Overview: Everyday Actions and Consequences

In Everyday Desires and Choices, we examined in detail the ideas that (1) humans are connected through the three "Big" desires we have in common, (2) that we each make hundreds of choices every day to pursue those desires, and (3) that each of us must continually choose whether to pursue our desires along a positive path or a negative one.

Recall that the moment of choice is also the moment of greatest possibility. Once we have made our choice, the possibilities begin to narrow. The range of possible actions we could take narrows to only those actions that are consistent with our choice. Finally, when we make our choice real by taking an action, we narrow the possibilities down to that single action. At that point, the deed is done, the choice made real in the world, and the desire attained in either its true form or its false one.

This article is an introduction to three related sub-articles that look in detail at each of the three spheres of human activity that we have been investigating.

I use the word "Sphere" to denote an area of human activity primarily or even exclusively associated with the pursuit of a specific, major human desire. It is my opinion that the three great human desires for Joy, Peace, and Love are so fundamental to all humans that they indeed encompass virtually all of human activity, even in our increasingly complex, modern-day world.

Further, by separating the three Spheres, we can take a bird's-eye view of our society. In fact, our society does divide itself rather cleanly along the borders of these spheres:

The Sphere of Joy is associated mainly with the spiritual aspects of our personal lives, with how we move toward or away from the Spark of the Divine that is who we truly are, and whether we help others move toward or away from their Spark. This is the realm of issues related to morality, immorality and amorality, to truth and lie, and as Katchadourian states in the book Guilt: The Bite of Conscience, to purity. This sphere covers the inward-oriented part of our personal lives, as well as how we influence others for good or ill.

The Sphere of Peace deals with self-governance and the way we govern society. It is involved with the definition of harm and the determination of restitution. Equality before the Law is the operating requirement, and the proper or improper use of coercive force the primary issue to be resolved. Unspoken, spoken and written contracts create and define responsibilities and rights. Mechanisms of dispute resolution are provided for all to use. This sphere can be seen as covering the formalized aspects of life in terms of how we rule ourselves in our personal life and as we attempt to control how others treat us.

The Sphere of Love contains all other aspects of human activity, primarily because this sphere is about our voluntary activities. This includes the real-world interests that we each pursue for our own happiness, as well as activities we engage in to express love and compassion toward others. As such, this sphere can be seen as covering the outward-oriented part of our personal lives, as well as the way we treat other people.

In each of the three articles dealing with the spheres of Joy, Peace, and Love, we will examine a list of possible actions that can be taken if someone chooses a path and stands ready to act. For example, what can he do if he chooses Ennoblement in the Sphere of Joy? Or: What does it mean if he chooses to Abuse his power and acts to take control of a society? Do we have examples of the consequences of specific choice-action combinations? Do we know people or ideas that embody a particular choice or choice-action combination?

Of course, life and human history are filled with examples of choice-action combinations and their consequences. I have mentioned a few in these articles, but I'm sure you will come up with your own examples of consequences or of exemplars, as you study each of these three articles with their graphics.

My primary goal with these articles on Joy, Peace, and Love is simply to provide a new, deeper, and more useful perspective on personal and societal matters. I'm looking to work with you and other readers to develop a perspective that is fundamental enough that we can get away, to at least some degree, from the largely useless talk that fills the polarized discussions so common nowadays. I don't intend to avoid difficult or controversial issues. Rather, I hope that taking our discussion down this deep will give us the tools to re-examine today's issues more productively once we come back up from resetting our conceptual foundation.

I hope you will help me develop this material by adding a comment and letting other readers see what you are thinking. If you provide a comment that adds to this material, I may be able to work it into a future revision (and give you credit).

Everyday Actions Are Meaningful

Are You Actually Doing the Right Thing?

It seems to me that the rising level of disturbing events and behavior that surrounds us today comes in good part because people have lost the knowledge of making proper choices or have created deep inside themselves, below the level of their conscious awareness, incorrect assumptions and principles for governing themselves and interacting with others.

We think that everyone else is the problem and not ourselves, but that is clearly a misunderstanding of the actual situation. We must remove the beam from our own eye first, before we can even think of attempting to remove the splinter from someone else's eye. [As an aside, I would point out that this website, with its emphasis on exploring liberation, is my own attempt to remove various beams from my own eyes. If you benefit from this effort, I view that as a welcome outcome - for both of us!]

A picture of what "should" be may sound silly or even intrusive, but if you don't know how to choose a positive destination, any destination (good or bad) will do. If you don't know where you truly want to go, how can you possibly hope to get there? If you don't know how you "should" act in your daily life, how can you possibly know if your choices and actions are helping or hurting?

After all, each of us knows people who routinely do bad things in order to obtain what they think are good ends. How can you get to a world where everyone is loved and happy and respected, if you use methods that are cruel or evil or abusive? Yet such conduct surrounds us more and more these days.

Everyone always chooses and acts from the belief that they are doing the right thing.

How can you tell if you actually are doing the right thing?

You may believe that the Ideal you seek to create in the world can be achieved no matter what choice you make. You may believe that your goal is so powerfully good that it will come into the world undeformed no matter how badly you act while trying to create it. You may believe that your Ideal is so positive or so Good or so necessary that you are actually required to use any means possible to make it happen. You may believe that adopting a wonderfully good Ideal protects you from bearing the negative consequences of your actions to create that Ideal in the real world.

