Living with the cons

We are all good at choosing what we prefer out of two general options, or what we would rather live out of two extreme outcomes.

Do you want to win 100,000 dollars or do you want to get punched in the face?

In these cases, rationality and preference mechanisms come into play. Of course.

But what happens when the answer isn't so clear-cut? What goes on in our minds when we have to decide on a more long-term basis and out of multiple "right" ways?

Here I want to pause to discuss the definition of a "right" outcome. This world seems obsessed with finding and categorising right and wrong things. Everybody thinks something is just one or the other but we forget other contextual and perspective dimensions. Splashing water in my face would not be right to do at work but if I do it in an appropriate context, such as in a Sicilian beach in August when it's midday, it becomes right. Also, it might be not right for someone to laugh hysterically but might be right (and categorised as "sane" or "normal") if the person is actually laughing to a really funny joke that his friend texted him.

Anyway, this is all to say: I think "right" is many times a changing, flowing status.

(I'll keep it personal here but in politics and international relations, this has caused many issues indeed).

If "right" is a fluid thing that changes, then there might be multiple rights at the same time.

Some "rights" may not even be as clear-cut as winning the lottery.

Here are some examples of situations that are not straight-forward decisions.

Is it right for me and my future career to accept this job?

Should I buy a car now?

Can I take a gap year and go travelling?

And here is a term I want to use: un-right. It might seem like un-right describes "wrong" or any other opposite of right but really, what I am trying to get at here is that we need to take a step back from all this categorisation and describe the situation just as it is in itself. Without giving it heavy connotations that might divert our judgement and thinking. This is because, if there are many rights that can become wrong and vice-versa, isn't it easier to just lighten up the weight of the issue and approach life in a less definitive way?

I think that taking a decision on a bigger scale -whether that entails moving, getting married or buying a house- can be a matter upon which we can rationalise the outcomes but only up to a certain point.

Especially if you're an over-thinker like me. At some point we need to let go of the pros and cons, of what's right and what's wrong. And just decide. If we un-right the situation, on the contrary of what people might think, we might actually do ourselves a favour.

Right is un-right.

This is because most of life's long-term decisions aren't (as aforementioned) outrightly good or bad. Sometimes we also may not have a clear preference or opinion regarding them. Judgement may often make us unhappy. Looking at the world with a win-lose approach does not always work in real life.

For example, if we do decide to buy that car...we will have both good aspects and bad aspects about it. Yes, we might feel that the good might be more than the bad, but who knows how long that will last. Sometimes we get confused and our thoughts might get tangled up. 

If we only use the win-lose framework our thought process might look like this: "I did well buying the car, look at how fast I can go now! Oh, traffic jam. Maybe I should've not bought the car after all...oh what's going on? I would have been at work by now if I had taken the tube. Nevermind, I'm almost there. Oh, no...someone stole my parking spot!" and so on till exhaustion. I'm not saying we all think like that, but some of us certainly do!

What we really need is coping mechanisms for dealing with the cons of a situation that we put ourselves in.

Escapism won't work: it's a mischievous trap. The win-lose framework appeals to us because we think we can compete and win. But there will always be some parts of a decision that are not quite positive.

Also, we might even "win" once, but there will always be other decisions to make and honestly, we cannot possibly win them all. 

If we don't learn how to cope with the cons of a decision, we might end up not making any decisions at all and wishing our life away.

----------------

Sometimes the best option might not exist after all, even after counting all preferences in a well thought-out, rational way. 

Sometimes we just need to account for the fact that neutral, un-right decisions WILL have both positive aspects and negative consequences. 

Those times, we just have to learn how to deal with the negatives.

And that's up to you (sorry no ultimate recipe for life here).

**P.S.**

Another suggestion coming from a comment on this blog post by a friend of mine regards not focusing on coping with the cons altogether and instead on seeking the "magis", as St. Ignatius puts it. Here is a helpful resource passed on to me by her. Feel free to read it if you are interested: 

http://www.sjweb.info/documents/cis/pdfenglish/200511008en.pdf

BBC's Great British Class Propaganda

You remember when in the movie V for Vendetta the British government official starts dictating what to do in the media to help manipulate people's opinions and keep the dictatorship in place? Maybe the Great British Class Calculator should have been in the movie as an exemplar tool that seems fun but really, is changing your perception of things and directing people to make certain propagandistic cultural assumptions.

Call me conspiracy-lover, but I think there are the assumptions that are embedded in the discourse of the little interactive system. Assumption which make us think more about our differences rather than what we have in common as people living in the UK.

Here they are:

1. First assumption: our social system is made up of social classes.
Don't get me wrong loads of people do want us to believe that, in the UK in particular, there is this social class system within which people always try to categorise themselves. However, is it there really or are the differences merging?


2. Second assumption: everyone who takes the "test" is going to be categorised so everyone is part of a class.
What about people from abroad living in the UK? No test is going to be able to measure each person's individuality. The BBC is blatantly ignoring the opinions of real people that have taken the test. Just read the comments here to see what users say.

Apart from the test's questionable validity, SHOULD any tool measure people's individuality?
It took me ages but I eventually did realise that being different is never a bad thing...thank goodness we aren't all the same! It is true: psychologically we sometimes need to use our brain to categorise people because it helps us remember more...but society never helps us grow out of this childish and inaccurate habit of ours! Why shouldn't we grow out of it? Life is, thankfully, more complicated than that. Do not just see your neighbour as your neighbour: you might miss the fact that he goes to the same gym you do, he's got interesting political opinions and (why not) he might even have interesting salsa moves! He is a human being after all, and as a human being his life is more than just being the neighbour of yours.


3. Third assumption: classes are acceptable social categories worth studying.
If the BBC spends money and time to make it, then the assumption is it must be worth knowing about. Is it really? Why is the fact that there are classes in place always worth mentioning before any event that has (or is) uniting people in some sort of way?

I suggest you being more inquisitive when it comes to things like that.
Do not fall for it. Do not give these discursive elements for granted.
Think with your own head.

The day in which one human life is worth more than another one is today.
The mentality is in place. I find this much more worth talking about than what my result is on the flippin' social class calculator.