the survival of our species.

Another example of an unpalatable but perhaps necessary “solution,” this one to the problem of waste, would be to require all factories and other production facilities to process (not store) all waste on their factory premises or to contract for its proper disposal.  This would mean no more dumping waste into rivers or oceans, no more carting things to a landfill, and no moving to a new site when the old one gets too polluted.  This would be costly for some businesses, but then consumers would know and be paying the actual cost of production instead of the actual cost minus the cost of processing waste that has in the past been less expensively placed in the environment where it can affect the lives of everyone.  We will no doubt be very reluctant to take these very difficult actions in the future, because we are used to depending on the planet to process our waste for free instead of paying for this processing ourselves.

A routine of steps for making fact-based decisions that take feelings and desires and all outcomes into account contains the following steps.  The method requires a deliberate and unhurried approach, taking the time to reflect and to allow thoughts and feelings to surface that may be buried or unfamiliar (from Ebbe--Problem Analysis).

Write out a description of the problem.

Examine all of the elements of your description of the problem, to ensure that they are accurate and true.  Make sure that your "facts" are facts and not opinions or wishful thinking.  Admit it if you don't know something. 

Carefully consider the impact on your problem description of your motives, your feelings, and how you wish reality to be.  Refine your problem description by removing distortions due to your motives, feelings, and wishful thinking.

Are there deadlines or important timelines concerning the problem?

How have things in the past led to the problem? 

Who are all of the other people who are actively involved in the problem? 

What are the views of others about this problem?

What are all of the different feelings that you have about the problem or aspects of the problem?

What have you yourself contributed to making this a problem or to its lack of solution so far?

How do you feel about yourself in relation to the problem?

What are all of the potential solutions to the problem that you can think of?  Be open to those solutions that you do not initially feel good about.

What are the moral and ethical questions raised by your potential solutions?  What are the moral and ethical issues of not acting at all?  Consider these carefully, since these are probably the elements of decisions that come from deepest within us.  Get moral/ethical consultation if you can’t reach clarity yourself.

Narrow down the potential solutions by excluding those that you could not carry out for lack of ability or resources or because the solution would not be morally palatable to you.

Notice which remaining solutions will work only if you can get someone else to do what you want. 

What are all of the outcomes of each remaining potential solution, including outcomes far in the future and the impact of your possible actions on others?  Be open to all outcomes, especially those that you know you would prefer to ignore.

What will be the remaining unsolved elements of the problem after each solution you are considering is implemented?

What are the unintended results of each potential solution? 

Are there legal ramifications of any of the possible solutions (or of non-solution)?

Examine the actions and resources necessary for each remaining solution, to ensure that you have the ability and the resources for each.  Discard those that are not feasible.

How would you feel about yourself after solving the problem in each of the remaining possible ways?

Make a list of the uncertainties and major questions you still have, if any, about your solutions, and talk them over with a trusted adviser.

Choose the solution that seems most desirable, given--

         the actions necessary

         the resources needed

         the outcomes anticipated

         your feeling about each solution

These steps of thinking carefully about all aspects of the decision-making process help greatly to clarify options, but in the end they do not help us to evaluate those options.  In order to choose between options that all have both positive and negative consequences, we must use our sense of values to determine which consequences are more important than others, and we must “add up” in our minds the sums of the net effects of those positive and negative consequences for each option.

Allow yourself some time (at least overnight and preferably a couple of days) to let yourself fully "feel" the results of your deliberations.  Pay attention to nagging questions, uncertainties, and new considerations that come to your mind.  Re-evaluate your chosen solution if necessary.  If you don't "feel right" about the solution, back up and reconsider the alternatives or generate new ones.  (In some cases, the best solution may be not to act!)

HELPFUL ATTITUDES

Your consideration of how your potential actions could affect others will be much more effective if you care at least somewhat about others’ feelings and welfare. 

Having adequate empathy skills is also very helpful in this regard.

Greater awareness of how important other people are to our meeting our own needs moves us toward considering the benefits and costs to everyone of our decisions and not just the benefits and costs to ourselves.

