One of the many things I'd like to really think and write about someday is the tendency to cast behavior that is not consciously chosen in a "conscious choice" frame. I got a lot of this as a kid growing up religious: failures of self-control were frequently phrased as if they were deliberate, fully-considered acts, as if there was a 5-minute cost-benefit analysis before some kids decided to feel each other's delightful sexual bits or try some of the devil's drink. One take I heard more than once was "why would you choose to compromise your [eternal salvation / honor / soul / etc.] for a few minutes of temporary pleasure?" Even back then, even as a very stupid teenager, I knew that didn't feel right. It wasn't just because of the assumption that 16-year-olds are capable of rationally weighing gradual, slow-burn long-term benefits against short-term, fast-burn, intense benefits (though that's the core of it). It was also that weird assumption that there was ever a conscious choice.
I know, for my part, I had a hundred thousand experiences of being me, doing my thing, then looking up in horror as some authority figure asked what the hell I was doing. Then I would look down, see my hands covered in mud from my mother's flooded flowerbed, or look past the delicious lips of the girl I'd been kissing for an hour, or look at the materials I'd used to create something that were actually someone else's important resources. I'd suddenly see what I had been doing in a new light--the what the hell are you doing? light--and get a very familiar, horrible feeling in my gut: consequences.
But there was no point at which I'd weighed those consequences. I had never had a thought like "let's do this; it will be worth the risk."
For a while, as a teen and young person, I was known as a risk-taker, a daredevil, a thrill-seeker. I really was none of those things. I would suddenly realize that I was hanging from a wild rose bush off a 50-foot cliff in the Cascades, or was flying hell-for-leather down a gnarly singletrack in Moab behind my cousin's boyfriend (an actual downhill MTB hucker), or about to try a somersault on waterskis at 40 mph.
when I was a bit older, I did sometimes have at least part of the mental conversations with myself about risks and rewards, etc. Those conversations didn't often go in reasonable directions, but at least I had them.
I sometimes wonder how I became an academic. I'm not introverted, autistic, or asocial; those characteristics are often excellent for academia. I've been cramming my square peg into Academia's round hole (I just realized how very inappropriate that sounds) for 20+ years.
About 8 years ago I did a teaching observation with a colleague, trying to get tenure (again). After I taught the class she asked, "It was interesting that you decided to spend two minutes talking about a tangent subject instead of following your lecture plan. What prompted that decision?"
I looked at her for a few seconds and said, "I don't know... personal pathology?"
She truly seemed like she had just heard something she had never in her life imagined or considered (she was a bit asocial, very introverted, and probably struggling with OCD; she was perfect for academia).
Now, with the hindsight of a few decades, some hard-won coping strategies, medication, and a slowed-down mind and body, I think I've started to learn some things about myself. In the few situations where people have asked what "choice" I was "making" with a clearly impulsive action I have tended to respond with a good deal of snark. I think questions like that are sometimes a flex, an attempt to dominate others, and the people doing that can go fuck themselves. The people who are honestly confused about why someone would "choose" to build a very low quality guitar out of a metal washtub instead of grading papers their students expected the next day could probably use a little consciousness expansion, too.
There are more things in human behavior than are dreamt of in your weird and narrow philosophy, Horatio.
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