Thoughts on choice
January 16, 2008Sartre promoted the idea that everything we are presented in life is a choice, and that we alone are responsible for the choices that we make. We are not predisposed to certain choices because of genetics, society, twinkies or anything else, we alone make the choices. Now if you look up freedom you’ll see that freedom is defined as the abilty to make choices without outside factors influencing our decisions. So in the end this idea of choice indicates that man is truly free.
These are all basic concepts of existentialism, and can be explained far better by other writers than myself. However, I feel like talking about some off the things that have come to my mind from considering this particular point of existentialism.
One of the things that I have heard tied to this idea of choice addresses the purposes of life. It breaks out as “there is no point, or ultimate purpose to life EXCEPT what you choose to be the purpose” and “there is no meaning to life, EXCEPT the meaning you choose for life”. Now, over the years, I’ve had conversations with people about this idea and it’s been my observation that people either agree whole heartedly with this notion, or are staunchly against it.
To be honest, I’ve had a hard time understanding the few lucid complaints that I’ve heard regarding this idea. I don’t think the complaints were poor and I’m sure there are problems with it, but the people trying to voice them were somewhat unclear in their thinking and it made it difficult for me to understand their meaning.
Let’s try to think of some reasons why they might not like this idea though. “It goes against the beliefs in a higher power”, “Having no built in point to life puts too much responsibility on people”, “The lack of purpose reduces us to simply being organisms that exist and die”.
I could probably come up with some more but those seem to follow what I remember from the conversations that I have been involved in. Let’s talk about them them in order.
“It goes against the beliefs in a higher power”. Does it? How does our ability to choose what has meaning in life have any affect on the existence of a higher power? If you have a belief in a higher power and have beliefs/faiths in that higher power, then isn’t the belief in that higher power based upon faith? Isn’t faith a choice? If you believe in a higher power who gave you the ability to choose in the first place? I think this idea of choice is built into the ideas of faith, belief, in most religions, however my knowledge of religions is shaky so this could be a result of an insufficient sample size.
“Having no built in point to life puts too much responsibility on people” - This is kinda the point of the views of existentialism, that you are RESPONSIBLE for your life. This can be unnerving to people, especially upon first hearing it. However, being responsible shouldn’t be seen as a burden, but as an opportunity. Consider things from both perspectives, if you’re not responsible for your life, who is? If you screw up, who has to pay the penalties? Who is the one that decides whether you go to work today? Who makes you be faithful to your lover? Who pays the price if you aren’t? If you are free, and the choices are yours, how would your answers change for the above questions? Perhaps the questions are contrived, and don’t really illuminate the problems adequately. However I don’t see much differences arising in your responsbility arising from whether you have choice or not, in the end you are responsible for your life whether you wish to admit it or not.
“The lack of purpose reduces us to simply being organisms that exist and die” - Perhaps so, it’s a little unnerving to think about it in these terms, but while that’s a very difficult thing to come to terms with it also gives you a certain amount of freedom. Because if that’s all we are here for, then anything else we accomplish in our lives, that has meaning to us, is like a bonus. To put it a different way, if there is no point to life except the one we give it, and we’re really just organisms that live, reproduce, and die, then whether we get the big house, or the fancy car, or the nifty electronics gadgets, or whatever else you’re into is a bonus. It’s something to take up the time between life and death, and if you take that time to do things that are worthwhile, then you have done something more with your life than was necessary for you to get through it.
I’m not really sure what the answer is, I just wrote this out because I’ve been thinking a lot about choice and seemed interesting to talk about. I think about these sorts of things a lot these days, it’s interesting. I’m not sure if it’s fruitful or not, but it is more interesting than anything I’ve seen on TV.
Choice is an interesting lens to evaluate life through, it might be true, it might not, but the lens shows things in a different way than other lenses might. I think that’s one of the useful things about philosophy, a big box of lenses of different types and colors that you can use to evaluate life by, none of them show you life exactly how it is, but they give you lots of different perspectives.
