If you ask the average college
student why she is in class, she is highly likely to say, “Because I have to
be.” If you press her, she will elaborate and tell you that this class is a
prerequisite for her major and she needs it to graduate. You might then say,
“Im sure you’ll be very happy to graduate.” To which she will likely reply,
“I’ll be happy once this degree gets me a good job.” However, if you assume the
attainment of such a job is her dream, again she will correct you. “No no no, I
just need the job to make lots of money so that I can be happy”.
Her
goal is clearly happiness however; the issue here is that she thinks happiness
is a destination. She sees it as her ultimate ends and is using her life choices
as a means to attain such ends. This is the thought process in which the
epitome of instrumental reasoning lives. Her life can be viewed in this
analogy: Everyone at the park wants to do the monkey bars. Each person aims to
reach the other side of the bars as fast as possible. They grab onto one bar,
for just long enough to grab the next. They use each rung as a step towards the
platform on the other side. No one bothers to enjoy the inherent pleasures of
swinging in midair, suspended by your own strength. No one cares about the
feeling of cold metal pinching your palm, and certainly no one tries to deviate from the standard monkey bar
usage. They simply take advantage of
temporary means while keeping their eyes locked on the ends. Similarly, people
will go for a walk on a wooded trail, and walk the path because they must to
get back to the parking lot somehow. They keep their heads down and think of
their car; their goal. No one sees the beautiful autumn trees, or notices the
brilliant blue robins egg that fell into a patch of moss.
You
might wonder, “But what’s wrong with having goals?” The problem is only having
goals and no inherently valuable life experiences. Instrumental reasoning is plagued by two
egregious problems. Firstly: finitude. One can plan out an instrumental life,
but there is no way to tell after which act, the curtain will fall. If one’s human finitude approaches more
quickly than expected, the goals of that individual will not be accomplished.
For example, you fall off the monkey bars half way through your attempt. Now you have not completed your original
goal. You’re standing on the ground in a mucky puddle of dirt and gravel and
your left with nothing. Not only have you failed to reach the platform on the
other side, but you didn’t even have fun trying. This is precisely the other
danger of instrumental reasoning.
Regardless of if you accomplish your ends or not (lets pretend our trail
walker has made it back to the car without meeting his finitude in the paws of
a grizzly bear) your means of instrumental reasoning negates the value of the
process. Yes, the walker has arrived safely at his car, but he was not present
or awake during the walk. In this way, instrumental reasoning enables us to
sleepwalk through our lives. We focus so strongly on the value of our goals,
that many humans (certainly Americans) are unaware that anything else even has
value! What is the point of going for the walk in the first place if the walker
refuses the inherent pleasures of it? Why not just stay in the car to begin
with?
This
is the very question Plato asked before he decided, “the unexamined life is not
worth living”[1]
The famous philosopher believed a life
void of self-reflection caused one’s deathbed account to be void of value.
Plato felt that a life lived without waking from the daydream (without claiming
one’s life as ones own), is a fate far worse than death. (Plato would have just stayed in the car
while our walker was out watching his feet plod the path and dreaming of the
parking lot). Plato taught that every individual must face their finitude,
reflect on their lives thus far, and ask forbidden questions. This, he claims,
is the ‘wake up call’ needed to allow such an individual to form her own
opinions, choose her own direction, and claim her life as her own. The
philosopher wasn’t wrong; certainly in light of a loved one’s death, or a close
personal brush with finitude, individuals are generally motivated to do
something better with their lives afterward.
This
motivation is the upshot to human finitude.
Personal proximity to death is often perceived after death has made
itself present in another. When this causes one to realize that he too, shall
die one day, and in fact that day may be very near, the realization motivates
the individual to abandon instrumental reasoning and gravitate towards
inherently pleasurable activities (interestingly, these activities generally
fall into two categories: family friends and loved ones, and shock-value
adventure stunts). The individual may then partake in endeavors in which he
will be present and awake, having chosen to be so through his own examination. For example, if you find out that your
favorite set of monkey bars are to be removed from the park in two hours,
suddenly standing on the platforms doesn’t seem very important. Instead, you
want to spend your time swinging from the rungs, flipping up side down, and
enjoying the inherent pleasures of the structure. In the same way, if the
woodland walker was told by a park ranger that he would be consumed by a bear upon
his arrival at the parking lot, he would likely open his eyes to the scenery
around him in an effort to perceive as much natural beauty as he could before
he was not longer able to do so.
In this way,
knowledge of proximity to death causes us to examine the path our life is
traveling, and allows us to choose
whether we wish to continue traveling on it or not. Awareness of our own
finitude breaks the blind wandering suffered by so many. Self reflection allows our college student to
say “I hate these stupid classes they make me miserable, I don’t care what my
mother says, I’m going to be a truck driver!” The student has now claimed her
life as her own by refusing to attend classes she dislikes, to achieve an ends
(happiness) she cannot ensure. Instead,
she has woken from her sleepwalk, and chosen activities which bring her
inherent happiness. This, Plato would
say, is a true victory of reflection over instrumental reasoning.
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