Choice

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Democracies ensure that the ‘right to choose’ of an individual is to be protected by all means. This choice is however limited to national choice or social choice. One may choose one particular political party or candidate without intimidation. One may go to a temple or church to get married or can go to the Marriage Registration Court and get married legally. The state cannot compel him to go to a particular temple or church nor can it compel the individual to go in for a court marriage. Whom to marry, when and where, however is entirely left to the individual. But choice is not limited to the elections or marriages: it is mainly the individual’s prerogative to choose his being. W.H. Auden had already asserted: if we choose to die it does not matter, let’s start dying soon. And if we choose to live, it does not matter again, let us start living soon. But choice is not so simple as it is made out to be. Life and death are binaries and the contrast is so obvious that choice appears to be almost a naivety. But one who chooses life knows how difficult it is to exercise a choice. And he who chooses death also confronts million challenges to his being.

Choice has now become an existential term. Soren  kierkegaard has made ‘choice’ an oft discussed word in the existential vocabulary. Choice validates life especially of an individual. At the national level too a different validation comes beyond the moral- legal questions. Choice, its authenticity and validity defines the character, integrity and sense of responsibility of a state. Take for instance the present situation in the Indian sub continent. The world knows that after 1971, especially after the dismemberment of Pakistan, this new country which was carved out of India in the name of the two nation theory, has been bleeding India with thousand cuts by sending terrorists to different parts of the country. India with its thousand years of philosophy, poetry, religion and culture has not been responding in equal measure. The world thought of India as a soft state. But after the Pulwama massacre the present Prime minister of India, Narendra Modi has resorted to a muscular policy. Instead of being reactive, this time India has become proactive and has attacked and demolished the terror infrastructure deep inside Pakistan using its air power. How could this choice be made? If a terrorist attack is a bloody revenge in the name of self preservation or righteous indignation is also bloody. If by choice, as Jean Paul Sartre says, we choose ’good’, is it good that India chose? Was it a moral good? Yes it was, otherwise the alternative choice would be termed as cowardice. A heroic proactive attack often is necessary to demonstrate one’s moral and national integrity. The ‘good’ chosen is ‘bad’ in terms of morality, for bloodshed whatever be the provocation is unacceptable. Yet what India chose was being to become a self-respecting country in the eyes of the world.

Kierkegaard would definitely approve of India’s choice. In Either/ Or he clearly states: “My either/or does not in the first instance denote the choice between good and evil; it denotes the choice whereby one chooses good and evil/ or excludes them. Here the question is under what determinants one would contemplate the whole of existence and would himself live”. In the case of India the determinants are life positive.

But the individual choices are more complex. If we are born ‘nothings’ and choose to become something which may be termed as ‘being’, does the validity depend on moral choices? In a world where man kills to survive, the question of being and choice are irrelevant. Man has his instincts and often instinctual choices are Hobson’s choices. If you do not kill the enemy, say a hungry tiger, you are sure to be dead. Here instinctually you kill, a choice you may not have exercised in more sober situations.

Career choices, choices of life partners, are made if not instinctively, by considering the information or determinants, available at the moment of opting for one alternative. That choice may in the future prove to be totally wrong and you cannot regress to the original moment again. Choices are to be made from situation to situation, moment to moment. Being comprises the totality of choices made for life is such that one choice made at a critical moment determines your being at that moment only. Being too is a process not a product you can opt for at a moment of need.