Your choices will be better informed and more humane if you believe that in the long run you will gain more rewards and get more out of life if you take others' needs and feelings into account when you act, trying not to harm them and sometimes allowing them to meet their needs at the expense of your own immediate gains.

Your choices will be more effective if you have the best fact base possible for the choice.  Distinguishing reality from opinion and distinguishing reality from our emotion-induced wishes and distortions of reality are just as essential for this as using only trustworthy fact sources.

Your choices will be more effective if you have as much commitment to the truth as you do to your immediate gratification, since this will at least minimize the bias that we grow up with toward choosing the immediate gratification and ignoring the facts.

(For further explanation of removing distortions from your thinking and the cultivation of empathy and social concern to help make better decisions, see (Ebbe) “Better Decisions,” “Empathy,” and “Gaining Wisdom.”)

USING THESE IDEAS IN YOUR LIFE

You as an individual can take the first step toward making the world a better place by adopting these methods of decision-making in your own life.  You can pay attention to all of the negative as well as the positive consequences of your choices, especially those that are likely to occur in the future.  You can make a commitment to seeking the truth and to recognizing how you distort reality in order to take care of your immediate feelings.  You can check out every one of your thoughts and opinions, to see if they are really true or if they contain distorted wishful thinking.  You can develop greater empathy and take your impact on others more seriously.  You can pay attention to how much others contribute to your life, and you can cultivate a personal attitude of gratitude for your life and for what you have in life.  You can acknowledge and honor your motives, while removing their distorting effects from your problem-solving assertions.  It sounds like a lot to do, but you can do it little by little, using available attention to consider each of these items as they come up in your daily life. 

The most effective single thing you can do to improve your decision-making is to wonder for each of your thoughts if it is really true, given what you know or could know if you cared to, and examining how your wishful thinking might be coloring your thinking. 

You could teach your children to value the truth and to use it to make their lives better, by your example and by examining with them the consequences of their decisions and their distortions of reality.

You can make a difference in the world and improve your own life, too, by examining all of the positive and negative consequences of your actions, by taking others' needs and feelings appropriately into account in your decisions and actions and by getting the most accurate information that you can to help you to understand the issues.

essays\meansvsends

Lifelong Adherence to Expectations from Childhood

LIFELONG ADHERENCE TO EXPECTATIONS FROM CHILDHOOD

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.    11-13

ABSTRACT:  The positive and negative consequences of continuing in adult life to attempt to fulfill what we believed was desired of us in childhood are explored.

KEY WORDS:  ideals, childhood, shaping, roles

As children, all of us have some understanding of behaviors and roles that we believe our parents or caregivers want us to do or fill, as well as those that they wish to discourage.  These  behaviors are typically rewarded or punished (being “good,” being “bad,” talking back, playing the piano well, playing football well, doing well in school, acting more maturely than would be expected for one’s age, being nice to others, being selfish, being tough, “being a man,” becoming a doctor, etc.).  Most of us respond to these rewards and punishments by trying to do what adults want of us, although depending on the form and degree of those rewards and punishments, some resistance or rebellion may occur.

If internalized, these expectations become ideals for us, which is a step beyond expectations and involves more internal conflict, shame, guilt, and/or self-punishment if we view ourselves as failing to live up to them.  An ideal is what we are “supposed to be” (or do) rather than just what adults want us to be or do or expect of us.

If most of this guidance or coercion is aimed at personally or socially productive behavior (brushing your teeth regularly, treating people well), then going along with it is usually in our best interest, but if an element of this isn’t consistent with our personality or talents, then to continue as adults to hold it as an ideal and attempt to fulfill it can create problems.  During development, we are capable of trying all sorts of behaviors, but as adults, conflicts between who we are and who we believe we are supposed to be are more serious.  If the expectations and ideals that we have accepted growing up are not compatible with our personalities and talents, then it is important to deal with whether to continue to please others by conforming to and honoring the ideals that we have accepted from others, or to take the risky step of changing our ideals to some that are more compatible with our adult views of ourselves and of the world. 

