Friday, October 24, 2008

The 'But...' rationale

I came up with a rationale sometime before in my life. Well, in fact, i came up with alot of rationales in my life! But sometime ago upon its creation, as with most conceptual brain-impromptus, it waned off upon the passing of time. And all of a sudden, one fine day, it self-invoked again.

I disliked complications of life, to say the least. I used to frown upon people's distressed look in making difficult decisions. I feel like scolding such people and snap them out of it and which I usually did. And the usual response was fake acknowledgements just to please my naive senses that everything is easily solved.

Of course I understood- now and then- the apparent difficulty in undergoing such dilemma and that whilst it may be a clear-cut "do" or "do not" or the likes, there is always the underlying pressure that may be so significant in forcing someone to go against all rational thoughts which in turn confuses them as to whether this pressure be given precedence or the so called rational one.

A friend of mine told me that he has a friend who had a rationale on his own. His rationale was that he always believe that the first reason be given precedence and that any subsequent thoughts should not be entertained. I call it the "Immediate-gratification" rationale. I did analysed this thought before and conclude that it had a very utilitarian tendency.

I subsequently devised the "But..." rationale. Actually it's nothing really since anyone definitely would have thought of it before at least once in their life! It goes on the basis that if there is a "But" to a given choice, it should be given precedence and that was it. Whatever reasons were those "But"s, there must be a justification for its existence so that if this "But" is indeed a justified one for its existence, then it follows that there is a valid reason why one should give precedence to it. Therefore, if there was a subsequent "But" to a "But", than the last "But" would take effect. The fact that there exists a "But" means that it is a valid reason to follow it, otherwise it should not exist at all.

It then follows that that decision be final and so theoretically, it appears that a decision can be made without so much considerations and tension after all since this is the only option and that both ways, there would inevitably be pressures. It's a matter of executing it rather than trying to find solace in making the right choice because at the end of the day, there is no right choice. The right choice appears to be the one that this person could console himself into.

Obviously, as you would have noticed by now, this rationale is not rational at all in that it is flawed because it tricks a person into a fallacy that the best option is always the latter one. This is definitely not always the case. So, i never really followed this rationale at last. In fact, i do not know in the 19years of my life what guided my decisions. I do realise that I do deliberately make decisions that I do not prefer in relation to a more desireable and beneficial one. At the end of the day, what could have possibly guided me was the combination of all the rationales I had cropped up in my head. Or that I was somehow too tired to weigh the options that I convince myself any one of them.

2 comments:

CHRIS TAN said...

TQ. I tot I seorang saja ponder all these things, rupanya ada kaki lagi.

dey. when i blog i edi emo. when i read ur blog I tambah emo. haihh..

so mari kita emo emo la. i don't know why but i think ur blog is emo-ish. welcome to my emo world.

mau join my gay world also? welcome to my gay world!

Cheong said...

hw can u be both emo and gay? unless u mean gay "gay" agn...LOL
but i dun feel emo wor in my blog...haha...only sometimes lar...cn guess in certain posts. n yea! i memang pat lau oso thing bout these kind of things one ler..