MeyerBros

a co-worker just said “sometimes it’s just better to ignore things that you can’t change.” sounds good on the surface, but let’s dissect that a bit more. basically, in every case at every point in time we have to determine exactly what we can or cannot change. beyond the obvious self-beurocratic hang-ups, there’s a lot of considerations to be dealt with. there would have to be some guidelines. let me try to lay them out:

1. attention vs. action: is this an issue of ‘ignoring vs. observing’ or ‘ignoring vs. acting’? for the purpose of this exercise, let’s say that both are forms of action and we’re really dealing with action vs. inaction.
2. certainty of change: are we sure that our chosen action will result in the desired change?
3. change earned: define “can’t change”. what if i can change a minor part of the problem, but not enough to make it worth while? we need to define exactly how much change is considered reasonable.
4. effort spent: we seem to be dealing with some sort of effort to change ratio here. what is that ratio?
5. last resort: action would have to be the last resort - or we might end up acting on things all the time.
6. proper authority: obviously we are all going to have different ideas about what ratio is considered appropriate, but who has the authority to make the decision in the moment?

you can see where i’m going with this. it’s starting to look suspiciously like Just War Theory ANLJWT.

We all know that it is impossible to determine the outcome of any action for sure, that the effort can never be determined properly and no one will be able to agree on the outcome anyway. Proper authority is a silly question, because who better to determine one’s energy output than that person - but if everyone is their own authority the whole system falls apart. We all know what happens if there aren’t standards - but beyond that, we’re suddenly dealing with an entirely subjective ethic which is hardly worth talking about.

but we’ve lost all hope long before that. the issue is not really action but attention. even with the assumption that the two continua are synonymous, then in-action requires in-attention. but without attention, how will you even know when decisions need to be made? and if we default to paying attention, then how will we ever truly be able to ignore what should be ignored? it will be too late, observation will have already taken place. there is no way to leave attention as a “last resort”.

obviously the only real solution is to remove our “last resort” and deal with the fact that all action is, in fact, too ethically unstable and practically risky to be taken. while the myth of redemptive action is a strong one in our culture, we have to stand apart and live the ideal ignorance in every aspect of our lives. There is no way to apathy, apathy is the way.

let’s proselytize!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 17th, 2006 at 11:00 am by eric and is filed under rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.