If one has been expected to become a doctor, and one has accepted this as an ideal, and if one has the intellectual capability and is accepted into medical school, then before starting medical school one should ask whether this “feels right” to one in terms of one’s other values and pleasures.  If one is inspired by painting considerably more than by learning about the body, then there is a conflict, and one must weigh the rewards of pleasing one’s parents by being a doctor (and the rewards to oneself of the role and career) while missing out on an art career, versus disappointing one’s parents and pursuing art as a career.  The consequences of changing directions might be even greater if one had been expected to become a professional athlete but then changed to art!

This conflict is even more intense if it is not just a question of pleasing or disappointing one’s parents, but also involves still trying to gain parents’ unconditional acceptance by pleasing them.  It is much easier to risk making the change to do what one wants to do if one is confident that parents will still love and accept one, but much harder if one expects the parents to always thereafter view one as a failure and refuse to “forgive” one.

Many of us are in this bind of fearing to displease parents because of feared disapproval or rejection, and we rarely talk about it with anyone, because we sense, correctly, that it would reveal a weakness that would be more appropriate for us as children than for us as adults.  As a result, many people soldier on doing what they don’t really want to do, out of fear of disapproval and rejection.  You can check out whether you are being affected by this dilemma by being honest with yourself about whether you are really doing what you want to do.  This applies to every area—your job or vocation, whether to have children, where to live, who to marry, and so forth and so on.  If you would really rather have your life arranged differently, what keeps you from doing it?  Leaving aside the practicalities of capabilities and costs and considering only others’ reactions, whose disapproval, disappointment, or rejection keeps you from making some changes?

Another possible issue is that one has unquestioningly accepted the values and plans of others for one and therefore doesn’t know what one’s own values, strengths, weaknesses, and desires are.  If this is the case, then a closer self-exploration is in order before either going forward or making changes, so that one can compare who one is with what others want for one.  Introspective reading can help with this exploration, as can trying out activities that seem interesting in order to find out what one actually enjoys and feels fulfilled by.

If you have made life choices in order to please others or gain their love or acceptance, imagine what it would be like not to have to prove yourself any longer, what it would be like to be free to be you no matter who that was.  You might miss the security of knowing what you are “supposed to do,” but the relaxation and release from a straitjacket of expectations (and ideals) could be even more valuable.  You would no longer have to cringe every time you wonder if something you have done or said has angered or disappointed significant others.  You would be free to be happy.  You may have derived some satisfaction or happiness from your success in pleasing others,, but the joy in being yourself and using all of your talents in the world would far surpass that.

Of course, making changes after one’s life is already established in certain important ways has its practical difficulties (getting additional training, moving to another city, how one’s spouse and children will feel about the changes, etc.), and we must always be realistic about these new goals.  It is not productive to set new goals that are fantasies and not compatible with one’s actual abilities or are simply not possible in the environment.  Those in boring jobs that do not use their abilities are in an especially difficult position, since in modern industrial society, many tasks are needed that are in fact boring and make little use of personal qualities or abilities, and alternatives may be hard to find.

To risk the disapproval, disappointment, or rejection of significant others is a major challenge, but not to act risks self-hatred and self-rejection, which can be even worse over the long run and which prevents you from achieving the degree of maturity that you might otherwise achieve.  It may be better overall to do what is “right” for you and resolve to work out as best you can any relationship consequences.  Even if you cannot get the acceptance of significant others, it may be best for you to do what is “right” for you and to feel good about yourself.  The key to making this shift possible is for you to no longer hold yourself to a rule above all other rules of always pleasing those other people.  It is also not unreasonable to reverse the direction of these expectations, so that you believe that they “should” accept you as you are (at least as long as you are treating them decently), rather than expecting yourself to always please them.  As an adult, you have a right to do what is best for you, as long as it is not unreasonably harming others, and it is not reasonable in this day and age for parents to determine their childrens’ important life choices.  You will probably have to work with yourself for a while to convince yourself of the appropriateness of this role reversal, but it is probably in the interest of your emotional health and your happiness to make this shift.

