The actions one made in the past can be continually redefined by oneself. He/she may conclude they were wise actions or stupid actions, he may decide he had few other reasonable choices or he may decide he many other choices. Furthermore, he may openly let the presently known results of the actions effect his reflections on them or he may try to evaluate the actions based only on what was known at the time. Whatever he may do, the actions he made were entirely his choice.
Future Decisions
When one is contemplating possible future actions, he may put together what information is available and then he may create a series of plans based on various scenarios. He may deem those plans as final decisions, but no decision is final unless acted upon.
Present Decisions
Just as one seemingly declares a conscious intent before each action he makes, he seemingly finds himself having made each action without having knowledge of planning. However one may describe the experience of acting, the actions themselves are always his own; they’re entirely his choice.
Good Faith
For one to act in good faith is to act with the knowledge that all his actions cannot be other than what he chooses.
Does anyone have any thoughts on how one can make more of his/her actions in good faith?
To me, “acting in good faith” means “acting in accord to a pre-chosen/agreed-to plan” without deviation.
Thus to know if one is acting in good faith, one must know “the plan” (whatever that might be).
With that in mind, one can examine or improve how well he is acting in good faith by making “the plan” very clear and verified as understood, and especially documented/remembered.
Additional enforcement of good faith is accomplished by volunteering for a “TSL”, “Temporary Self-Lock”, temporarily, physically disallowing alteration in the plan or actions being taken. Social schemes use extortion to accomplish this, “Do what we say, or else”. If one is merely trying to do his best on his own, he need merely make it nearly (not totally) impossible to do other than what he chose. Of course, it wouldn’t be wise to make such locks permanent or even lengthy, but rather short and voluntarily reestablished (such as a timed lock on a refrigerator or bank account).
Such things are used to gradually annihilate addictions.
My definition of good faith could be described as a reaction to yours. I take the imposition of values from one or more person to others, and proclaim they are meaningless unless one chooses those values for oneself. The values may be chosen through direct actions that all can see or they may be chosen based on a declaration to oneself; either way they may always be redefined or changed.
Regarding “pre-chosen/agreed-to plans”:
If the person whose action’s faith is in question had agreed to the plan then his actions may or may not be in good faith, depending on whether he realizes that each action is still going to be his choice regardless of prior commitments that may coincide with it.
If he didn’t agree to the plan and knew nothing of it, then it has nothing to do with the faith of his action.
And keep in mind; if he knew of it, but didn’t agree to it, he can still make an action that coincides with it so long as he realizes that he’s doing so because it’s his choice.
Let one base his actions on anything he wants, but if an action is not based on the most current information, then it’s based on the misplaced faith that nothing could have changed since the action was first contemplated. No matter how little time has passes between the prior made plan, there will always have been new information accumulated. So if you want to consider my version of good faith as only the absence of bad faith, then that’s fine. But, I don’t see it as a product of the times, you know better than anybody that the decisions most modern people make are never nearly as educated as they could be.
So what you are saying is that I know to never hire you for anything because by the time you get part way through it, you will change your mind so many times that you will never get anything accomplished. I would not be able to depend upon you for anything. You reduce the value of your own decisions to zero.
And if everyone around you does the same thing, the value of your decisions becomes even more uncertain because you can’t depend upon them for anything for the same reason. The end result is that you all become extremely weak and effectively non-existent - a waste product - self enslaving nihilists.
How so, even if I happened to be indecisive (which has nothing to do with the faith of my actions), can you not still judge each action in itself?
Is this obviously feigned misunderstanding your showing because you don’t like independent minded people?
Exactly what do you mean by nihilist in this context and how can acting in good faith be a form of self-enslavement? And then, what do you mean by self-enslaving; to be a slave to oneself, then of course, but if you mean for one to voluntarily become someone else’s slave, then what makes you think that other person would want him being that you posit that those such as him would be useless workers??
Many months ago, when I still considered myself one, I told you so, again and again and again, through a variety of threads, often with the words “nihilist” or “nihilism” in them. – You can act in good faith with a poor memory, but in that case your actions may end up being mostly vapid.
We’re anonymous people discussing philosophy here. I wouldn’t tell this to an employer; not necessarily because I lack commitment and loyalty, but because it would confuse him.
