first published on Feb 8th, 2019
I’m not good at deciding. I say I’ll do something and I carry on in that vein for a while, faithful to a settled idea, that it’s the right thing, that I made the “right” decision: perhaps for days, months, years, decades; obedient to that decision, comfortable in its sharp, hard-edged decisiveness, accepting it as one of the facts that make up a life. It joins that panoply of facts which singly make a tiny impact on the universe and its unchangeable history. They make a great deal of difference to a single human life.
Decisions are one thing. They might be as ephemeral as some New Year resolutions. Commitment is another thing. It’s something not to be undertaken lightly. It’s a contract, not to be broken one-sidedly. I’ve reached the conclusion (I nearly said “I’ve decided”) that my own decisions tend to be pretty stupid—not a good way to go. The stability of purpose they promise is illusory. They’re not worth the paper they’re written on, assuming anything of worth is actually written on paper these days.
Decisions can be made by computers. That’s how they can play chess. In 1967, I got interested in this problem*. I’d learned to program in an ICL assembler code called PLAN, then migrated up to COBOL. One day I discovered someone had produced an add-on subroutine which allowed you to turn decision tables† into a string of IF…THEN statements in COBOL. I soon got bored with trying to write a chess program. To be honest I hadn’t a clue where to start; just knew that it was doable.
I’m fairly capable of reason, wouldn’t have got far in computer programming without. Actually I never did get far. It was always a stretch. Over the years it reprogrammed a part of my head, but I’m still hopelessly slow, and getting slower daily.
Reason—I see it now, writing this—has no heart. Computers can do it, they have no heart. Artificial intelligence will never “get” love: not understand, not acquire; nor give, nor receive. Yet I’ve grown up with thousands and millions who don’t share my deep sense of deep mistrust in reason. Perhaps they wouldn’t begin to understand my problem. Reason is a bag of tools, they say. It’s the basis of measurable intelligence. You can go places by using it coldly and calculatingly, unsoftened by emotion. It gives you power. Yeah, right.
Perhaps I see now what happened. In my early life, there was no visible love, nothing for this baby, toddler and developing child to provide him the comfort of mutual attachment. I was reasonably fed, clothed and educated, but otherwise neglected. Thousands and millions of others could say the same, especially in that time of war which scattered families. Thus my inevitable quest for love stayed untutored, untuned. I looked around me, followed every impulse. At four I could read, devoured every printed thing I could lay my hands on …
Where is this going? It’s getting out of hand. I meant to get this finished in one go, don’t have the stamina these days. Ok, so I meant to be writing about “getting clear at last”. By which I mean understanding rather than deciding: passively listening, getting inspiration from somewhere, not just imposing my will. One can decide things more or less in an instant. Brexit springs to mind, ha ha! That does you no good at all, you can end up in a dead end. Can’t go forward, can’t go back. Letting wisdom posssess you, let’s call it that, that’s altogether a different process. Letting the Tao, or God, decide. Riding lightly on destiny. I don’t care what language is used. I have no commitment to any belief system.
One thing I have understood is that my writings, the ones on A Wayfarer’s Notes, do not belong online. That’s simply their breeding-ground, where they were conceived, raised and mated promiscuously with all comers, and good fun it has been for more than ten years. But that’s no place for them to stay. The format is wrong, there’s no contract with the reader, no commitment by either party, no structure, no reading order. It’s a place to browse: nibble here and there with a short attention span. Have a glance at “Medium – a place to read and write big ideas and important storiest‡” and see how each article is timed: “4 minute read” etc.
So Wayfarer’s is changing. Nothing will be announced, nothing is final, it may slowly disappear like the Cheshire Cat leaving nothing behind but its smile.
As for The Retreat, I like it a lot, hope you do too. Once it was Vincent’s Retreat but now it belongs to its members, let us be a co-operative, a commune. I don’t have to be the administrator, or the only one. Let us make it up as we go along.
Ha! I think you know how much I trust reason! At least, reason functioning as a kind-of autonomous unit. Make that ‘autonomous monster’. In most of the horrors enacted in history, ‘reason’ has been a prominent player.
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Yes, Ian. I think I know you to be a dualist, whose spiritual path involves dealing with inner conflicts. I have gone to the side of non-dualism, where there is only one thing, the God that is Love, whose obvious drawback to human understanding you have pointed out in your comment, ie how did that “monster” arise? How did those “horrors enacted in human history” arise? I don’t think reason could provide us with answers. All we have is reality, which displays itself to us without comment. When there is only love in our hearts, we can perceive dispassionately because we are relieved of the other emotions. How do we achieve that state? Neither through reason nor rejecting reason, I suggest. I don’t have a recipe.
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“The Logical Song” Supertramp
“When I was young,
It seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle, it was beautiful.
And all the birds in the trees,
Well they’d be singing so happily,
Joyfully, playfully watching me.
But then they sent me away
To teach me how to be sensible,
Logical, responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world
Where I could be so dependable,
Clinical, intellectual, cynical.
There are times when all the world’s asleep
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man.
Won’t you please,
Please tell me what we’ve learned.
I know it sounds absurd.
Please tell me who I am.
I said, watch what you say,
Or they’ll be calling you a radical,
Liberal, fanatical, criminal.
Won’t you sign up your name.
We’d like to feel your acceptable
Respectable, presentable, a vegetable.
But at night, when all the world’s asleep
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man.
Won’t you please,
Please tell me what we’ve learned.
I know it sounds absurd.
Please tell me who I am.”
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I’ve always found it difficult to make important decisions. I’m indecisive that way.
But when I look back on those decisions, I see it was impossible that I could have decided any other way.
A friend of mine who was brought up in a Calvinist church said that as a boy, he had to memorize a poem about going through a gate with a sign saying “Free Will,” but when the poet looked back at the gate, the sign on the reverse side said, “Predestined.”