Sometime ago I wrote an article on “self-improvement”. In it I posited that there are extensions of minimalism to the realm of personal relationships that make a lot of sense in the abstract, but are difficult to implement because they require that we ask ourselves a number of difficult questions, and therefore necessitate a certain degree of moral courage.

It seems to me that all the major decisions in life are of the same nature – not only the ones about what (or who) to remove from our lives to make them more productive. Whether or not to get tertiary education (and where to do so, if yes), whether or not to get married (and to whom, if yes), whether or not to have children (when, and how many), what kind of work to do and why… these are all questions that are central to our lives, and require that we take the time to think carefully about them.

The combination of the ambiguity and personal nature of these decisions makes it impossible to get one-size-fits-all answers to any of them. There is a limit to what even extremely well-reasoned arguments can do, and when it comes down to it, the best of arguments only do well when a particular prerequisite is in place – personal perspective.

The following quote by Lee Segall illustrates this quite well:

“A man with one watch knows what the time is, a man with two watches is never quite sure”.

The above quote is interesting because it highlights in some way the difficulty we all face when making some decisions. Like all proverbs, it makes sense when taken literally, but also alludes to some deeper truth: the person with one philosophy of life, no matter how poorly crafted, has an easier time making decisions and moving through life than the person who has none, or too many competing ideologies.

For the purposes of this essay, the word “perspective” is used to describe a person’s system of thought, which includes but is not limited to what they think about the nature of humanity, where they stand on issues of ethics and morality, and what they believe to be the origin and purpose of life. It provides a sort of center, the basis upon which the person prioritizes and makes decisions as (s)he move through life. Every one of us has at least the rudiments of such a system of thought; only that some people are not very conscious of its presence and influence, and, consequently, have never taken the time to craft it appropriately.

Perspective is important because provides a sort of yardstick by which we judge our actions, the proverbial watch by which we check the time. The proverbial man with many watches seeks exactitude in his knowledge of the time, but believes it is to be found in the accruing of many watches. He thinks that he can make up for the imperfections of one watch by adding another one, which is of course false. All that he gets at the end of the day is more confusion, because no two watches tell the same time. Similarly, we have people chasing one fad after the other, always running after new philosophies… yet never making any meaningful progress in life.

The development of perspective usually begins in childhood. We build our lives based on the information we receive from teachers, parents and other authority figures in our lives. However, because we lack the ability to question and analyze, we generally accept whatever ideas are exposed to us as true, and construct meaning from our experiences on that basis.

However, there comes a time, usually at the prime of youth, when we are exposed to perspectives which differ from our own, and therefore have to confront different interpretations of reality. The tendency is to break out of old molds, reject most of the rules which governed our lives prior to that time, and at least examine what these new philosophies and lifestyles have to offer. We get to experience, examine the claims, the biases and the merits of different ideologies, and decide what hypotheses we will base our lives upon. This is quite a normal and healthy process, whose logical end, at least theoretically, is supposed to be creation of a new manner of thinking, unique to us, that will be honed as we move ahead in life.

The only problem is that it never comes to an end for most people.

Why is this the case?

Short answer: our desire for perfection. Any person who is attentive enough will realize that every perspective is unique in its own right, with its own claims, strengths and weaknesses. However, it is only human to want to be all strength and no weakness, even in our thought processes ¹ . The tendency therefore is to want to embrace as many of these ideologies as is possible; reason being that we think that such a pursuit will enable us get all their strengths, while exacerbating us from making the sacrifices required, or the blind spots and weaknesses of each perspective.

It is the paradox of choice: increasing the number of viable choices available to us decreases the likelihood of us actually making the choice. Because all these choices are seen as being equally valid, remaining in a position of indecision gives the semblance of possessing them all. Choosing to see things through a particular lens instead of the other imply that we miss out on some things, which we generally prefer not to.

We therefore have all these people constantly searching for the perfect life philosophy; the one that will enable us think with perfect clarity, the one which will rid humanity of all biases. The problem is that there is no evidence that such a philosophy exists, or will be crafted in the nearest future.

Admittedly, there certain benefits to such thinking. By never committing oneself to any particular ideology, there is a certain acceptance of all ideologies, and a sense that one’s whole life is ahead of them. Life is full of possibility, all actions are permissible, and so there is no way by which we can be held accountable for our actions. However, it also comes at the detriment of the progress we make in life.

Also, by never admitting to seeing things in a particular way, there is a certain air of “open-mindedness” that we can ascribe to ourselves. We are above board, privy to a panoramic view of life’s issues… But again, this is false, for the same reasons advanced in the preceding paragraphs. And, not that I am against being open-minded, but what is the point of opening your mind, if it is not to fill it with something? Do we open our minds to throw our brains out? Or to show the world the contents of our minds?

Life is imperfect, and any useful ideology, while coherent, will need to speak to all of life, in all its complexity. It will need to speak to life in all its complexity: its tragic nature, its paradoxes, contradictions and mysteries. However, it cannot be constructed from nothing. A certain set of assumptions have to be made for it to be constructed upon, and commitment to any one of these ideologies means moving one’s life in a particular direction, and accepting that one’s thinking will have certain biases.

Biases… the dirty word. For most of my life, every mention of the word ‘bias’ came with a pejorative connotation to it: they were things to be understood and removed, so that the thinker could have access to clearer thought. However, no matter how much the gospel of throwing away our biases has been preached, even the smartest of people, the clearest of thinkers, still have biases, some even as strong as the clearest of their opinions. It therefore seems to me that even the best of us can only be made aware of these biases; eliminating them altogether is not as possible as we thought.

The idea that any line of thought is objective suggests that the thinker is detached from the situation enough to have an impassioned look at the facts of the situation, and then draw logical, objective conclusions. What that idea also presupposes is that the thinker has no prior opinions or assumptions about the subject at hand. But then, what is a human being who doesn’t have such feelings or opinions?

Even then, how feasible is it for every human being to undertake such thinking for every decision they have to make? Therein lies the positives of biases. For all their weaknesses, those biases reduce the fatigue we experience when dealing with decisions by adding weights to some paths, favoring some alternatives over others.

It is okay to have biases, so long as we are aware of them. Instead of obsessing about getting everything right and not missing out on anything, we should become comfortable with missing out on, or even being wrong about somethings. It may not lead to the perfect life, but at least it would keep things simpler, and make life saner.

Notes