Decision Making in Personal Life
Decision making is never easy, but always seems simple. At any time, there are a finite number of things you can choose to do; knowing what choices you have does not seem particularly difficult.
For example, a high school student has, at any time, the choice of how much effort to put into an assignment. We can simplify this to three options:
- put a tremendous amount of effort in;
- put enough effort in to get a passing grade; perhaps a B in today’s era of grade inflation;
- not do the assignment at all.
The choices are simple. The difficulty comes from how each choice impacts every other component of the student’s life. Parents may monitor the student’s grades, prepared to punish poor performance with sanctions sufficient to make choice (3) inadvisable. Choice (1) may seem attractive if the student intends to attend college, but pursuing it may make it difficult to spend time with friends; or perhaps be teased or mocked by friends for taking grades so seriously. Choice (2) may be the compromise.
This is a well-understood dilemma.
Evaluating a scenario, taking stock of the available choices, and forecasting potential results is difficult, and there is the distinct chance you will make a miscalculation, but there’s not much more to it. It’s a skill, and thus can be acquired through practice and mistakes. Life, I’ve found, is happy to provide opportunities for both.
I am interested in a related concept: What is a sufficient justification for making a choice?
For example, is “I don’t want to” a sufficiently good reason to avoid doing something? Is “I love it!” an ample explanation for a hobby? And is “I don’t care” reason enough to ignore something?
It seems, to me, that society at large – and by this I mean the culture of the United States – has accepted these as good reasons for behavior. People talk about pursuing their dream job, regardless of the cost; college students cite boredom and antisocial teachers to explain poor grades; parents respond gleefully to an indication that their toddler likes something. Of course, it seems equally true that there are times when “I don’t want to” has no bearing on behavior – few would turn away a family member in need simply because they don’t like them.
I am coming to believe that an emotion, in isolation, is never a sufficiently good reason for action; indeed, I am tempted to say that any transient emotion – desire, fear, anger, and the like – should carry no weight when making decisions.
Emotions are too vulnerable to manipulation to either be trustworthy or sustainable.
It is difficult to sustain an emotion, which makes it a poor reason for action. It is easy to become excited, but far more difficult to remain excited when faced with the prospect of work. If one’s justification for the work is the excitement, then the work will not get done. I admit that emotional reward may work in many cases, but only when the difficulty or likelihood of failure of the project remains below a certain threshold. If the probability of failure, or the difficulty, of the project increases above some threshold, the emotions attached to the project will change – for example, excitement at the chance for success changing to fear. It’s certainly possible in some cases to use the alternative emotion as a further motivator, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I would suggest that if you are relying on your emotional state to motivate you to work on a project, and you are succeeding, then the project does not challenge you.
I also find it difficult to trust an emotion – or, more accurately, to rely on an emotion being the same. Emotions are particularly vulnerable to delusion (false beliefs). A delusion will incite a corresponding set of emotions in the individual. I imagine that it’s possible to use these emotions to work on a project, or put more energy into something. For example, if you believe that when you die you will go to heaven, it makes it distinctly easier to face death. If you believe that sacrificing your life for God and Country will (1) help your friends and family, and (2) cause you to be rewarded in heaven with everything you ever wanted, it makes it somewhat more palatable to contemplate such a sacrifice. Suicide bombers fall victim to this delusion – their deaths seldom help their friends or family, and can directly harm them. Their rewards in heaven are possible, I suppose, if you accept their religion as fact; if you’re an atheist, it seems absurd.
These delusions have obvious benefit; they generate the emotional drive to perform an exceedingly difficult action.
The problem I have with them is what happens when the delusion is dispensed with. What if at a critical moment someone shatters your delusion? For example, a politician who believes that being elected will make his country a better place learns, halfway through his term, that his country is distinctly worse off as a direct result of policies he implemented? Leaving the possibility of him refusing to accept the fact and his responsibility for it behind, this would likely destroy his motivation for running for another term. (It might, of course, inspire him to correct his mistakes. But it might also ‘inspire’ him to commit suicide. Either way, he’s unlikely to run for re-election.)
There’s also the practical difference of establishing the delusion in the first place, and then the potential for distorting one’s perception of reality attempting to maintain the delusion.
The unreliability of emotion makes it a poor motivator; and thus, I believe, makes it an insufficient justification for action.
The difficulty I have now is discovering what else there is. Kant’s philosophy, rooted in obligation, solves the problem; but introduces others. For example: where does the motivation to uphold one’s obligations come from? There is the rather scary possibility that everything comes down to emotion (and delusion), which means that the best solution is one that is least susceptible to destruction.
