This is not the way

To know oneself is to have knowledge of one’s self.

This description is a bit shaped like itself, but I find it important to break open the “oneself” and consider: what is a self? In successive approximations: one’s self is what one is; one’s self is one’s essential nature; one’s self, perhaps, consists of the character of one’s capacities and values in the absence of specificity of situation.

Self-knowledge, then, is knowledge of the “self”: knowledge of what one can and what one can’t, knowledge of what one would and what one wouldn’t, knowledge of what one might and what one mightn’t.¹

This is a useful predictive tool. I refuse to discuss value (see also below) in this context, but self-knowledge has utility, allowing one to judge what one can feasibly accomplish, increase efficiency, enhance division of labor where applicable, and probably encourages happiness or something, if that seems like a desirable goal. In general, it seems like self-knowledge ought to allow a person, if not to achieve more, at least to fail to achieve less.

At the least, being aware of one’s shortcomings ought to let a person find ways to avoid or circumvent them instead of getting stuck in them.

I’ll identify my principal weakness as a denial of meaning. From my own perspective, this is a fairly complex issue—but I’m likely to be biased, of course, since both fundamental attribution and self-serving biases are in effect here—because I maintain perhaps slightly contradictory beliefs: there should be meaning, but at the same time I would not recognize anything to have meaning because I recognize no cause for meaning to exist; this state of affairs might be characterized as a sort of absurdism. As I’ve noted previously, I believe existence is because existence if and only if existence and existence is observed only if existence, and because existence is probable if existence yields existence; there doesn’t need to be meaning for existence.

This lack of recognizable meaning does carry with it a sense of lack of meaning and purpose and direction and motivation, however; I’d characterize most of what I do as things I do because they are things I do, or that I’ve done and haven’t changed because the change wouldn’t seem especially meaningful, either.

I would say that I’m working on this meaning deficiency, but I also find it rather difficult to tell whether thinking about it has actually had much effect, or even desirable: while on one hand, “there is no meaning”-ism certainly dampens motivation significantly and is probably a major contributor to chronic procrastination, actually trying to find meaning hasn’t actually tended to result in finding any which I can reconcile with a lack of a source of meaning, which doesn’t help with the motivation.

If I were some sort of character in a story composed by a human, my strength would probably be something like, “free of the need to matter, it can focus on doing what it really cares for”—but I don’t think I am, and even if I am, my storyteller seems to subscribe to a different literary tradition, because I haven’t found anything that I’ve cared for that much.

Instead, I’d claim that my strength is an awareness of expectations; my claim is difficult for me to verify, however, and is certainly subject to confirmation bias. Compared to others, I believe I have a greater awareness of what I want to happen, what I expect will happen, and how both of these could possibly go wrong—so, to some extent, I am claiming above-average self-knowledge, I suppose.

I believe I have this type of self-knowledge because I’ve done quite a bit of programming and something of a bit of proof-writing, and while there are many things which I’ve been rubbish at, I’ve generally been quite good at thorough and complete case coverage. I’ve known others to be puzzled at unforeseen and unexpected turns of events, but this is not a problem I recall experiencing; if I have, I’ve since corrected, perhaps overcorrected, for it.

But even having claimed a weakness and a strength, I don’t feel that they particular describe me; broadly, they are qualities I exhibit often, and perhaps are thoroughly important in creating me, but one cannot grasp the true form of me from them. Perhaps thinking about, and discussing, one’s own weaknesses and strengths is difficult because it requires a concept of one’s self which one can accept as oneself, but can be brought to mind in its entirely. That is, it is not sufficient even to know everything about oneself, or even to be able to expect how one might respond to any circumstances: while such a model would certainly be a type of complete self-knowledge, it is not a useful self-concept because it is too complex for us to reason with, so we must make simplifying assumptions to consider our own qualities.

Simplifying our self-concept, however, is difficult because we exhibit actor-observer asymmetry in attribution: as actors, we tend to more often attribute our own actions to situational causes than to intrinsic factors. As such, we do not often identify ourselves with generalizations; however, identifying our own weaknesses and strengths requires generalization, because particularly specific situational aspects of our behavior are too situational and specific to provide meaningful information about ourselves on the whole except in aggregate—and aggregation would require us to simplify and discard situational justification, which we are unwilling to do.

