“Necessary Choices”, etc. (296-300)
Welcome to Fragmentarium! Each issue contains five fragments of text that can be read independently of one another. However, all of the fragments are connected (from #1 onward), so the more of them you read, the more whole they will become.
296. Necessary Choices
Having the freedom to choose can make us anxious. Our choices have a real impact on both our lives and the lives of others, and we worry about the harm we might cause if we choose badly.
We know that freedom means responsibility and we do not like this because it seems to imply that we have to be careful with our choices. For each and every decision we make, we could also choose otherwise, which means it is always possible to make the wrong choice. We want instead to be free without responsibility, to be able to choose without having to consider the consequences.
But as we cannot do this without risking enormous harm, we need to examine more closely the relationship between freedom and responsibility. If we can see that our actions must follow from our responsibility to ourselves and the people around us, then suddenly those actions are no longer mere products of contingent choice but also necessary ones.
It is precisely the feeling of absolute contingency that produces so much anxiety over our most important choices. It is because we know we could be pulled away from what is best by another option we might want more or fear less that freedom can feel like a curse instead of a blessing.
When we see the full scope of our responsibility, it becomes much less likely that we will be pulled away by our desires or aversions. We then understand that responsible actions are those that we must necessarily take to meet needs. We feel this because one of the things we also see is that we are not entirely separate from others: your need is my need and vice versa.
When our awareness is broad and deep, we understand that empathy is not optional. Empathy is a fundamental part of our sensory apparatus, which means the needs of others cannot be ignored without effectively lobotomizing ourselves.
In seeing that we must necessarily respond to all need, we also discover that our choices are not just contingent but also necessary. By allowing ourselves to act from the necessity of compassion, we grant ourselves the opportunity to reduce suffering and create joy for ourselves and the people around us.
297. Seeing Both Sides
The more isolated you become, the more difficult it becomes to see the world outside of you. Greater and greater isolation means that the relevant part of the world shrinks until it contains no one but you. In this tiny world, you are in control, you are the arbiter of truth, and you determine what is real and what is fake.
As your interactions with others gradually cease, you stop participating in their shared reality, which means the norms and truths of that reality stop applying to you. Even the natural world, which seems to impose certain conditions on your existence, can be mostly avoided or at least mitigated through technologies that allow you to separate yourself from nature. When all of your basic needs can be met without interacting with anyone, then your isolation has become total. Your new world has a population of one, and its form is whatever you give it.
But your ability to shape the world is no aberration from normal. The truth is that the world is always your world, even when you are not isolated — you can always see whatever you would like to see in it. But the truth is equally that the world is not yours at all — it is always determined by factors that reside far outside your control.
Your isolation has made this second aspect impossible to see, and seeing both sides of the truth is essential. To see only one side of a truth is to almost guarantee despair for yourself. In this case, either the despair of the world being your own delusion and thus it is meaningless, or the despair of the world being entirely out of your hands and thus you are meaningless.
To overcome despair, you need to reconnect with the shared reality you have abandoned. But how did you get here? What drove you to isolate yourself in the first place? Your isolation is only a symptom of a larger problem — the problem of attachment that plagues us all. To see this problem in all of its troubling dimensions is your only possible path to salvation.
298. The Other Self
He knows who he is but there is no way for him to actually be that person. It’s too much even for him to think about. When he does try to think about it, it’s only for a moment or two before he gets frustrated. And since he can barely think about it, he certainly cannot talk about it.
It’s not as if anyone would talk to him about it anyway. He knows he’s alone. There isn’t anyone around who would understand. And there’s no point in trying to express himself when the only person who’ll hear him is himself.
People just want you to shut up and follow the usual ways. That’s how he sees things. He tries to do this to the best of his ability, but it takes every last drop of energy he can muster, including the energy it would take to be honest with himself. Being honest would mean confronting his fear, and that doesn’t feel realistic.
His fear is so nebulous and vague that he cannot possibly grasp it, let alone confront it. Roughly it’s a fear about what he is and what he isn’t. About the person he probably should be but cannot seem to actually be. About what would happen to him if he tried to be this other self. About how his life would change and things would become even more uncertain than they already are.
The problem is not just what he is and should be but what he would become if he tried being that and the difficulties it would create. It would mean committing to a wholly different kind of life that people might call strange or deviant. It would mean abandoning the comfort and safety of his present situation for something far more risky. And who is going to help him with all of that? Himself? He alone is not nearly enough for him to bet his life on.
He cannot trust himself to make the change because he cannot even trust himself to be honest with himself. That seems plainly true, for he wouldn’t be thinking about these things in this way if there were any real possibility of the change happening.
He has accepted that he’s alone and that his continued survival depends on making no changes. He will go on being what he already is, even if it means living in denial. He will continue playing the role that has been handed to him. He cannot see how he has any choice in the matter.
299. Noticing Anxiety
When I’m bothered by distressing events happening in the world, I can easily fall under the influence of anxiety. Anxiety is a kind of suffering that arises in response to attachment — usually attachment to a desire for stability or certainty. Often the feeling of anxiety is so powerful that it overwhelms any other feelings. But sometimes it is more subtle and experienced only as a kind of tension or numbness.
When anxiety is present, it can cause me to take actions that are not only unnecessary but also harmful. The harm can be as simple as being distracted from treating myself and others with compassion. My attention is taken from me and given instead to the signal of danger that is threatening my attachment.
I cannot escape from anxiety simply by forcing myself to ignore the signal that I’m perceiving. In fact, I must see it, for it is by seeing that it becomes possible for me to respond from awareness. However, I do not have to allow my anxiety control over my attention or actions.
Noticing the presence of anxiety when it arises can be challenging. I have to be able to recognize subtle changes in my body and my attention that indicate the presence of suffering. When I can notice these subtleties, I gain an opportunity to intervene. I can release my attention from its narrow focus on the concerning signal and allow it to wander back to what is necessary: my own needs and the needs of the people around me.
As I do this, I must take care not to just reduce my attention to those things I can directly control. By focusing only on what I can control, I limit myself to a very narrow set of possible actions. But to overcome the significant problems of need and suffering, I have to allow myself to act without boundaries. I have to allow my individual abilities to join with those of others towards compassionate actions that can create change at every possible level.
300. The Value Of Art
To show your art is never easy. It means not only taking the risk of making something real but also exposing yourself to the commentary and criticism of others. You know you might end up getting more than you expect, and it won’t necessarily be what you want to hear.
Even so, you feel the need to show what you have made to others. You can see that there might be something good in it, something that other people might appreciate and perhaps even love. So you decide to ignore your concerns and you send your art out into the world.
But then a strange thing can happen. You have given people access to your creation for the first time, but no one is saying anything. While you knew that admiration and adulation were unlikely and you worried endlessly about the possibility of harsh criticism, you never for a moment thought that the response to your efforts would be nothing.
You expected someone to at least recognize your work in some way, but it’s almost like your creation doesn’t exist. It can feel like the value of your work has been diminished because it has been ignored. For when it was only you who had seen it, you knew it was real and you could see some value in it. But now even that seems to be in question. From here, it is easy to fall into self-doubt and decide that there never was anything good about your creation in the first place.
But it is important to remember that these judgments are yours alone. The true value of your creation always remains open and undetermined. You have the ability and the courage to continue asserting the value you see in it, even in the face of general indifference.
It is always possible that your art does show something valuable even when other people cannot currently see it. Throughout the history of humanity there have been many impressive works that first fell stillborn from the press. But time supplies vindication and the determined artist knows this. You must find the resolve to keep going, even when your most cherished creation has not yet found the recognition you know it deserves.