This analysis has focused on roles and achievements, but the reasoning and value choices apply equally to all expectations of others—degree of sociableness, customs of all sorts, conformance, dress, agreeableness, the assumption that one will take care of parents in old age, etc., etc.  The argument is the same in every case.  What is the best thing for you under the circumstances and given careful consideration of all of the consequences of each possible choice?  These consequences include our own emotional reactions to our choices, consequences far in the future as well as more immediate ones, how our behavior impacts others, and the reactions of others to whatever behavior we choose (and our reactions to their reactions, etc.). 

This is not an argument for simply doing in every case what would seem to be more immediately enjoyable, since long-term rewards can be much more important than immediate enjoyment.  One might appropriately decide that the best thing for one’s life is to stay home and take care of one’s parents if that will be emotionally rewarding and financially feasible.

Every option has negative as well as positive consequences.  If

we choose an artistic career, then we should be prepared to give up excessive alcohol use, since it probably would impair the physical abilities needed to produce our art (and perhaps our artistic judgment as well), and we should accept that we must also find a way to prepare for retirement, given the fact that art often pays poorly and given that it would be unfair to other family members for us to presume that we could sponge off of them in old age.

These arguments are intended to be freeing but not to support irresponsibility.  They rather attempt to shift responsibility more to yourself, so that you rather than others are making the final decisions about your behavior and your benefits and losses.  For some people the choice to reject parental expectations of care in old age would be the right one, if that choice was necessary to enable them to have an extremely rewarding career (and they might choose later on to take care of parents anyway).  For some people, it could be the wrong choice, if while it enabled them to have the desired career, it also resulted in them suffering from lifelong guilt about doing so that they could not resolve.  Choice is complicated, but in general we feel better about ourselves and our lives if we make the choices rather than acceding to the wishes of others!

There is an assumption, of course, underlying this line of thinking that your choices for yourself will be better than those of others for you.  This is generally true, because we know ourselves and our needs and feelings better than others (if we have taken the time and effort to do so), and because the wishes of others for us are so often contaminated by their natural wish for us to be and act in ways that will benefit them, even if they are to our detriment.  If you are one of the few whose cognitive capacities are not sufficient for making these choices for yourself, then you may wish to consult with someone with more experience and better judgment to help you.

essays\roleandidealchangesinadulthood

Helpful Learning For High School Students

HELPFUL LEARNING FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.     11-13

ABSTRACT:  Current high school education neglects a number of areas that are very important for all individuals to understand in modern society.  These are enumerated, along with some recommendations for teaching style.

KEY WORDS:  high school, education, secondary education, virtues

Children in our society learn from parents and family, peers, in school, from churches and other institutions, and from their daily observations.  There is no overall organization to this learning, and children vary in their interest in learning, inquisitiveness, and persistence in finding learning opportunities regarding various topics.  As society has become more complex and family traditions less honored, many parents have depended on school (and sometimes church) to teach children essential knowledge.  Some schools have scrambled to add courses and course content (sex education, how to study, how to apply for college, how to apply for jobs) to ensure that children do get essential learning, but many people in our society live their adult lives without adequate understanding of topics needed for full participation in modern society.  This is particularly true for financial and economic understanding but is certainly not limited to that area.  Most readers will be aware of having no training in some of the topics below and having to gain some understanding on their own later in life.  Much of the learning obtained later by chance or from other individuals is faulty or incomplete, so children would benefit from parents and schools in particular ensuring that some types of trustworthy learning opportunities are made available in these areas.  Many of these essential topics could be adequately covered in a single lesson, but some would require three or four hours.  The following identifies essential areas of knowledge for full participation in our society.