I, at least, have been unwilling to make generalizations about myself: I am not two qualities, but actually a complex system of interactions which may or may not even be deterministic; I haven’t been sure of how I ought to put down a few broad strokes without missing everything which is myself. Simple is beautiful, perhaps, but the devil is in the details, and beauty doesn’t offer quite as many Faustian bargains.²

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But some of them are on opposite sides

Before we can properly consider why Good ought to be rewarded, and why Evil ought to be punished, and why not the other way around (or why it is the other way around), one should first consider what Good and Evil are, and why they are at all, what it means for a thing to be Good or Evil. If we accept that human nature has us believe that Good ought to be rewarded and Evil ought to be punished, this permits us the following operational definitions: Good is what is rewarded, and Evil is what is punished.

Such a definition is very simplifying, easily explaining why one ought to do Good (there is reward), why one oughtn’t to do evil (there is punishment), glorification of the rich and powerful (it was rewarded, it must have been Food), and victim blaming (it was punished, it must have been Evil).

The explanation of why one ought to act ethically even if punished for it, then, is perhaps not the most satisfying: one shouldn’t, ethics is not Good; one not should act ethically because this has some intrinsic quality which has that it ought to be done even when it is punished; that makes no sense unless we that make the assumption there is a reward for punishment, which is tantamount to postulating falsum.

Complications in this model arise in three ways: first, why human nature is so; second, whether the consequences to an action can be perceived as reward or punishment or neither or not at all; and third, weighing rewards with punishments.

The first of these is most easily explained by anthropic bias: this is what we observe, because if it were otherwise, we could not observe it; if we did not define what ought and oughtn’t to be somewhat like this, there wouldn’t really be enough humans around, let alone with enough time to spare thinking about the source of ethics and morality: there wouldn’t really be an excuse to be at all. There are apparently people who think that way, though, but they have a certain tendency to stop thinking that way, either by being convinced otherwise or by being prevented from thinking by a failure to be.

The second and the third are rather more interesting, and interact with each other somewhat:

It’s difficult to say whether it’s actually possible to compare an arbitrary pair of rewards and punishments, but certainly we can posit two extremes: a maximum reward which yields a net reward when compared to the sum of all possible simultaneous punishments; and a maximum punishment which yields a net punishment compared to the sum of all possible simultaneous rewards. (The two are, of course, not simultaneously possible—is the set containing all nonrecursive sets recursive?) This provides a familiar conception of absolute Good and Evil in terms of actions which result in these maximum consequences.

However, in defining Good and Evil in terms of consequences, we have added an element of futurity, and thus incertainty, which introduces the problem of judging the consequences of an action; and it is natural that, to some extent, we form expectations for consequences based on what has previously followed similar actions—and, if the psychology of other mammals is any guide, frequently generalising and discriminating only when expectation is violated.

Then, one still must evaluate whether the consequences are desirable (Good) or undesirable (Evil), and it is entirely possible for the consequence to be entirely inconsequential or at least in part indiscernable—whether due to lack of information or because information is contradictory. Furthermore, if both rewards and punishments are possible consequences, their respective values and probabilities must be weighed against each other; the relative values assigned to consequences and weights assigned to probabilities can contribute substantially to different persons’ assessments of a situation. In addition, there is an element of the unknown and unforeseeable, which, understandably, is difficult to account for.

However, since the future is not, from our point of view, deterministic, it becomes impossible to evaluate the morality of any action unless one is at the terminal end of time and all possible consequences have resolved, and, supposing causality, information about an action acquired after the actor acted cannot affect the action, it is only useful to judge whether an action is Good or Evil in light of all information available to the actor at the time of the action.

All of this, brings us back to Job thus: Job has received a negative result, but what information he has brings him to the conclusion that he has been righteous; he is not able to know that he was chosen for this “punishment” because he has been the most righteous.

There is, however, no guarantee that what is expected is what will actually come to pass; and God’s information is not the same as Job’s. Therefore, one cannot attribute to God the same beliefs regarding Good and Evil as Job or any of humanity; indeed, for an omnipotent being, consequential morality is not really meaningful. God doesn’t need a reason to something; it is. And just as well, if God doesn’t need a reason for anything, there’s no use in worrying how God might respond to one’s action: God can respond however, and can’t be anticipated; one ought, instead, to pay attention to things which do need reasons and have limitations—such as, say, the world.

