Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Choice cut
Category: Poetry/LyricsIf you were forced to choose,
Between your life and others,
What would you choose and why?
And how the hell,
Would you ever know,
If you were right, or
Wrong?
Old Comments
I have a serious problem with this poems characterization of “others” as something that I might choose. “Others” generally includes at least two actual individual human beings, one of which I might certainly choose over myself, and the other of which I might certainly put myself well ahead. However, this is a minor point because the real beauty of this poem is the question on which it ends. How indeed?
There is no way to tell, not for any decision we ever make. All we do is guess, but our guesses can be made ever more effective toward our ends if we are willing to pay attention to the past results of those decisions. For example, walk across the hot black asphalt after choosing that wearing footwear of some sort isn’t important. While nursing the blisters you may decide that next time, you’ll wear footwear. This seems like you chose wrong the first time. But perhaps not.
Perhaps, with these painful blisters on your sole, you will have the means and the passion and the motivation to warn your loved ones of the hot street, saving their soles from the fate of your own. Is that too small a reward to for the cost of some sore feet? As I age, I feel less and less like there is a right and wrong choice. You may not like the outcome of your choices, but I think you can always put those outcomes to a use good enough to justify the original choice. It is paying attention and strengthening self-discipline that generates the seeds of joy.
Being force to choose? I think once you’re forced, the value of the right/wrong paradigm evaporates. Morality is useless and empty when we are forced.
Morality is subjective at best, which is also a point made in this poem.