Let us discuss philosophy without worrying about the necessary guises we must use offline.
Actually, I was. I just used the job issue as an example of something far more serious.
You had proposed a non-commitment stance within yourself. That means that your own mind disregards its own decisions as irrelevant because they could change at any moment based upon “new information”. So can you decide to do anything for tomorrow? Apparently not and thus you cannot do anything today for sake of tomorrow. You can’t build toward anything and thus can’t accomplish anything. You can’t come to any understanding of anything in life because every understanding requires a building up from an unshakable foundation up to finer questionable details.
It seems that you are proposing to disassemble your ability to think or know anything. And that is what I was calling “self-enslaving” because that leaves you helpless against those easily manipulating you with mere rumors and suspicions that count as persuasive information. You can’t know to not do what has been suggested. You will be feminized and entirely dependent upon others for guidance and accomplishment, a monarchy’s perfect citizen and slave to the State.
I almost think it would be enough to say I want to avoid becoming exactly all that you suggested. I understand my version of good faith to be one of the most important basis’s for that. But, I’m here to communicate and obviously I’m communicating the exact opposite of what I intend to you.
I’ll take that as my fault. But, then I was yet to bring up examples myself, now I think the time is right, so hopefully you’ll have a better understanding of what I’m trying to say.
Example 1: One has been reading and discussing a philosophy that is very unique from what he’s used to. To properly follow it would mean that he’d have to not only think differently than he’s used to, but live differently as well.
He also has a commitment to self-improvement. That commitment is entirely unrelated to the demands of others. He’s in a position to live however he wants and he needs not answer directly to anyone. But, everything he knows about himself, every deep analysis of himself that he’s done, tells him that he wants to become more than he is.
He hardly needs to declare to himself that he plans on improving himself, but he does so just as a way to make sure he stays on track.
He has been learning the aforementioned philosophy as one way among others to improve himself. He also declares to himself that he will study that philosophy, also as a way to stay on track. He starts to consider the possibility that the philosophy he’s been studying and learning from others is not entirely whole; meaning he may want to disregard parts of it in his goal of self-improvement. But, the advocates of that philosophy are very persuasive.
Obviously, some people would just tell him to “think for himself”. But, that is a benign cliché; one can’t do anything but think for himself. The cliché is really just implying that he should thinks more, but if he already thinks more than most then it is useless advice. The best advice to help make sure that he doesn’t end up failing at self-improvement would to be to remind him that his commitments aside, he must always choose through his actions.
His actions may go against the new philosophy he’s learning, but so long as he keeps in mind that his actions are always his own, whether they’re right or wrong based on the criteria of others, he will at least know that he’s acting in good faith.
The fact is that neither commitment of his, nor his propensity to make commitments is necessarily in danger. He will always continue to try to improve himself, as long as he can understand the reasoning beyond the words themselves, and he will continue to study the new philosophy as long as he still has reason to believe it is worthwhile.
So the commitment in that case is “self-improvement” and an experiment he is trying out is the “new philosophy”.
He holds no faith in the new philosophy as he reexamines it day by day, moment by moment to ensure that it conforms to his assessment of “self-improvement”. He is “acting in good faith” in regards to his self-improvement goal, not the new philosophy goal. Thus it is virtually guaranteed that he will not go far with the new philosophy regardless of whether it would have brought him self-improvement. And without being forced in some way, he would never get through any serious schooling.
It reminds me of the woman who marries a man with the idea of improving her life, but day by day, she reassesses whether her man is helping. She is judging him every day. She has no commitment to the marriage, despite what she says, only to her own improvement. And as soon as she feels that he isn’t really helping in that regard, the marriage is over. She then espouses that he didn’t hold up his end of the “bargain”. Of course, a marriage isn’t proposed as a bargain for personal gain.
You can have only one highest priority and in a chaotic society, filled with adversaries, that one priority is usually more than you should expect to accomplish. All else will be sacrificed for its sake. This is further enhanced by the fact that people look for possible problem-causes more than they look for possible solution-causes. The result is that they convince themselves of problems that were easily solved or not problems but it seemed that they might have been, so for sake of the highest priority, they don’t take the chance.
Lengthy commitments are very difficult in an adversarial environment.
