I cannot believe I am rediscovering the difficulty of having to choose between intentions and consequences. Ten years ago, I would have simply dismissed this as something that bored students of philosophy would like to entertain themselves with. A matter of no real consequence.
Until, I heard about a friend's friend, Brad.
Brad, screwed up on his girl, big time. See, his girl just became president of her school organization. She had told him about her plans for the year, and how good and exciting they are! Of course, she had thought that it goes without saying that these be kept secret till she had met everyone. She wanted to be the one to spill the beans.
Brad just did not have that in mind. All he thought was how proud he was of his girl, how the world needed to know about all these smart plans on Facebook and how it was all her idea...
And yes, brad graduated from the same school his girl goes to, so her organization's members are incidentally in brad's social network.
Sweet, really.
Fortunately, Brad's was not a matter of life and death, and I know that it's probably useless to be talking about whether his intentions were good. Or whether, anyone's intentions are good. Regardless, we ALL suffer the consequences- broken relationships, bankruptcy, jail time, or a hangover so bad you don't notice the traffic to work the next day. And the list does not stop.
So what is knowing the intentions good for? If, at the end of the day, what matters is the consequence, then shouldn't we start writing Merriam and all the other dictionaries to render this word obsolete? Seriously, having to forget one word would mean freeing some bytes of space in my memory, along with all the nonsense that I have just discovered, like how a university is to blame for one committing suicide.
Rightly so, if a driver, by some sheer bad luck, runs over a man stupid enough to cross the road when all the lights are green, would the driver's explanation be relevant? There are no such things as accidents, for which the one causing them is told, "Don't worry. That was an accident. Not your fault." Or told, "Don't worry. We know you did not intend to run him over, so it's fine." On the other hand, if that same driver maneuvers just in time to dodge the man crossing the street, he would be praised for being able to do so. He would be seen a responsible driver. Or a hero even.
In other words, we are what the consequences of our actions are.
Unfortunately for Brad, he is a twat, by virtue of that definition.
But surely, his intentions account for something. After all, actions are usually driven by intent. Without purpose, there can usually be no action. Yes, it is not always that intentions lead to happy endings but, having good intentions, as Brad's, is often a good start than having cruel ones.
So, the question would be, what of good intentions leading to tragic ends?
Some might say, bad luck!
However, knowing what one had in mind for doing something less favorable in others' eyes is a ticket to understanding the action, then to forgiveness.
Brad might still face his girlfirend's reproach. She might not talk to him for days. (I have heard of girls do worse like dipping their man's toothbrush into the toilet bowl without him knowing it. Others pour gasoline on the poor guy's car, whose paint would slowly change colors after several days.)
Brad can only hope that she would listen to why he did it. To do that, he would have to admit stupidity or tell her how our rationality is limited in so far as knowing all the possibilities of an action is concerned. He must be able to talk her into believing how he intended it to be something good, even romantic. He must be able to turn her head from the shambles he has created and make her see what he really wanted to happen.
I can only wish him good luck.
