Consequences

Lots of controversy these days, lots of moments where you might start to get excited because something you believe is being attacked.  Let's back down a bit and look at what's underneath these differences of 'opinion.'

If you start from a different place, what you are looking at will look different.

One of the big differences in the way people think is the way we look at consequences.

Let's start even earlier.  Let's consider our view of people.  Four choices (one is a straw man):

1) Fundamentally evil: This is what you think of others if you are paranoid and always looking for the worst in everyone else and in the world.  But there is too much love and beauty in human relationships for this to make sense globally.

2) Fundamentally good: This feels better.  This is where the world likes to say it lives.  The problem is, how do you explain the bad things that people do?  The answer is, they are victims of their environment, forced by circumstances to do things they wouldn't do in a perfect world.  Fix the environment, fix their behaviour.

3) Biological Determinism: What we do is programmed by our genes, our biochemistry, and our brains.  It is all a matter of successful coping strategies in a world that has no opinion.  The winners are the ones that replicate their behaviour in others (via reproduction or cultural transmission).  Good and Evil are manufactured because they are part of a useful strategy.

4) Made in the Creator's Image, fallen:  This requires the acceptance of a ton of backstory, but it provides a nuanced view of human behaviour that doesn't require the loss of meaning or ethics.  It means that I can celebrate the glorious beauty of another person, despite not agreeing with their philosophy or theology, because I know that they were created by a Being that loves beauty and wants to see them at their best.

Obviously, I favour #4.  The third option is gaining steam as more behaviour evolutionary psychologists do more research, and write cool stories, but it still removes any universal meaning from our lives.  Let's look at the implications of the Image/Fallen view some more (since I'm writing this, I get to drag you along).

One of my programmer heroes wrote this response to the Charlie Hebdo shootings.  Obviously, a matter of life and death, with massive consequences for choosing to value free speech above other's religious sensibilities.

On a completely less urgent note, there has been a flame war in the Christian Blogosphere about cleavage and yoga pants.  Girls, I am male, a father of two teenage daughters, and married to a smokin' hot wife.  Therefore I am not qualified to say anything about your wardrobe.

But Consequences...

The problem with thinking as a victim is that one's own responsibility is minimized.  This actually reduces one's own worth - if you did not cause anything to happen, you can be safely ignored.  This ends up depersonalizing everyone.

But responsibility is scary.  Acknowledging that behaviour leads to a response means that we sometimes have to pay for what we've done.  That can get expensive.  Easier to push responsibility away.  

If a set of consequences happens consistently, and is understood throughout a society, it results in a set of rules that everyone agrees to.  For example, once we see the violence that comes from revenge, we stop vigilantes from responding to crime with more crime, and we centralize authorized violence in a government, which is allowed to impose justice and end the cycle of feuds.

But when part of society follows #2 above, claiming that they are victims, the rules fall apart.  We are left with individual judgements in every situation - who is the biggest victim?  Whose rights were violated the most?

If we agree with #3, we may negotiate a set of rules that some agree with, but in that world, success is the only value.  Winners win, and set the rules for others.  That leads to a backlash from the losers, who adopt the language of victims.  And so we are back at blaming others, and avoiding responsibility.

If we are created beings, endowed with free will and agency, then we need to take responsibility for the consequences of our actions.  As my financial guru John Mauldin quotes of economists, it's not the seen consequences that make a good forecast, it's the unseen.  So only taking into account first-order effects of actions is not taking life seriously.  Look for the results of your actions several chess moves forward.  Think about how you see yourself.  Think about how others see you.  Think about what others think about your actions and how that will change their actions in turn.  Then don't be surprised when there are surprises, because we do not have God's perspective (all-knowing, eternal).  We don't see the lion in the grass.  We don't know that our butterfly wing flap will cause a monsoon on the other side of our (social) world.

But we do have responsibility.  Given that God put us here to display His creativity and glory and beauty, we need to work towards that in ourselves and others.  Every time we fail, we understand that failure is inevitable because (a) we are in an imperfect world, and (b) we have fallen from perfection by choosing to go against God's perfect design.  But success is possible, because (a) our world was created by a rational God and it can be understood, and (b) there is enough of God's character in us that we can create beauty and glory despite our limitations.

I am heading toward a philosophy where I very carefully regulate my own actions, taking into account my relationship with my Creator and my social sphere, and where I discount the views of the wider world, since the wider world is abandoning the Image/Fallen view of humanity.  That means that there may be consequences in my relations with society, where I will be 'victimized.'  But I choose that, not as a victim, but as a responsible agent.  Meanwhile, I will demonstrate in my life, in the richness and beauty and glory of my relationships, the benefits of living as if I were created within a meaningful story, as if I am a character who gets to play a part, whose chapter doesn't end when my life here ends.  I choose my path, and accept the consequences.