the choosing

Is choice really an equal opportunity proposition? Julie gets us thinking again by allowing us to run wild with what I'll call the concept prior to choice. The choosing itself.

A few of you took friendly umbrage a few posts ago when I said no one chooses to be an asshole. And if we were dealing with only the present tense, I'd agree.

But our choice is never just about the now, and seldom ever about the situation at hand. I prefer to think of choice as a reaction to the sum of our lives. It's impossible to separate the choice from the choosing; from the external and internal reactions; the side it puts you on. For or against. Yes or no. A position is assumed. Consequences and pre-existing conditions abound.

Choice. It's a funnybugger, that one. Do we ever really freely choose anything? If I choose an apple, it's because I have memories associated with or have been convinced of the goodness of the apple. You may have had a different construct of the apple, and therefore may choose something else. Does that make either wrong? No. Different? Why?

So when we are faced with choosing to be an asshole. I'd suggest the same thinking. If I choose to be an asshole, it's because being an asshole has helped, protected, or nourished me in some way in the past. It's gotten things done, or kept me alive. If I choose not to be an asshole, perhaps I've learned in the past there are other ways to get what I need, or worse, am merely afraid of what you'll think of me.

I know and you know there is more to this. I'd like to think I am not often the asshole and it's not because I don't want you to think I am, but rather because that is not how I prefer to engage the world. Because I've had the luxury of not having to rely on assholery to survive. But truly, how do we learn to choose? A million variables come into play every time we choose something, especially a moral or social choice.

The Bible (can one use asshole and the bible in the same post?) talks about Free Will. That we are all born with free will and only by truly surrendering to God's Will can we be truly free. But how free is that Free Will? If we are born with it, where does it go? Does that mean we no longer can choose independently of God? Or does that become the eternal struggle?

So when we are choosing the greater necessity, justice or forgiveness, I'd expect a whole filing cabinet of stuff comes along with making a choice, not the least of which is how we'll be perceived in the choosing. Even if you don't care what others think (and perhaps a few of us exist) we do ruminate about what we think.

Plato, at the end of his life and after many, many words put to paper, said something to the effect of I've never written what I truly believe. That's a gobsmacker, isn't it? I've never written what I truly believe.

Because knowing what you truly believe and then having the ability to put that raw emotion into words is incomprehensible, isn't it? And if Plato couldn't hack it, I won't pretend I am able to either. It would render all of us permanently inadequate to rely only on words to explain what we truly believe. And I'd say the same about the choices we make.

And yet we try. We construct our world and our beliefs and our own rules around our choices and how they compare to the choices around us. We try, ever vigilant, to get our two cents in. We express bits and glimmers of our naked selves through the choices we make and the ones we don't.

After writing this I don't feel it's as succinct as I would like. I've had my head lodged firmly up my ass lately but there isn't much to do about that right now. So scattered as this is, consider this my wooden nickel. And before you go (if you so choose, of course) tell me your thoughts about the strength and limitations of choice.