Indian Man in America: Response to my friend and my cousin (from the first post): When do you not strive to improve or do good?

One of the friends I made during my Alternative Spring Break trip I went on let me know about a dilemma that he was facing: If one recognizes that it is "good" to volunteer at a food pantry, why not volunteer more? Why not devote every amount of energy towards doing this "good"? I feel that people are constantly compromising beliefs and principles (myself included). It then becomes difficult to justify any type of relaxation. We may try to reach an "optimal efficiency" state, but no one can fully know what that is, ignoring the fact that physical or mental limitations may make such a peak vastly different among people. This is why I have difficulty adhering to a consistent set of philosophical tenets. If a person truly believed them, they would act on these principles with every action. For me, the only ones that come to mind are to always treat people with respect (which I admit I fail at every now and then) and to seek truth.

Personally, I feel that in addition to treating each person we encounter with respect, there are a number of other beliefs that should guide our lives. I am in the process of typing up a response but generally I would say that these include being grateful to the people who have supported us and helped us get where we are, loving others and ourselves, and working within the systems where we find ourselves to be the best we can be but I am also drawing from the advice of many successful coaches such as Stephen Covey and potentially also Fr. Thomas Kalam who recommend creating a personal missions.

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Self-discover and clarify your deeply important character values and life goals. Envision the ideal characteristics for each of your various roles and relationships in life. Create a mission statement.

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Prioritize, plan, and execute your week's tasks based on importance rather than urgency. Evaluate whether your efforts exemplify your desired character values, propel you toward goals, and enrich the roles and relationships that were elaborated in Habit 2.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Balance and renew your resources, energy, and health to create a sustainable, long-term, effective lifestyle. It primarily emphasizes exercise for physical renewal, prayer (meditation, yoga, etc.) and good reading for mental renewal. It also mentions service to society for spiritual renewal.

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Praxeology, the logic of human action, is a relatively new science that isn't often taught in the mainstream school system. I'm basically just transcribing the following youtube video here in case you don't have 'time' to see it but if you do, I'd recommend watching it instead of reading this: The concept of time is crucial to understanding the universal laws of action. Time is the concept which seperates praxeology from all other schools of thought, that deal with human action. Without time, the treatment of human action would be the same as mathematics. Because we know about time, we know that one thing must follow another and things must be understood in terms of cause and effect. A man acts to satisfy some desire, to seek change. Action is always directed towards the future. It is based on the desire to end some uneasiness that would continue if the man did not act. From the moment we start acting, we have to start economizing time- just like we economize other scarce resources.

The study of praxeology can help us understand the limits of human planning and it actually reminds me of the Heinz Dilemma which I originally heard from Fr. Alex Praikalam but was recently reminded about by a story told to me by Fr. Kalam - there was an Indian man who was on a very turbulent flight to London to complete his PhD dissertation. The pilot was in great distress and the crew chief announced that the plane was about to go into a nosedive and that everyone should think about those they most cared about and pray to their Gods. The Indian man thought about the fiance he had left in India and the life of teaching in the best Indian colleges that was waiting for him there and told God that he would give it all up if he was allowed to give his dissertation. Soon after, the turbulence ceased and he was able to get his DPhil cum laude. Should he give it all up and become a missionary in Africa?

Here's the Heinz Dilemma answer to this conundrum:

Stage one (obedience): Heinz should not steal the medicine because he will consequently be put in prison which will mean he is a bad person.

Or: Heinz should steal the medicine because it is only worth $200 and not how much the druggist wanted for it; Heinz had even offered to pay for it and was not stealing anything else.

Stage two (self-interest): Heinz should steal the medicine because he will be much happier if he saves his wife, even if he will have to serve a prison sentence.

Or: Heinz should not steal the medicine because prison is an awful place, and he would more likely languish in a jail cell than over his wife's death.

Stage three (conformity): Heinz should steal the medicine because his wife expects it; he wants to be a good husband.

Or: Heinz should not steal the drug because stealing is bad and he is not a criminal; he has tried to do everything he can without breaking the law, you cannot blame him.

Stage four (law-and-order): Heinz should not steal the medicine because the law prohibits stealing, making it illegal.

Or: actions have consequences.

Stage five (human rights): Heinz should steal the medicine because everyone has a right to choose life, regardless of the law.

Or: Heinz should not steal the medicine because the scientist has a right to fair compensation. Even if his wife is sick, it does not make his actions right.

Stage six (universal human ethics): Heinz should steal the medicine, because saving a human life is a more fundamental value than the property rights of another person.

Or: Heinz should not steal the medicine, because others may need the medicine just as badly, and their lives are equally significant.

However, Fr. Kalam told me that the most interesting answer to this conundrum he actually heard came from a Muslim who told him that he would give his wife to the druggist as long as he saves her.

Here is a praxeological take on this conundrum: Scale of Values

From the transcript, Praxgirl: In our last lesson, I defined Praxeology’s use of the terms Ends and Means. I showed that a thing only becomes a means when a purposeful actor has employed it to achieve some end. And I showed that ends are the desired states a man acts to achieve to remove some uneasiness. In this lesson, I'd like to discuss another important categorization implied in the concept of action that we will now refer to as an acting man's scale of values. We've placed a lot of emphasis on showing that action involves choosing between different alternatives and that action itself is the demonstrated preference of the actor's weighing between these alternatives. The fact that action is a choice implies that valuation occurs when action and that we can...