here I am baby, come and take me

Over the past few days I've been engaging in a thought experiment. We are told constantly and in many different incarnations, by Aristotle and Aquinas, that we do things because we perceive them as good. Whether or not the actions are good in themselves is a different through obviously related issue. There's something that fascinates me about that: if we didn't think something was good, we wouldn't do it. I've repeated it, used it, and perhaps even taught it, but I never stopped to actually analyze empirically if it were true. And so I did.

I decided to perform 50 actions, each with 10 steps regardless of how easy or difficult the task would be. If I had to do something as simple as to open a door I found within my actions 9 discrete and isolatable actions. In so doing I was able to keep track of the sequence of actions as well as stop when I found that the theory was incorrect. To my surprise it was true. I did my actions because I thought they were good. I slept in because I thought it was good. I didn't get out of bed because I perceived comfort as good. I didn't want to write because wasting time appeared to be good. So on and so forth. I appears that it is true: we do things because they look good. Analysis often proves otherwise.

Now, I can't begin to express how energy consuming the experiment was. Each action I decided to take had to be thought out quite completely. Not to say that every action was an analyized one. Nor did I select only those actions which seemed most wholesome. From eating to taking each step, from uncapping a water bottle, to zipping my shorts up - everything was analyized. Sometimes I had to bring myself to do things consciously. It's never been so difficult to do the most simple of things. Imagine combing one's hair, and with each stroke, questioning whether or not it was done because it had a view of "good" in sight! Now that I'm done with the experiment I can't quite get myself to snap out of it. I'm not overthinking things. I just can't do simple actions without observing minutiae. It is difficult to type if I don't zone out a bit, and driving quickly becomes very stressful. Eating is probably the toughest. At the same time I feel like I have to restrain myself from doing really weird things like throwing stuff on the ground, walking into a wall, and the like.

I do not claim to be one of those brilliant people who can't do ordinary tasks, but I wonder if this is how it begins. I wonder if in thinking in such a way we lose the fluidity of life as if behind every action there is an equal and opposite second guess. Aquinas tells us that every moral action is a willed action. Perhaps willing something too strongly takes away what is truly human about act, that is, the seeming intrinsic reflex toward goodness.

We'll see how long this lasts.