What is right, and what is easy
Somebody said, “The time is coming when we will have to choose between what is right and what is easy.” –or something to that effect. Take the current trend in the cultural and political commentary of the nation's leading newspapers. It appears that only those decisions which yield “positive” results are considered good.
Let me unwrap that a bit. I call it extreme pragmatism. It’s the idea that the choices we make are only considered “good” if there are no negative side effects. If however, we encounter hostility, or the slightest resistance in response to the decisions we’ve made, those decisions will be categorized as “poor” ones. Actually, that’s putting it lightly. Most of the labels I hear in conjunction with such a philosophy are more mean spirited than that.
But what are the implications of this methodology? Well, there are many. For example, If the rightness of our choices are predicated upon positive outcomes. It means we must consider what is good. Moreover, we must decide if what is good is something subjective, like my taste in cars, or something objective like our agreement that there is no such thing as a round square.
In addition, we must decide if doing the right thing outweighs the adversity we might experience after the fact. There was much adversity during the revolutionary war. You might argue, “Yes, but the outcome was good. Look at where we are today as a result.” This is true though, only if you know where to divide time. We have the “good” outcome because we stayed the course and won the war. Yet there were tremendous costs in terms of the loss of life both during and after the war. What if we had decided at the first defeat or after sustained casualties to tuck tail and run? Where would your precious outcome based decisions be then?
That’s just one very superficial example and I don’t have the time to go deeper with this subject, but you get the idea. When we base the rightness of our choices on outcomes, we become the center of our own little universe, and the rest of civilization burns. Our tolerance of others' cruelty goes unchecked and tyranny becomes the order of the day.
Chad Phillips
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