Weighing the Pros and Cons
One tends to weigh a thing, a life circumstance, or a personal decision to be made, according to its advantages and disadvantages, and its outcomes or consequences, thereby favoring the expectation of one event over another, preferring one personal decision over another, and planning one’s affairs in accordance with what suits him, based on his available options, and on the preponderance of benefits and advantages, or drawbacks and deficiencies, and their potential subsequent consequences.
A rational person, aware of what is happening around him, should investigate the facts of things and various life circumstances with the highest possible degree of accuracy, and reflect on them with an objectivity commensurate with their importance and what he might face if he were to say or do something specific, especially so that he can deal with them effectively and successfully, bringing him benefit and protecting him from harm.
Among the requirements, values, principles, and behaviors of weighing in this context, we mention the following:
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- Weighing in the face of intellectual perplexity: A person strives to balance and weigh matters, and to identify early the consequences of his decisions, when it is difficult for him to adopt psychological or intellectual stances, or to make decisive choices of which he is certain of their correctness, and when his ordinary thinking fails to resolve the matter and make a personal decision without hesitation.
There are some life circumstances to which the principle of weighing advantages and disadvantages does not apply before undertaking them, such as protecting one’s family, providing housing and security, and food, in any environment a person finds himself in, because they are priorities that allow for no hesitation.
- Objective thinking is better than emotional thinking: A person’s commitment to objective thinking (detached from emotions and supported by facts) contributes to weighing the advantages of life and personal matters over their disadvantages, whereas emotional, excessively idealistic, and naive romantic thinking does not contribute to arriving at the truth, nor does it clearly and logically demonstrate what a person should say or do in his life.
- Knowing correct information and facts: One cannot weigh the advantages or disadvantages of something unless he knows the correct information about it and its established facts, especially those that can be verified. He must think about the matter in a way that is detached from emotions; above all, objective thinking must begin by discarding psychological biases that contradict logic.
A Kuwaiti writer
