By Mr. Samuel Matti Dumdum
The essay below is the fourth in Mr. Dumdum’s series of essays entitled The Journey and the Quest, which is designed to teach the various winning attributes of successful people: their mindset, skillset, psychological and spiritual countenance, and the manner with which they engage the world.
If in physics there is Newton’s Third Law of Motion, in life, there is the law of unavoidable consequences. It is a natural phenomenon; it is an unwritten law. Like the creeping flow of time, it is an unseen force that governs us all.
And this is how this phenomenon manifests and unravels in life: for every intent acted out in reality, there is a corresponding outcome and a subsequent consequence to be borne by the actor.
Look at it as the ripples in a pond. An innocent drop of the tiniest pebble or the sudden gust of an unseen breeze: they all cause those ripples, and each ripple carries a consequence that spreads out in that pond called Life.
Like the ripples in a pond, outcomes are neither good nor bad, but the consequences resulting from those outcomes always take on color and, often, with ethical dimensions. They may be benevolent or malevolent. They may be reversible or irreversible, temporary or permanent.
Let me explain further: The proximate outcome of stepping on the gas pedal while driving would be the unmistakable acceleration in car speed. The consequences are many: Faster could mean earlier arrival at your destination, or it may just be the thrill of speed, the sheer pleasure of feeling the wind on your face. Maybe it is just the shallow inner reward of having passed over another car. Sometimes, it is the secured relief of having escaped a perceived threat to your survival.
The intention of the car driver may be singular or multiple. It may be innocent, benevolent, or purposely malevolent. While the outcome of an action is often proximate and close to the point where it is taken, consequences are a different matter. Most take time to ripen and manifest themselves in the realm of felt reality, but consequences ARE inevitable.
For every intent acted out in reality, there is a corresponding outcome and a subsequent consequence to be borne by the actor.
It is easy to confuse the proximate outcome of an action with its more delayed consequence/s, for consequences are always a step or two away from the proximate outcome/s of action/s. Quite often, they can be so far removed from the birth of intent, action, and outcome that it may even become difficult to correlate consequential events with the decision-action taken long ago.
You may also view consequence as the long ethical shadow of an action’s outcome.
All these consequences take on differing perspectives and color. And for us creatures and beings living in human societies, the consequences of our acted-out intentions inevitably take on certain ethical dimensions.
Be wary of malevolent, irreversible consequences borne out of poorly defined intent. Be cautious even more of those bitter, unintended, unexpected ones that trigger vicious progressions of chaos and disorder.
Man, as an apex organism, is equipped with a faculty and tool to address these phenomena: this is the brain function called thinking and remembering.
I must concede at this point that the ability to think and remember is randomly distributed in varying degrees among individuals. But it is also a skill that can be developed to a more advantageous level. And I submit, and even insist, that awareness and appreciation of this faculty (to think and remember) IS a valuable key to successful survival (and prevalence!) in a world of uncertainty.
Memory and the ability to think and imagine are often taken for granted, even derided on occasions (as in, “Oh, he is just a dreamer,” or worse, “He is just good at memorizing, at rote learning).
In this digital day and age of instant information readily accessible at your fingertips, of cut-and-paste school reports, nature’s gift of thinking and remembering has become underappreciated and, therefore, underused. It is often wasted in most people, often misused and abused, especially by the young.
Often, it is used for the idle pleasure of recollecting and repeated rehashing of pleasurable moments long past, or worse, in the repeated recollection and mental replay of those bitter and painful moments, of reliving the misery and suffering of past hurts. Both instances get a person stuck in a repeating loop of fantasy or misery that puts one into a stupor.
The gift of thinking and remembering is more than this.
Through memory and deliberate thought, humans (and many other creatures, for that matter) learn to avoid mistakes experienced in the past. And by communicating the lessons derived from that memory, the elders teach the young.
Still, memory and deliberate thought are more than this.
It also allows people to imagine and play out mentally the various possible outcomes of any intended action before that action is actually lived out. It permits us to evaluate many, though never all, possible consequences before doing the intended deed.
It even allows us to commit fatal errors and die in that stream of consciousness without having to really experience the actual pain and suffering associated with this imagined consequence. It allows us to concoct strategies that win (or lose) and lets us choose our best and optimal course of action from varied imagined ones.
Now, let us for a moment further explore the process of human thinking – of imagining possibilities and acting out those possibilities in the play-stage of our minds. Using rationality and informed logical processing, we can envision which ideas and scenarios might work and which might not. And having formulated many possible courses of action, we apply only the most optimally viable ones in real actionable time and place.
So then, we ask: what are the chances that the successful ideas played out in our minds will actually prosper in the real world? And those fighting scenes that failed in your imagined gladiatorial arena, would they have most likely failed too, when acted out in reality? These would have caused you untold discomfort and, possibly, irreparable harm and pain.
That is why we plan. That is why we do mental simulations.
That is the distinct advantage of the thinking and rational human being over other creatures. And lesser men, I might add.
Through the contrived “battle arena” of your mind, you can play out ideas, even bad ideas, test them against the realities of actual existence, and let the bad ones die if they must, instead of the living you. Then, you can act out in real life ONLY those that have passed the rational, quality screening of your thinking.
But this process MUST be learned and tutored – stirred and sifted harshly by informed, deliberate thinking. No wild daydreaming. No random imaginings that tend to favor your natural caprices and proclivities.
Unfortunately, many of the available imagined alternatives allow us to choose only between immediate sensual gratification versus a potentially larger future gain often shrouded by haze and uncertainty, between a minor but real present discomfort and a huge future pain and suffering that is equally hazy and uncertain.
So, we take our chances and roll the dice.
“Let the dice fly high!”
According to Colleen McCullough (historian and famed author of the novel-series “Masters of Rome”), the great historical Julian (the Julius Caesar, whom many know only through Shakespeare’s “historical” play) must have said these words before he crossed the Rubicon. You see, the historical Gaius Julius Caesar was not a fatalist, unlike the Shakespearean version.
He was a realist and a believer that Destiny is what you make of it, although he was careful not to tease and challenge the goddess of fortune to do her mischief.
Yes, the uncertainty of that imagined future will always give us pause. Will that intended decision and action give benefit or malefit?
Occasionally, the only apparent benefit of an intended action is the promise that it keeps us in the game of life just a little bit longer, and, hopefully, unencumbered by the burdens of past unintended consequences.
But then, perhaps, even that possibility is the better option to the unmitigated slide of the present.
So now, the greater issue becomes clarity and intensity of vision.
Because clarity and intensity compel.#
Mr. Sammy Dumdum is a part-time lecturer at the School of Management, teaching International Business, Management Accounting, and NBV (New Business Venture) topics on business modeling, SWOT/TOWS and strategic matching, and business review and audit, among others. He also conducts corporate seminars on topics such as general management, strategic management, product management, solving performance problems, intrapreneurship, sales management, and other topics on leadership and first line supervision.
Banner photo by Ylanite Koppens from Pixabay.
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