Blog

Why we do what we do?

Why do we do anything? Why do we work, and relax and study and watch movies and learn random skills? More important, why do we act how we act? What causes and motivates and moulds our behaviour? Why did I get angry when that particular person was rude to me, but not when someone else was being rude? Why did I not study for that exam despite knowing that I’d regret it later?

Why did I stop to interfere in the scuffle going on between the local kids in a park? Why does the thief steal? Why does the child with cookie crumbs on his mouth lie? Why do strangers slow down to help you cross the road when you’re afraid to walk through? Why do we hate? Why do we love? Why do we feel everything and nothing and so much and so little? Why do we do what we do?

What prompts us? 

Determinism and Decisions

When I first heard of the terms Determinism and Fatalism in Ethics, I was fascinated. More so by Causal Determinism than Biological Determinism or even Fatalism.

Causal Determinism runs on the idea that our actions set grounds for further actions. That I will behave a certain way because I have behaved a certain way in the past. It is a definite linear string of cause and effect and further effect—for infinity.

You have free will in the sense that it is your choice. Your actions are chosen by you, but they’re still pre determined in the sense that you can’t not choose this particular choice. As a person, shaped by events and actions, you will do what you will do.

It is like we’re mapped out on pen and paper, if only someone could get enough paper, enough pen and every single action, intention and environment all interacting together. We’d be so predictable, if only someone could know just the right details. I guess everything is predictable that way—just a form of science we don’t yet know the rules of.

Do I Even Have A Choice?

I read in Theology about how the concept of an omnipotent God is often said to contrast the idea of human free will. If there is a God who knows everything, then that God must also know exactly what action I or you or anyone on the planet would take, which somehow boils down to there being no free will. But that sounds just forced. Just because there might be someone who knows what choice we will make does not  mean that we do not have the choice. It just means we are very predictable. 

And being predictable, that is something I can live with. There is a constancy in being predictable enough that our life is mapped out. It means what I do is what any version of me will do in the same set of circumstances. And while that may be a bit tragic, if you think about it, it is also very liberating. 

It is tragic because I know my end will be the same, for better or for worse. Tragedy is, after all, knowing that you could change it, but you wouldn’t, because that’s who you are. You wouldn’t and sometimes you shouldn’t.  I could make my choices in such a way that I don’t end up studying philosophy after two years of physics and chemistry and maths and biology in school—and for a while I was slightly stunned by the complete 180 my academic life took—but I’ve found that I would have chosen it anyway, because that is what I have become, after years of interaction with this world and with myself. 

It is really great what a perspective you get after you’ve reconciled with your choices. 

It is not a tragedy, sometimes, just fate, if you want to be poetic, but not even fate in the restrictive sense. It is liberating in that it helps you make peace with your decisions. There are no wrong decisions and right decisions. There are just decisions you would and decisions you wouldn’t. 

Between any two choices presented, there is one that you can’t not make, and sometimes, it doesn’t matter of its right or wrong—who decides what right and wrong is anyway? 

It is just the choice that you can live with, and you have to make that choice, no matter the consequences. 

This is why I love the concept of causal determinism. Because it makes me accept my own choices and decisions, it tells me that I couldn’t possibly have chosen the wrong thing, because there is not wrong thing. There is just the thing I’d choose and the thing I wouldn’t. There is just the thing that happens, always, and the thing that doesn’t because it wasn’t meant to happen. Maybe it did happen in some parallel universe, in some other life, to some other you, but that is different, isn’t it.

Perception and Perspective

There is so much we don’t know about this world and more that we just opt to believe about this world , to assume and accept and actualise. We see what we want to see and we make it reality. There is no saying what actually is real, there is no standard we have that we can measure our perception to. I see what I see and you see what you see and we don’t know if what we both are seeing is even the same thing. 

I find it hard to reconcile the fact that there is a world that is so breathtakingly complex and diverse and detailed and the fact that there is so much of it is dependent upon an interpreter. 

There is so much to see and listen to and feel and the fact that there is so much to be experienced implies that it was for an experiencer. Sometimes I completely believe in the concept of 

But isn’t that terribly arrogant and terribly human of us. To believe that all of this was made for us. For our benefit and our survival and our pleasure. Isn’t that exactly what is wrong with us as a species—believing and we are the ultimate species and that everything else on this planet, on this universe is a means to our ends. 

Isn’t that the reason we’ve been ruining everything. Because we claim everything we see and we call it ours henceforth. It is, at the end, all about us. The one great flaw and characteristic of humanity. To internalise and ingratiate absolutely everything into the idea we have of our own importance. 

I am a spiral of thoughts and emotions and more thoughts, unfortunately. I think about everything, from the future to beyond that future. I think about time. About what it was before I was, and what it will be after I will be- after everything. What was life before there was life—was it the expectation of life? Was there always meant to be you and me? Is there even expectation in the universe or is it just pure potential, accidental becoming? There are endless questions and endless answers, perhaps, we will never know. 

Will there be something of us left after this planet is nothing but a remnant of life and noise and colour? Were there people on moon, i think, sometimes. Were there people on Moon and Mars and Jupiter before they went barren and silent? Were they like me and you? Did they think about life after and life before and life elsewhere and if there was sometime where there was life nowhere and how could that happen—

I’m a myriad of thoughts and emotions and more thoughts and the thing is, ultimately, all my thought circle back to myself. 

The never ceasing relevance of the I.

I am and I think and I exist therefore I must be important. It is just as arrogant as it sounds, and yet, I am important, just as you are important, just as every single being on this universe is important. But often, in the grand scheme of things, we attach a certain narcissism to this importance. We can see it in the books and the movies and the unending narrative of the one that sacrifices oneself for the many, the one that dies in battle, the one that dies because the plot demanded it, the one that dies a hero and one that dies unknown. 

There is a value we attribute to different lives and that value is dwindling pretty fast, both in the narrative and in real life. We dismiss our lives, our self, our existence. We live for trivialities. We dismiss other lives even more. They are means to an end, unless they are the end, but then someone else is a means for this end. 

Human existence is a circular paradox of too much arrogance and too much negligence. I am, I matter, I deserve everything. But also, I am nothing in the infinite, absolute flow of time, forgotten in a heartbeat.

Why Do I Do What I Do?

But why do I do what I do? For myself, inevitably? Probably. 

It’s kind of expected isn’t it, that our actions and choices eventually revolve around our own existence and our own past and future in some way. And then it’s complex and incredible that we still end up influencing so much of the external world with this self centered existence. Mirrors and some such analogy perhaps. That I am a mirror for you and you are a mirror for me. That maybe I mirror the world and maybe the world mirrors us back. That maybe we’ve all got a bit of narcissus in us, staring at the reflection and trying to make sense of it.

But why we do what we do? Because we’re trying to make sense of the world? Maybe.

Maybe nothing is certain except for my faith in myself and what I’ve become. Maybe everything I do is an exercise in figuring out the rest of the world, and then figuring out more about myself. Maybe there’s not much available to us in terms of knowledge.

Maybe all I’m doing is throwing stones in the dark, hoping to come across something that is not thin air.

If you liked reading this incredibly messy ramble about existence and actions and whatnot, feel free to check out A Letter To My Younger Self: Don’t Worry.