how to study

how to apply for a job

how to apply for college or other training

how to balance a checkbook

how to a buy house and to decide whether one can pay for it or

  not

how to choose and make investments, especially for retirement

how to prepare financially for retirement and how to manage

  retirement psychologically

understanding the economy, where various jobs are, how the state

  of the economy affects job opportunities, investment, and

  saving decisions

having a healthy, fulfilling primary relationship

basics of sex, safe sex, and reproduction

parenting (goals for parenting, what makes for a healthy child,

  and what helps children mature)

how to vote

how to arrive at a position on a political issue

how to get what one needs from government

how to contribute to the community at large

health basics (care of body, nutrition)

healthcare (how to find it and pay for it)

understanding and dealing with alcohol, gambling, smoking and

  other addictions

social interaction basics

how to work with others and how to cooperate to get what you

  want

effective communication

having empathy for others

balancing the needs and wants of self and others

The following are less “practical” but equally important for flourishing in life (and much less likely to be overtly taught than those above).  Generally we expect children to learn these latter items by observing and imitating significant others, but those others are usually unaware of their responsibility to provide this modeling, and many are unable to model effective knowledge and practice of these items, making it even more important for society to provide additional learning opportunities for them.

self-awareness (ability to accurately evaluate oneself and make

  choices about what kind of person to be)

acceptance of self, others, and our existential situation

self-esteem and dealing with superiority/inferiority issues and

  rejection

how to think usefully and accurately

taking the future into account when making decisions and

  choosing behaviors

taking others into account when making decisions and choosing

  behaviors

reality testing (how to know what is real)

managing emotions

self-control and how it benefits one

the value and benefits of living a virtuous life, including

         honesty

         responsibility

         acceptance

         love

         empathy

         equality

         cooperation

         fairness

         self-control

         autonomy

         skills for dealing with one's emotions

If high school or similar educational enterprises were to provide learning opportunities for any of the above, those opportunities, to be maximally effective, should be done with clear explanations, many examples and discussion opportunities, and practice opportunities, rather than being presented in a typically “academic” way.

essays\highschoolbasics

An Answer to Post-Modernism and Deconstructionism

AN ANSWER TO POST-MODERNISM AND DECONSTRUCTIONISM

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.    12-13

ABSTRACT:  The paradoxes of deconstructionism and post-modern thought are outlined briefly, and an existential position that allows a way forward is described.

KEY WORDS:  post-modernism, deconstructionism, philosophy

The two world wars, the Cold War, the insecurities of the nuclear age, and the further loss of traditional values due to modern consumerism and mobility have increased greatly the uncertainty of many human beings about how to live and what could be depended on for guidance and security, as expressed in existentialist assertions of our aloneness and questioning of our basic existence.  (Interestingly, the root issues in this social change were sensed by philosophers in the late 1800’s, particularly by Friedrich Nietzsche, greatly anticipating the consciousness of such things by the educated public.)  The greater detachment of human beings from human contact in the Industrial Age, which again reduces experiential certainties and security, has been augmented in recent years by the information revolution and its e-mail and cell phone technologies. 

Recently, in the area of philosophy, deconstructionism has questioned our ability to describe reality in language, and post-modern thought asserts that because of language inadequacies and other human limitations, we are quite unable to determine what is true or to identify a meaningful “reality” at all.  These philosophical movements have added to and expressed the underlying despair that human beings in developed countries feel about finding meaning, satisfaction, and fulfillment in the modern life (and, of course, since philosophical movements are language-based efforts to describe our human existence and experience, they must define themselves as failures even as they struggle to debunk much of what we thought we believed!)

Very briefly, deconstructionism basically points out the inadequacies of our language and our use of language in describing anything (our experience, the world around us).  If we think carefully about what we say (and think), this view becomes clear.  Try to define “chair,” for example, in words that give a complete and unambiguous definition, and you will find that it is actually difficult, even though you “know” what a chair is.  How many legs does it have?  Must it have legs at all?  Does it have a back?  Is a beanbag a chair?  Is a suspended wicker basket to sit in a chair?  Is the crotch of a tree a chair?  You may be tempted to give up in disgust, saying “Everybody knows what a chair is, so why bother?”  This is true, as far as it goes, since you and those around you are seldom confused when any of you refer to a chair.  We must conclude, however, that our communication is filled with these references (chair, love, happiness, freedom, etc.) that are all somewhat ambiguous when we try to agree on a single definition, so in real life, it seems that we must be satisfied with verbal communications that are productive but ambiguous.

