Last week I invited you all on a small excursion down memory lane. I carried these thoughts and ideas with me throughout this week, and now I have been lead to wonder whether I have great expectations for next week and also beyond that: am I free to choose my own beliefs about past, present and future reality (or realities, if such a plural form makes sense at all)?
There was a dude a few hundred years ago named Blaise Pascal who apparently tried to give a sort of mathematical proof for the existence of God. Whether he succeeded or not I don’t know, but I think part of the so-called proof was a rather simple argument. He argued there are really only two cases: either God exists or God doesn’t exist. In case God doesn’t exist, we don’t lose very much by believing that God does exist. But if God does exist, then it seems as though the loss of believing God doesn’t exist would be far too high.
I think I have come up with a somewhat similar yet significantly different rationale for choosing to believe something. Instead of using a term like “God”, let me simply refer to something like “doing the right thing” (versus “not doing the right thing”). Let me give some concrete examples. This week in Aschaffenburg (Germany) apparently (according to news reports) some crazy person attacked a group of small children. A bystander tried to defend the children from the attack. The attacker killed two people: the bystander and one small child. I do not wish to get engaged in the political discussion related to the event. I wish to focus on the bystander: did that person do the right thing? (this is intended as an exercise for you to think about). I could easily create a very long list of such examples, Should anyone drive a car? Should anyone kill any living thing? Should abortion be legal? It is undoubtedly far easier for me to pose questions than to provide answers.
For me, the crux of the matter is really focused on the present. I believe my life right now is more interesting if I believe doing the right thing is good for me. Now. Whether I might profit from it at some time in the future really doesn’t matter — except (perhaps) insofar as the expectation of a reward seems to be required. Even if I know that the future reality is that no such reward will ever exist, my own imagination that doing the right thing is good for me now is sufficient to give me the motivation to do it.
Class dismissed! Oh, one more thing: I have decided to not give you a quiz on this next week, or even at any future date.
Socio Business blog 