But it seemed that your OP was about not actually having a goal to attain as much as “doing anything he wants based upon new information”. Without a specified goal (and often even with one), the mind is lost to the gusty wind and rain. And again, reliability, confidence, and self-respect are lost to “I just wanna have fun”.
They’re both commitments, the former differs only in that he cannot (yet?) trace the root of that commitment to the ideas or persuasions of others.
It’s true that he holds no faith in it, or if he does I would tell him that he should not, should he wish to avoid bad faith.
I didn’t specify that his actions had already been affected by his doubts in the new philosophy, so the faith of his actions (whatever it may be) in regards to both commitments is equal. I meant to imply that he has only begun to silently doubt the new philosophy.
That’s not necessarily true. Just because he deems the basis for his studying the new philosophy to be a part of his commitment to self-improvement, doesn’t mean that it’s a secondary commitment, which he will unlikely continue. I didn’t give many specific reasons for his commitment to self-improvement. I only implied it “seemed” very right to him; so one could just as easily say that that commitment has the poorest foundation and was made in the worst faith (meaning having unquestioning faith in one’s intuition may actually be more fanatical than having faith in the ideas of others).
We could say that rather than eventually completely rejecting the new philosophy, he may conceivably embrace all or part of it far more than he originally expected, if he happens to find a new basis for learning it rather than the clichéd basis of “self-improvement”.
I don’t know how you came to that conclusion, and I doubt you’re correct in your implication that it would be unfortunate for one who would “never get through any serious schooling”. But, nonetheless, you may actually be correct if you assume that one with good faith would be less likely to get through certain types of schooling. After all, much schooling that is called serious, is far from it.
Most people don’t make decisions in good faith, therefore it’s unlikely that she made the decision to marry him in good faith, but up to this part in your example, there’s nothing specifically leading to that conclusion.
That’s an indicator of bad faith, although it’s not a conclusive one. I could actually argue that the fact that she chose to marry for an untraditional reason means she actually may have made the decision in the best of faith (despite the naivety). But, in modern society the reasoning she gave to her marriage is actually very common, even if untraditional, so it seems the chances are high that she was highly influenced (directly or indirectly) by people to marry for that exact reason, and she didn’t know that she must make her own choices.
That sounds like it may be ideal, but I don’t know why it would be the rule.
Would you please clarifywhat you mean by problem/solution-causes?
It makes sense to me now how one could be given such an impression . The problem for me is that I find the goals most people claim to make to be very shallow and to be highly influenced by others, I’d rather they have no goals than goals such as that. If my OP, taken by itself, was to influence people to be less goal oriented, I would still consider it to be worthwhile, but, hopefully, with the correct understanding in good faith, people can begin to make commitments that I’d consider worthwhile.
Yes, but people seem to generally make their goal or commitment to be related to hedonism anyway, even if they don’t specify or declare it directly. That’s why I think it would be best to start with the focus on how to act in good faith before we approach the subject of what acts one should make. Basically, I’m just trying to get the more abstract, but necessary, philosophy “out of the way”, before speaking directly to reality.
Stuart, why would one continually re-define his actions from the past? At what point does one let go of the action? Granted, we can reflect on them as we must if we are to learn from them.
As to “wise” or “stupid” isn’t it enough to look at them with detachment? Of course, I would be a hypocrit to allow you to think that I did not also at times judge myself for them. But being human, it’s about learning from them, no?
I think that sometimes the way we need to look at them is to understand that, though they may have been our choice, sometimes those choices are grounded in the ignorance of not really having seen a fuller picture. We have to forgive our humanness for faulty judgments and for sometimes allowing our emotions to rule our choices.
…and without looking back and judging, he may put together that information based on the knowledge that he can make a mistake. It’s also a good idea to think a few steps ahead, kind of like a chess player does. Oh, that might be what you mean about different scenarios. Am I right?
I’m not even sure if the decision is final when acted upon.
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How can that be? If he has made conscious intent, itsn’t there cognitive thinking beforehand? Why would he have lost memory of having planned things out?
Although I do intuit that we have free will and conscious choices, at times the actions are more based on unconsciousness/unawareness, based on prejudices and desires. How can they be our choice then when we have been tricked by the mind. This is why it is important to observe everything honestly and to see where 'we are coming from" at gut level, in a manner of speaking.