Similarly, if we pay close attention to our thoughts and awarenesses, we observe a dizzying sequence of brief moments of ideas, perceptions, feelings, etc.  What we communicate to others or put into words to ourselves is a very small selection out of all of that, so it is clear that we can never fully describe our total experience, to others or to ourselves in a reflective way, and since we cannot record or communicate our total experience, it seems questionable to think that reasoning based on a small subset of our experience could provide us with accurate guidance about living.

Things are even worse in the area of feelings.  Try to define happiness or grief.  In the external world we usually have a physical referent to work with (though not in the quantum world).  With feelings, we have no referent.  If we consider why we react emotionally to certain things in certain ways, we see that we are born with brains that have, because of their construction (their similar parts and neural pathways), tendencies to produce certain emotions or feelings that are probably roughly similar, though not identical, in all of us, but that we each have somewhat different conditioning with regard to them.  Some of us are more sensitive to shame induction than others, while some of us are more excitable than others.  Some seem to feel their feelings more strongly than others.  Some of us have been abused and have some over-developed fears.  Some cultures use shame more than others to shape behavior, and some use guilt more.  We know that our emotional state is affected by how our brains are operating because chemicals that affect brain chemistry can change our emotional states.  We must conclude that since our brains are all just a little different and our life experiences are different from those of anyone else, each of us will have slightly different views of and experiences of our feelings.

The upshot of all this is that if we use language to communicate with each other about more complex notions than “chair,” it becomes a real challenge to establish definitions that we all agree on (or understand).  Hopefully you have thought this yourself when listening to people in political debate with each other.  In most such instances, you can easily see that when they talk of “freedom,” each of them means something different, and when they talk of certain government activities, one person thinks of it as interference or control while the other sees it as a beneficent attempt to solve a problem. 

The more abstract terms that are involved (existence, being, freedom, choice, determinism), the more difficult it gets, so that philosophers can write for pages and pages (or books and books) in order to investigate one sentence, and they will still disagree with each other or be incomprehensible to each other.  The conclusion is that most of our human efforts to describe reality with language are pitifully inadequate (even if we do manage to select, buy, and sit in chairs).  Very few people even try to be clear about what they say (or to think clearly), and those who do often have insoluble disagreements.  Since we record what we believe to be God’s communications to us with our words in our language and have only our human brains with which to understand them, we may very well have misinterpreted communications from God—not a comforting thought at all!

Post-modernism expands this analysis of language deficiency to include all thinking and all constructs created by groups of people.  Our thinking is just as inaccurate and muddled as our language, and morality is a human construction for the purpose of controlling behavior and teaching members of the group what to do and what not to do.  Group customs are arbitrary (shaking hands on meeting someone versus some other gesture).  Laws are poorly stated rules for interactive behavior, as evidenced by the fact that our courts are forever engaged in how to “interpret” what the laws “mean.”  The conclusion is that we make practically all of it up (our words, our definitions, our customs, our rules), and that there probably is no reality that we understand the same as others understand it.  (This is not to say that there is no reality, but simply that we are incapable of adequately defining and understanding it.)

There is no denying our sloppiness and difficulties in thinking and speaking.  We don’t like having these difficulties pointed out (look at what happened to Socrates, who delighted in pointing these difficulties out and was eventually put to death for it).  We fall back on “if it was good enough for my father, it’s good enough for me” or “God said it and that’s that,” but these are clearly reactions that simply attempt to justify our situation or try to claim that if we’re doing it, it must be good.

LIVING WELL DESPITE POST-MODERNISM AND DECONSTRUCTIONISM

We must go on living as the imperfect human beings that we are, in spite of the insights of post-modernism and deconstructionism, and we will do better if we take these meaningful criticisms of our behavior into account, while continuing to act in effective and meaningful ways in our lives.  It is suggested here that using our “common sense” while adding greater care to our thinking and speaking and greater awareness of our uncertainties and leaps of faith (to keep us honest in our assertions about “reality”) provides us with a workable framework for living.

