Link to swell blog posting...

[dlgood]

Earlier, londonkds linked to this remarkable* post on personal judgement, and the stories we tell ourselves.

* Seeing as I am remarking upon it, it is by definition remarkable...

A few passages I particularly appreciated:

• you can only try as hard as you can to develop good judgment, and not to let yourself be seduced by an image of yourself, before the need for good judgment arises (snip) You have no choice but to trust your own judgment, but the task of making it trustworthy is one you need to undertake well before that moment arises.


• the reason you are wrong might just be bad luck, but it might also be that you have accepted a story about yourself, and failed to notice that however flattering, it is just not true.


• with the right story in place, you can convince yourself that you are at one of those points: that something you want to do, and that is badly wrong, is in fact a difficult and even heroic gesture that only a person dedicated to virtue and justice could make. Here you are not just mistaken about the story you inhabit; you are actively falsifying it in order to allow yourself to pretend that you are not evil, but heroic. (snip) the more gloriously compelling the lie you tell about yourself, the more useful it is in protecting you from the knowledge of what you are really doing.

There was an "Othello" discussion. It was instructive...

Given that I do have a decent sized flist, I feel like I should be generating some better content these days. But, ehh. I'm working on a project re:future state of US Mine Warfare Countermeasures and it's pretty sticky right now. So this link is all I've got.

But feel free to read and come back here and initiate discussion on a case study or two from your favorite TV show. I'm all excited to get into a discussion today as long as it's one I don't really have to start.

Comments

[starryniteshade.livejournal.com]

It has been wisely said, "we see the world not as it is, but as we are".

I had a boss who was always plotting schemes against his peers and superiors. Not surprisingly he was paranoid that others were doing the same. He'd always ask, "what game is so-and-so up to"; and at the same time he could never trust his subordinates fully. So, I once repeated to him the above quotation. He looked at me blankly and said with confusion, "I don't understand what you mean!" And,yet most people would have called him a clever, smart man. He was just not a wise man.

In this world wisdom is less valued than cleverness. How often have I heard someone say, "so and so is the smartest person I've ever met". Just once I'd like to hear someone say, "so and so is the wisest person I've ever met." I suppose the problem is that you'd have to be wise to recognise wisdom, but cleverness is evident even to those who are not clever.

The above quotation is very wise. I recognise that even if I myself am not so wise. At least I know that we do not really "see the world as it is", but rather through a personal map based upon past perceptions and judgements about those perceptions. That's okay for we are not as gods, but must humbly recognise that we are limited in both capacities. We are gifted as animals in our capacity to generate these personal maps of the "world", but we must remember that the maps we generate are imperfect; and like cartographers of old we often feel inclined to put on our maps, "beyond this point, there be dragons".

Sam Keene once wrote, in his book Hymns to an Unknown God that these maps form our belief system (abbreviated B.S.) and we should hold on to those belief systems lightly. Hard to do, but even harder if you don't at least recognise the need to do so.

The article puts the above situation very well in both a personal context and in poetic context. The simple fact is that the "real world", which seems to always remain a mystery to us, will not allow us the luxury of decisions that forever leave our current B.S. intact.

Further the article raises issues well discussed by Carl Jung and his followers, such as the over-identification with particular virtues or traits - and in so doing imagine ourselves as "gods" or the projection onto others of our traits which we refuse to face (i.e. the demonisation of others). Sometimes rather than face our failings entire nations demonise the other. The US and the Soviet Union did this to each other until Gorbechev said, "I'm not playing this game anymore. You aren't our enemy." So hard was this to accept that Western Soviet analysts actually cheered the attempted coup. With only one second of reflection on their part should have been ashamed.

As for good judgement and luck - Napoleon said, "Don't give me clever generals, give me lucky generals".