None of those beliefs are true. These three articles on the Spheres of joy, Peace, and Love clearly show that, when you make a negative choice and therefore necessarily constrain yourself to use negative actions, you are guaranteeing that your goal will recede from you or will arrive in a corrupted or false form.

One of the most important lessons of these articles is simply this: You cannot achieve a good end by using bad means.

Note carefully here that I'm not saying that you shouldn't use bad means to achieve a good end (although indeed I hold that you should not). I'm saying that you cannot achieve a good end using bad means. Just as it isn't possible to get to the top of a mountain by taking a downhill footpath, it's not possible to walk a bad path and get to a good end. A bad path can only take you to a bad end.

Only by evolving the means you use toward a greater degree of appropriateness in every present moment of your life can you bend your path through life upward toward the good end that you truly desire. Of course, this doesn't guarantee that you will achieve your goal. However, it does make it possible to get there, and to get there without sacrificing your principles or virtue.

Fear, Anxiety, and Motivation

Fear and anxiety have been talked about by lots of people for a long time. The literature is so full of information of varying quality as to make it fairly impossible for us to sort through it without making some decisions to cull out a lot of that material.

Yet fear and anxiety are too important for our understanding of choice and action to be ignored. Their existence or non-existence in a person making a Choice and taking an Action will influence the motivating factors in his decision-making process.

In this analysis we will use fear and anxiety in different ways. It's important to understand why we need to distinguish between them, when the dictionary definitions for both words are fairly similar. We need to provide a clear separation based on time.

We will define Fear as the immediate, present-moment awareness that we are in actual danger from a clear threat. When seen this way, fear is an ally, a protector, a warning to take immediate action to protect oneself or to remove oneself from the scene where the threat exists.

One of the best books that I know of on fear as an ally is Gavin de Becker's book, The Gift of Fear. In examining the Amazon page for this book, I found a Q&A with de Becker, which had this observation: "[O]ne [of the insights] most applicable to day to day life, even for people who are not living with unusual risks, is to be in the present; … Now is the only time anything ever happens–now is where the action is. All focus on anything outside the Now (the past, memory, the future, fantasy) detracts focus from what's actually happening in your environment. Human beings have the capacity to look right at something and not see it…"

This draws the same conclusion so well illustrated and discussed in Eckhardt Tolle's book, The Power of Now, which we have already mentioned. When you focus on the present moment, you have power to choose and act appropriately. When you allow your focus to move outside the present, your ability to choose and act appropriately declines.

In general, when a person is faced with a real threat, he will act decisively. Sometimes the decisive act is to fight or otherwise protect himself. At other times the decisive act is to escape from the threat by running away or by playing dead in hopes that the threat will go away. When there is time to think and plan, he can choose among a number of options. Oftentimes, though, particularly when the threat is immediate, the body takes over and creates an act. In such cases, if the person ignores the body, the probability of sustaining damage rises significantly.

When a group of people realizes that they are existentially threatened by a real threat, they will tend to coalesce and act together once a clear path is pointed out. Thus, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill could rally their entire populations in a multi-year effort to fight the Axis Powers in World War II and have their populations respond with almost complete agreement.

Of course, it is possible for us to see a threat where none exists, or to dread a future outcome that has not yet happened and may never happen. This type of reaction is what we will label "Anxiety". When we fail to remain present, our awareness moves to the past in terms of regret or disappointment, but not generally in terms of anxiety. Anxiety arises when our consciousness partially or fully leaves the Present and moves into the future, where it sees uncertainty, potential loss of a desired future, or potential realization of a dreaded future.

Both fear and anxiety can cause a person to make a poor choice. Generally, though, it is anxiety that causes us to choose the negative path when pursuing our major human desires of Joy, Peace, and Love. This is why it is important for us to understand fear and anxiety in this discussion of Choices and Actions.

As you read through and study the text and graphics of the articles on the spheres of Joy, Peace, and Love, hold in your mind the question of motivation.

In particular, consider what could influence or drive a person to choose the negative Path for each of the three major Choices. This can help you bring into your own present-moment awareness an ability to see when your own motivations are tinged with or controlled by anxiety. That contamination could be leading you to make a choice to tread a negative path when you thought you were treading a positive one. By bringing that contamination up into your conscious awareness, you gain power over its subversive influence on you and regain control over your own choices and actions.

Conclusion

When we know how to distinguish good personal choices and their associated actions from bad personal choices and their actions, we can begin to define good ends that are truly good and create them in proper form in our world.

Like ripples on the surface of a pond, the effects of our internal changes, of our improved daily choices and our more positive daily actions, will spread out from us and affect literally everyone and everything we see. Better choices and actions on our own part not only change how we each perceive our world but also will change how others view us and act toward us.

Then, as we continue to choose and act more appropriately, other people will begin to choose and act more appropriately as well, simply by building on our example. As the positive ripples spread out from you, the world will improve. And all you did to accomplish this change was to choose more wisely for yourself in your everyday life. Ultimately, you don't even need to do anything. When you are improving yourself, simply being yourself is really all that is needed.

Now it's time to move on to the three articles on the Spheres of Joy, Peace, and Love. Here are their links:

The Sphere of Joy.            The Sphere of Peace.            The Sphere of Love.