If you mean that he is acting with good intentions, for the most positive and humane result, insofar as is humanly possible for him to know, then yes, that is acting in good faith to me. Acting on good faith, is also dependent on the other person. To me, it means that we have to have as much information as possible to make a decision. The reason we have lawyers is because we don’t always! lol
Put this way though - to me, does not necessarily bespeak good intentions. It can simply mean that it is his choice, no matter what . If that made sense. But I may be wrong here. I am often wrong about things. lol
To try to be sure that what one is doing is for the greater good for all concerned. That’s not necessarily an easy thing.
To examine what his “real” hidden-from-himself motives might be? We all have them but we’re not always aware of them.
To be sure of what he is dealing with - to see as much of the picture as possible - to discuss it with the other, whatever the plan is, so that later on he won’t want to back down. In other words, to really know what he is about.
To listen to himself, to hear the words which he speaks, to honestly examine whether or not he can be “real” with them later on to follow through. There are times when we think we know ourselves or what we are about and later on discover, we hadn’t a clue.
These are just my musing, Stuart.
To me good faith means there is an alignment between what one thinks and claims the motivations were for the actions one made and the actual ones. Oooooh, what murky waters we find ourselves in. Nevertheless, I think one can get much much better at this, and you can also get better at knowing when others are bullshitting and manipulating.
Now I notice that my definition could include evil actions or for those nihilists in the audiance, actions one does not like. Still, to me that is where the good faith comes in. It’s an honesty thing, which is closely tied and intermingled with a self-awareness thing.
If you reduce the reasoning for the motivation behind any action it will always come down to simply the fact that it was what you chose, so your definition isn’t really that far from mine, it seems you only further it.
That’s interesting to hear you say. Would you explain exactly why such good faith is so unclear or difficult to obtain?
There will always be some perspective where someone is manipulating someone else (whether it be the perspective of the manipulator, the one being manipulated, or a third party), the best criteria to use to avoid the most unwanted manipulation is very difficult to decide on, and then that’s only part of the struggle. But, if one doesn’t realize that in sense they cannot be manipulated by other people – anymore than they can be manipulated by bad weather to go inside, and that their choices are always there own, whether or not they will ever be happy with them – then they will have no chance of avoiding manipulation in any respectable way.
Manipulate - To influence or manage shrewdly or deviously + To tamper with or falsify for personal gain
If one is completely open and honest to another of their intent, then they aren’t manipulating. They’re trying to influence.
The former involves tricking the other, or hiding vital information from the other. Doing something at the expense of the other.
Bad faith is saying, ‘I want to be friends’, and then stabbing someone in the back as soon as they’re in range or vulnerable. Changing the goal posts without just cause, or with prior intent.
I believe that manipulation is far more difficult to differentiate from influencing one in a friendly manner than you claim. But, such issues are ones related to ones you and I have already discussed in sufficient detail to know that we aren’t going to significantly influence each others opinions on them.
My question to you is on your definition of bad faith. Wouldn’t it make more sense if the one who has something to lose in the exchange, rather than gain, is the one whose faith is in question? To clarify, if one is being asked by someone to be his friend, then he’s the one who has to decide if he wants to place enough faith in the person, whom he has yet to get to know, to oblige the request. The one asking, whether he’s sincere or not, has no need for faith, because there is no relevant lack of information; he knows what he wants.
The question of integrity goes both ways. One can question the other, or oneself. To be a friend, is to agree to set of norms. If one agrees to be a friend, yet has no will/intent to meet the expectations, one is acting in bad faith.
As I said in the previous post, someone offering friendship doesn’t always portray their true intent. It’s not a given that if they offer friendship, that they want it. If one has the intent to harm another, under the guise of friendship, how does faith come into the equation?
Because they are attempting to produce faith in the other, towards the self. One would be acting in bad faith towards the other.
Bad Faith - The fraudulent deception of another person; the intentional or malicious refusal to perform some duty or contractual obligation.
Also, I don’t think it’s a given that with any relationship that someone’s losing out.
Do you have a definition of manipulation? Or feel there’s something left out in the definition I referenced?
I liked the Wikipedia definition. It expresses how I’ve always intuited manipulation.