Philosophers are hit hardest by these acknowledgements, since the goal of philosophy seems to have been to express the truth in language.  Given the many efforts to do this by mighty thinkers over many centuries, we may be justified in concluding that it is not possible—that our human capacities are not sufficient for the task.  Given human curiosity, adolescent hubris, and the fact that every human being must figure out for himself or herself how to relate to oneself, others, and the world, people will continue to try find “the truth” and express it in words.  Each person will have to conclude, if they go far enough in that effort, that expressing the whole truth or the truth about everything is not in fact possible.  We are still left, though, with thought and verbal facility, just not enough of them to find and express the complete truth in language, and in order to make our lives as good as they can be (in terms of survival, satisfying relationships, and reasonable security), we still must employ our thinking and language to find the best possible solutions to many problems in living.  Perhaps philosophy can define a different project for itself—to help people to know as much of the truth as they can and to make that truth (that portion of the truth that we are capable of comprehending) ever more clear, even if it must remain incomplete.

The best that we can do would seem to be to (1) carefully review everything that we think and say, before inflicting it upon ourselves, others, and the world, (2) learn how to identify beliefs that have no basis in fact or evidence in contrast to beliefs that do have some basis in fact or evidence, (3) be willing to admit it when our beliefs (what we want to conclude or believe) are unsupported or are simply what we want to believe, (4) stop claiming that we have the truth (in order to get our way with others) when we do not have it, and (5) learn to tolerate the uncertainties of not knowing.

Many will resist this call to be more careful in their thinking and speaking, because without their claimed certainties (God will take care of us; marriage is for life; we’ll all meet again in heaven; if it’s really love, it will last forever), they feel fearful, adrift in existence, and without meaning in their lives.  The existentialists see this as facing the truth about human existence.  We can’t have it both ways, though.  We can’t make up beliefs that we “know” are uncertain (or could know if we let ourselves) and at the same time improve the accuracy and clarity of our thinking and communications (unless, perhaps, we restrict our improvements to only the physical world and keep unchanged our sloppiness regarding feelings and existence).  Each person must choose which way to go.

Our eternal quest as groups to have everyone in the group see and understand things the same way is one way in which we try to adapt to not knowing very much for certain.  We feel that if everyone thinks and believes one way, then that way “must” be right.  We praise freedom of thought and belief, but we are fairly intolerant of others’ thoughts and beliefs if those push us toward changing our lives or behavior.  We actually insist on quite a bit of uniformity of thoughts and beliefs, while allowing only differences that are kept private or don’t affect others negatively.

It seems clear that in order to have a world in which people get as close to the truth as possible, those people will have to face the fact that they don’t know very much at all for certain.  People dislike and are upset by “not knowing,” however, so getting as close as we can to the truth, then, is more of an emotional problem than a knowledge problem.  We can learn as much as we can, but we will never “know for certain” most of what we would like to know about life.  Accepting this is difficult, since it highlights our limitations as humans (when what we prefer is to pump up our pride in what human beings can accomplish) and since it leaves us with having to find other methods of adapting to reality (as far as we can know it) than making up false beliefs and clinging to them.

We will have to be satisfied with what is, instead of believing in what is unlikely.  We would not even hope that we could have politicians who put the welfare of their constituents above their own benefit (desirable as that might be), so we would look for ways to get the best job out of them that they are capable of.  We would have somewhat different marriages if we faced the fact that our spouses could die at any time, but it might make us value what we have together more.  We would undertake big projects more soberly, instead of assuming or asserting that “we can do anything,” but perhaps many of those big projects don’t actually better people’s lives anyway.  We would stop trying to deny our frailty and mortality by telling ourselves lies, but we might then value each day of our lives even more.

