Reflexions | Inspiration
Inspiration - How to make the right choice?
| 2025-05-01 |     |
We often get the impression that few societies have been as much confronted with choice as ours. Sometimes everything is possible, and you have to choose. But how can we be sure we’re making the “right” choice? In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines the conditions of deliberation as the surest way to reach the right solution: “Justice is that in virtue of which the just man is said to be a doer, by choice, of that which is just”, while injustice “is similarly related to the unjust, which is excess and defect, out of proportion, of the useful or hurtful.(1)”
Thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre have shown the limits of the deliberative process: “The result is that a voluntary deliberation is always a deception. How can I evaluate causes and motives on which I myself confer value before all deliberation and by the very choice I make of myself? […] When I deliberate, the chips are down” (2) We often have the impression that we’ve already made up our minds, and that even before deliberating, we’re already instinctively leaning towards one option over another... But is this “instinct” the right one? Or is it the influence of subjective elements that blind us? So how can we be sure that the decision we make is the right one?
This situation is a “condition”, a “state of being”, according to the definition in the Merriam Webster dictionary (3) . The American philosopher L. Ron Hubbard described “formulas”, recipes to be followed for every situation in which human beings may find themselves. By following the steps in the formula, we leave the condition behind and move on to a higher situation, and so on until we reach prosperity.
The formula for the doubt condition is as follows:
“When one cannot make up one’s mind as to an individual, a group, org or project, a condition of doubt exists.
The formula is:
1. Inform oneself honestly of the actual intentions and activities of that group, project or org, brushing aside all bias and rumor.
2. Examine the statistics of the individual, group, project or org.
3. Decide on the basis of “the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics ” whether or not it should be attacked, harmed or suppressed or helped.
4. Evaluate oneself or one’s own group, project or org as to intentions and objectives.
5. Evaluate one’s own group, project or org’s statistics.
6. Join or remain in or befriend the one which progresses toward the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics and announce the fact publicly to both sides.
7. Do everything possible to improve the actions and statistics of the person, group, project or org one has remained in or joined.
8. Suffer on up through the conditions in the new group if one has changed sides, or the conditions of the group one has remained in if wavering from it has lowered one’s status.”
By applying these steps, one after the other, we can get out of the condition of doubt and achieve a better situation.
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(1)Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translation W. D. Ross, Batoche Books Kitchener, 1999, p. 81, (https://historyofeconomicthought.mcmaster.ca/aristotle/Ethics.pdf). (2) J.-P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, Part 4, Chapter 1. (3) Merriam Webster’s online dictionary [definition taken on 04/08/2025]. (4) “Dynamic” means an urge toward survival. L. Ron Hubbard distinguishes eight of them: “the urge toward existence as one’s self”, “the urge toward existence as a sexual activity” and as a family unit, “the urge toward existence in groups of individuals”, “the urge toward existence as or of Mankind”, “the urge toward existence of the animal kingdom”, “the urge toward existence as the physical universe, which is composed of “matter, energy, space and time”, “the urge toward existence as spirits”, finally “the urge toward existence as infinity”. Source: L. Ron Hubbard, Introduction to Scientology Ethics, p. 12 and 13. (5) L. Ron Hubbard, Introduction to Scientology Ethics, p. 101.