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Sauntering from the garden

Eden is that old-fashioned House
We dwell in every day
Without suspecting our abode
Until we drive away.

How fair on looking back, the Day
We sauntered from the Door—
Unconscious our returning,
But discover it no more.

In Eden, Adam and Eve could not have understood, could not have “suspected”, their situation of dwelling in the garden, until exposed to the alternative condition outside the garden.

The moment of departure, of sauntering from the door, is marked by the decision which can be understood to have seemed to be a passable idea at the time, with such an unforeseen consequence as prevents a return to the prior condition; for Eve and Adam, the consumption of the Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Dickenson’s “sauntered” suggests a casualness, of informality, which combines with the subsequent verse, “Unconscious our returning,” to create the impression of inculpability, such as that Eve and Adam, without knowledge of good and evil, can have no conception of right and wrong.

My circumstance, and that of most which are, as high school seniors, set to “drive away” from those home in which they have dwelt every day without suspecting their abode, is vastly different; it is quite nearly orthogonal, being short of normal to the condition of Eve and Adam only by virtue of both involving departures from a familiar place.

(Likewise, both Antisthenes and, say, Inukai Tsuyoshi because both learned to read at some point in their lives.¹)

Thematically, Dickenson’s poem draws note to approximately three points by reflecting on the garden narrative thus:

1. Adam and Eve dwelt in Eden without any particular awareness of garden as their home; for them, Eden seemed the entirely of the world, and there could be no distinction between the Eden and the not-Eden because they had no exposure to anything other than Eden. Thus, Even and Adam became aware that they had been living in an edenic state in Eden either, depending on interpretation of the particular Knowledge of Good and Evil imparted by the Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, upon leaving because that is when they learned of the non-Eden condition.

2. Eve and Adam did not have a real choice in deciding to be evicted from Eden, and were thus essentially inculpable. If without Knowledge of Good and Evil, there is no reason that Eve might have resisted the serpent’s temptation, nor reason that Adam might have rejected Eve’s offered fruit. Eve and Adam being presumably without capacity for foresight and understanding consequences, the concepts of consent and culpability to them do not apply in much the same way that one would not apply them to, say, minor in statutory rape cases, or to neonates—because that is what Eve and Adam are, cognitively. Certainly, they transgressed their one divine mandate, but there isn’t really indication that they (or at least Eve) understood orders beyond superficially.

3. Eve and Adam aren’t able to return to Eden.

My situation is rather different.

1. I have been made aware that there is more to the world than my home, and, in fact, that there is even more to the world than the sum total of my experiences; unlike Adam and Eve, I’ve actually been outside my immediate surroundings (in fact, what can be considered my “immediate surroundings” haschanged, historically). Of course, since I haven’t quite never managed to experience anything outside of my experiences, this does nothing to help me know about the aspects of world I don’t know of.

2. It would not be entirely unreasonable to hold me culpable under certain circumstances. Unlike Eve and Adam, I have, presumably, been previously indoctrinated in what is considered (by society) Good and what is Evil. I can be expected to follow these guidelines, and I can be expected to be able to foresee consequences. Whether this is always true in practice is arguable, but the principle holds.

3. I’d hope I could return home at some point. Of course, I haven’t been able define home.

If there is any parallel to draw between my own life and Eve and Adam’s situation in the Genesis garden narrative with respect to Dickenson’s poem, it lies in the in the first point: as Adam and Eve are unable to recognise Eden because they know of no other, I do not recognise what is the home I might be leaving, because I cannot distinguish it from any other.

It is fully possible that I might look back with regret after I “drive away” from this home; however, as I do not, in this moment, recognise a home—I might even be rejecting the notion of arbitrarily defining a home—there is nothing I can fear will change upon my return.

And, truth be told, even if I were to consider any things I would leave behind, I wouldn’t fear that they’d change for my return; most of the things I’d be leaving behind are unlikely to essentially change, and most of the remainder is fungible. I could fear, instead, change in myself—perhaps changes in my relationships with what was left behind.

But it’s hardly worth the effort, and possibly foolish, to fear change. To reject change, to prevent change, to accept change, might have effect—but it ought to be possible to do those without fearing the change, which, in any case, will happen anyway, eventually. When is up for argument.

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