Thinking About Thinking

Maybe it is a sign of thinking too much but thinking about thinking can throw up all sorts of unresolved issues of spanners that cannot be found in the works but one knows they are definitely there. Why do we do sometimes do the things that we do for the latest conundrum of mine is there really a reward for every action that we take? The easy answer would be yes but is perhaps too narrowly defined against a determined psychologist who believes that all life’s actions are reward based, either financially or emotionally, even to the point that you are the only one that knows of that action and the reward that it brings. But is it all reward based?

Take a scenario that anyone would hope it never happens to them. Let us suppose it is a married male witness with two young children who has come on a woman being raped or an elderly woman being mugged in a deserted park at night.. The assailent clearly looks mean and carrying a gun. You know that reaching for your mobile phone would be too late to save the victim and only physical action gives them any chance of survival and your exit out of this mess, should you so choose, is unhindered.

Do you go for it while putting your life and the welfare of your wife/partner at home at great risk if you do in order to save the victim; their future and indeed yours is on the line now. You do not know the victim and if you walked away now only you who would know that you did. Is that not the safest bet of all? Surely that is practical and can be lived with? After all it is survival of the fittest or perhaps it can be argued you can live to fight another day. Not a lot of reward here one way to the other, not even a secret one.

There are counless stories of acts of heroism of people who tried to help others, strangers, and lost their lives in doing so in what seemed a selfless, heroic but ultimately a suicidal act. It was not really suicide because you never intended to die is about the best you can make of it, maybe. I think it is rooted in something deeper and more meaningful that started a long time before that in the formation of the sense of self and what answers eventually came from the questions asked in that journey whether one would have choosen to act or not.

It also lies in some part in what Martin Niemoller (1892 1984) thought about inaction when he said this: “First they came for  the socialists and I did not speak out-because I was not a socialist. Then the came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak-out because I was not a trade unionist.  Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out- because I was not a jew. Then they came for me-and there is no left to speak for me.”

No one can really answer what they would do on the night except hope that it would never happen to them. The fireside braggart with beer muscles might enligten us with his fantasies but only reflex instinct, flight, fight, fright primitive ones, will act on the those precious seconds, for better or worse, for thinking on your feet may be a luxury that is not there. 

In the wider context of war and defence of life and liberty and freedom, doing something is always better than doing nothing but at least you will get a chance to think about it first.

Barry Clifford