We all have to make choices based on what we want for our futures, and usually we have to make them without being certain of our predictions of what each choice will bring in the future.  Accepting that we don’t know much would lead us to think as realistically as possible about what each possible behavioral path would lead to, since clearly this is more likely to be helpful in ensuring good outcomes than basing our choice simply on what we would like to see happen as an outcome.  We don’t need to stop making choices, just because we don’t know very much, but we do need to make those choices as carefully as we can and based on as much of reality as we can, instead of going blindly onward based only on wishful thinking.

Much confusion arises from inattention to definitions, both in our own thinking and in our interactions with others.  In order to reach the conclusions that we desire, we often “fudge” our definitions, so that in one place we mean passion when we say “love” and in another we mean “affection” or “affiliation” by “love.”  To use words only in accord with clear definitions is “work,” but it is important for accurate thinking to use our definitions consistently (which means, first of all, to notice when we are using them inconsistently, and then to rethink or restate).  This is a key tool in resolving differences between people about their views of reality.

For most people, improving the accuracy of their thinking and speaking will require re-evaluating everything they think they know, but fortunately this can be done a little bit at a time (as long as all opportunities to do this are taken when they come along), and the further along one gets with this project, the faster it will go.

Since we now “know” that we know very little for certain, it will clearly be useful to attach a “likelihood of truth” to everything we “know.”  “The sun will come up every morning for the rest of my life” would have a very high likelihood of being true (since only very unlikely astronomical events could change that likelihood), while “the U. S. economy will continue to experience significant up’s and down’s” would have a moderate likelihood, and “all Democrats are fools” would be quite unlikely.  These likelihoods are derived from our knowledge about ourselves, others, and the world, so it is absolutely necessary to learn a great deal (and to evaluate the “truth likelihood” of each supposed fact or piece of “knowledge” that we come across).  The truth likelihood of things people say varies with their own level of accuracy of thinking and with their purposes in making statements and holding the opinions that they hold.  Just because your parent, your teacher, or your priest tell you something doesn’t make it true!  With a knowledge of these likelihoods, then, one can be more careful in evaluating the likelihoods of other “facts” or statements being close to true or not.

We will also need to improve the logic of our thinking.  For example, concluding from the moderately likely “fact” that some Republicans don’t think carefully about all of the implications of their proposals that Republicans have nothing worthwhile to contribute to political decisions would be faulty thinking.  Since Republicans and Democrats are both human beings, the same conclusion with “Democrats” substituted for “Republicans” would be equally untrue.

MANAGING OUR FEELINGS

It should be clear by now that striving to get as close to the truth as we can will require managing the discomfort that arises from finding conclusions that are probably true that are upsetting and that we wish were not true.  It is typical of human beings to reverse course at that point and to revise the “facts” to arrive at a conclusion that we like better.  Of course, if we want the truth (as close to the truth as we can get), we must work on being comfortable with what appears to us to be the most likely descriptions of reality.

Our discomfort can be over seeing things we don’t want to see about our parents or our children, or it may be about aspects of our existential position (death comes for all of us; we don’t know very much; keeping our bodies healthy involves a certain amount of pain and self-discipline; we are all capable of hurting others for our own advantage; etc.).  Accepting reality solves this problem, but that means stopping our resisting of reality and allowing ourselves to “get used to” it.  After all, the reality of things doesn’t change just because we recognize and accept it.  The same things are problems in the same ways after we accept a new view of things as they were before we accepted it.  So life is not going to get worse just from recognizing the truth, as long as we accept it.  If you continue to ruminate over one of these new, more realistic views, it means that you have not accepted it.

SUMMARY

The realities pointed out by post-modernism and deconstructionism about our limitations do not need to lead to despair.  We can adapt and incorporate these insights by accepting that we don’t know very much for certain, learning to think better, tolerating the ambiguity of not knowing things for certain, and managing our unpleasant feelings in response to realities (as near as we can honestly get to reality) that we encounter as a result of thinking more accurately.

We can take some comfort from the fact that poor as our thinking and communications are, we still manage to have pretty good lives.  Admitting the truth about our intellectual capacities shouldn’t stop us from having lives that are at least that good, and if we are willing to face facts, we can make our lives somewhat through becoming better at thinking, speaking, and planning than we are now.

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