At the same time, for many years I’ve found this emphasis on choice a little bit....insufficient, I suppose. While a good many things are influenced by choice, a lot of important things aren’t, at least not by my choices. I suppose you could say that we are influenced by each other’s choices, and that would be more true. The larger group of humanity making good choices influences my life for the better. But then what is this “good” we are striving toward, and how do we know it? How can any of my fellow humans know their choices are impacting me? For that matter, why should we strive toward good in the first place?
For the past year or so I’ve been reading Fr. Stephen Freeman’s blog. He writes about different issues from an orthodox theological perspective, and I enjoy it because it’s very different from any other perspective I get from anybody. He recently wrote a blog about choice and whether
evil is necessary for the existence of good. I really enjoyed it and the very intelligent discussion in the 100+ comments.
Food for thought:
Before looking at the nature of good and evil, it is worth seeing the problem involved when choice is inserted into the conversation. What happens in that approach is that we are no longer speaking about the nature of good and evil, indeed, both are relativized in importance. Everything quickly revolves back to the nature of choosing, and makes the actions of our will the center of the good. Thus, there is no true good or evil, only good choices and evil choices. It is a narcissistic ontology – a system of thought in which we ourselves become the center of attention.
Indeed, it is a bit terrifying to think there is no good outside of my choices. What if I am too ignorant to make good choices? What if I don’t feel like it? What if all the choices are simply terrible, which they might be because of bad luck or because I have made so many awful choices already that I am not left with any good ones?
Fr. Freeman goes on to describe (intriguingly I think) the human condition as one of change, or kinesis. He explains thus:
...Evil is not a “thing,” nor something that has any existence or being at all. To think about evil, it is necessary to understand that all of creation (ourselves included) is in motion (kenesis). Everything moves and changes (in terms of being). The proper movement for all things is towards its end in God (its telos). This is a movement towards greater truth, beauty, and goodness. Evil, on the other hand, is a movement away from proper being, a movement away from truth, beauty, and goodness. However, it is crucial to note that this is a movement, and not a thing.
If I understand correctly, this is related to something I intuited quite a while ago: each choice I make, however freely made, changes me in some way. The “me” that makes each good or bad choice is not static. Maybe one choice doesn’t move me a whole lot in one direction or another. But 5, 10, 20 choices down the line, the “me” doing the choosing is potentially quite a different me from the me who made the first choices. And that me is going to perceive and experience reality quite differently.
I find this aspect of choice is not really brought up in everyday discussion of choice, which tends to focus on relationships and material things: poor choices make others angry, or waste you time and resources, or lose you opportunities. All this is true enough, but I’m not sure it’s sufficiently subtle for cases where there is no immediate bad result from a choice, or it takes too much imagination to think that far into the future. Beyond the material consequences, I think we all need to have some sort of understanding of what our choices are moving us toward. Individual choices don’t make us a good or evil person on their own. But I do think it is possible to get to a place where it becomes difficult to choose not to do evil. And that is really quite terrifying.
Now I have to look up this blog you're referring to. Great job, there is plenty to ponder in here and I like the idea that it's the choices rather than just the actions themselves. It doesn't escape me as I have been trying to make better chocies personally and I notice how habit forming they can be. Sometimes we are so lost in habit that you don't even notice the choice presenting itself and you just act on instinct. That always freaks me out becuase I would like to be aware of what I'm doing.
ReplyDeleteOh, Father Freeman's blog is so interesting! He discusses theologians and philosophers that are not part of our everyday conversation and education (not how I experienced it, anyway). And he is very humble and down to earth in how he explains it, which is unusual on the internet. And from what I've seen, his regular readers and commenters are the same (double unusual!) If I get to stirred up or full of my precious self he always helps me regain perspective.
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