Be practical!

“Are you going to be impractical as that?”

“The evaluation of an action as ‘practical,’ Dr. Ferris, depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.”

Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged, 1957

‘Just do the practical thing,’ they all tell you. But what is the practical thing? Is it that which costs less time and effort? Or is it that which has more likelihood of being approved and supported by other people? I guess they are both the same thing, since in communities—and in some communities more than others—the fact that something is supported by others makes it less costly in time or effort.

I am not trying to sophisticate things here, but really think about it, in the most ‘practical’ way possible. Isn’t doing something just because it’s common, without having a clue why you are doing it, costly too? Aren’t there may be some costs other than the cost of having to live with people’s disapproval, or the cost of time, or energy? Isn’t it something that you feel in your life too? Now, wouldn’t that make it ‘practical’ to avoid this unnamed cost as well?

In my life I observed that people talk about different costs all the time; they talk about the cost of standing out and having to face the music, and they also talk about the cost of living in a country where everyone is ready to stab you in the back if it will put them in a more favorable position with their bosses. They talk about the cost of doing something that you really like and to make a living out of it, and they also talk about the cost of just doing the same mundane job that you do not like one bit.

Well, I think we should make up our mind and figure out which is more costly. People view this paradox in amazingly different ways. Some people will tell you: ‘it’s inevitable!;’ we have to choose according to our programming, conditioning, conditions, childhood history, status, ‘the political game we find ourselves in’, race, nationality, etc... (You can fill in with any cause of variation among people you have in mind).

Personally—and there is a bunch of people who would agree with me—this is how I perceive my options; it’s either watching the world around you being shaped by forces outside your will, and shaping you too in their aftermath, or watching the world being shaped by forces outside your will, and slightly influencing your life as well, which might just be fair, because you might be slightly influencing the world too.