Are we responsible? - Part 2

“[God] is the greatest democrat the world knows, for he leaves us “unfettered” to make our own choice between evil and good, he is the greatest tyrant ever known, for he often dashes the cup from our lips and under cover of freewill leaves us a margin so wholly inadequate as to provide only mirth for himself at our expense…”- Mahatma Gandhi

In my last post I came to an abrupt ending about how God is responsible for everything and we couldn’t hold anybody accountable for their actions as they were pawns in a bigger and grander plan. The theory seemed plausible as it appealed to your abstract mind and it also went along with the delusions which we have come to accept, until I mentioned the serial killer and the paedophile. Suddenly, a Pandora’s Box opened, filled with emotions that engulfed the abstract mind refuting to qualify it.

Let’s revisit the issue again. We established the actual absence of freewill as our decisions would be based on our prejudices, genes, upbringing and many other variables, moreover, the options we choose from, is also not controlled by us leading us to believe there is some higher power that has authority over it.

Is that entirely true? If we look closer at each decision, we realise that the decision to choose between right or wrong still lies with us. If we can decide between right and wrong aren’t we then, partially responsible for our actions? I also talked about how each decision inadvertently becomes a factor for a future decision. Zooming out into a more macro view we can conclude that an eco-system then becomes responsible for its own actions.

Recent research has pointed out that religion and its offshoots were evolved as a necessity for the human race to survive because it set the rules for distinguishing right and wrong and also encouraged to work for the common good rather than for the ‘self’. The common good often included the good of the ecology too. Many civilizations have long perished (ecocide) as a punishment for ignoring the common good.

The question of God’s existence still remains unanswered. Everybody has to have delusions to keep them going, the more deluded they are, they more happier they seem to be, but don’t be deluded by our apparent inability to control the future

“Choose to believe never inherit it”

Differences

People are different. It’s these differences that make us so interesting or we would be just bland as British cuisine. These differences dictate our beliefs, our tastes, our partners, our opinions and even our fights. The fights have been quite prominent enough that the masons of society tried to use universals to segregate us or rather restrict our differences. This led to basic segregation based on gender, religion, race, colour and so on. These segregates then developed rules and practices. Crude segregation like this was done to rein in the chaos that arose out of these differences. Simply put, rules keep us alive or we would just kill each other at the drop of a hat.

This worked well for some time because these rules have evolved with society and now as we believe it, constitutes the civilized society. The evolution was not without its hiccups, some really bad practices and rules led to unnecessary stifling of individualism, like casteism and subjugation of women. However, as society evolves, it corrects its mistakes and such practices would eventually come to an end. That’s the beauty of evolution.

Howard Moskowitz, a psychophysicist, on his quest to find the perfect Diet Pepsi (he was consulting for them to find the perfect blend for their new product ‘Diet Pepsi’) stumbled on the fact, that there can never be the perfect PEPSI only Perfect PEPSIS. He realized that people have different preferences so the perfect Pepsi is a delusion. The best way is to get people into clusters of preferences and develop products to satisfy that particular clusters. Even though, Pepsi just went with only one diet Pepsi, his later clients took his advice and bought out different choices for their products. This unwittingly started the revolution of choices.

Today, the ruling dogma of all western industrial societies is that “if we are interested in maximising the welfare of citizens, then the way to do that would be to maximise individual freedom. The way to maximise freedom is to maximise choice.” This was explained by Barry Schwartz the writer of “The Paradox of Choice”. This contradicts our accepted segregation.

This was ground breaking; the advent of choices and cheap customised servicing with the help of technology has changed the way we live. We are spoilt with choices today. Individualism rules over collectivism. It’s our very own differences that are being harnessed by marketers to sell products. Product lines are being horizontally expanded to service everybody’s needs. Life can’t get any better.

The downside for all this is something called as ‘opportunity cost’. We are so spoilt with choices that we can’t make up our minds on anything and is always bothered by the missed opportunity. For example, when we order something at a restaurant, we always wonder what it would have been to have the other dish, it’s the same with men choosing partners, and why else do you think men cheat? ‘It’s all because of choices’. So inadvertently, we end up with regret or anticipated regret, its opportunity costs, an escalation of expectations and self-blame which all spiral into being miserable.

Everything seems to be a good idea the night before.