Imagine that you are a person in a horrible and traumatic situation. The love of your life, the parent of your children, has been burned to death, deliberately. Capital punishment, imposed by a culture that believes some sins are so horrible that they demand this gruesome torture to balance the scales. The whole future you dreamed of having together has gone up in flames, and you are sick with grief and loss and pain.
Some people would be tempted to fling themselves into the flames as well. You probably do think of it, at least once, as you stand there, watching the pyre blaze. Some people will even think that this is the morally right thing to do, and will judge you for not committing suicide. They will think that you didn’t really love the one you have lost, if you are able to stay standing and move on without them.
If it is your aim to reduce suffering and death in the world, however, then this impulse and any social pressure behind it is your enemy. If you leap onto the pyre to be burned as well, or hang yourself from a beam at home, or stop taking meals and waste away into nothingness, regardless of the method of your self-destruction, what will it achieve?
Your friends will be hurt. Your community will be hurt. Anyone who depended on your skills and experience and work ethic will be hurt. You will be destroyed, and your children will now have lost both of their parents. It will not bring your lover back.
Furthermore, you will have validated the idea that your suicide was moral. You will have set an example of surrendering to grief instead of coping with it. Others may be tempted, they might believe it was right, to follow you just as you followed your beloved spouse, directly into the grave. Is that something you could possibly want for your children?
You wail. You gnash your teeth and flail your arms and cry late into the night and hold your vigil. Death and suffering have struck you especially close to your heart, and you feel the loss, and you need to express it, but you must not let it consume you as well. If you let that happen, death wins. It claims two casualties for the price of one, and there is one less person working to prevent future suffering.
If you understand this, and you gird up your heart and throw yourself into your duties and refuse to distance yourself from your children… and cry and grieve, yes, in quiet moments, alone under the moon… the people around you may be shocked. They may persecute you, calling you cold or unnatural. They will say that you do not understand what it is to love.
They will be wrong.
It may seem to you, for a time, that life is not worth living to you anymore. But you will keep going because your spouse is not the only person you love, and is not the only person who needs you. Even if you believe it is a fact as normal and obvious as the sun rising tomorrow that you will be together again in heaven after you die… You should not then believe that the right thing to do is to hasten that reunion. There are still things left to do here first, and the right thing is to get them done.
The story I have just told is a story about the Sunk Cost Fallacy, applied to human life.
If you were to turn a blind eye to the needs of the world as it continues to turn, if you forget your duties in the pain of being robbed of something that was precious to you. If you couldn’t let go of someone or something you loved, even though there was no way to get it back. That’s the sunk cost fallacy leading you to neglect the people who still need you, and ignore the importance of things you still have the chance to save.
If, reading this, you can understand how much it hurts to let the dream that you could have been together with your loved ones forever fall away from you as something that can never happen; if you can understand how it could be tempting to follow that dream and step into the fire… but you can also understand why you have a duty to let go, for now, and focus on what can still be done… then take a moment to notice how it feels. The feeling of facing a lose/lose scenario, and having to make the best of a genuinely terrible situation.
Watch out for the moments in your own life when your heart sinks and you see something falling apart and you really, really, really don’t want it to. Remember your duties to the people that still rely on you. Remember that even if you can’t feel happy about it, there are other things you need to get done, and try not to let your despair cloud your vision while looking to see how much you can salvage out of the situation. That’s the key to overcoming the sunk cost fallacy.
Mitigate the Loss; Fight for the Living
This post is an addendum to A Different Prisoner’s Dilemma. It is another scenario with which to demonstrate the point.
Imagine that you are a person in a horrible and traumatic situation. The love of your life, the parent of your children, has been burned to death, deliberately. Capital punishment, imposed by a culture that believes some sins are so horrible that they demand this gruesome torture to balance the scales. The whole future you dreamed of having together has gone up in flames, and you are sick with grief and loss and pain.
Some people would be tempted to fling themselves into the flames as well. You probably do think of it, at least once, as you stand there, watching the pyre blaze. Some people will even think that this is the morally right thing to do, and will judge you for not committing suicide. They will think that you didn’t really love the one you have lost, if you are able to stay standing and move on without them.
If it is your aim to reduce suffering and death in the world, however, then this impulse and any social pressure behind it is your enemy. If you leap onto the pyre to be burned as well, or hang yourself from a beam at home, or stop taking meals and waste away into nothingness, regardless of the method of your self-destruction, what will it achieve?
Your friends will be hurt. Your community will be hurt. Anyone who depended on your skills and experience and work ethic will be hurt. You will be destroyed, and your children will now have lost both of their parents. It will not bring your lover back.
Furthermore, you will have validated the idea that your suicide was moral. You will have set an example of surrendering to grief instead of coping with it. Others may be tempted, they might believe it was right, to follow you just as you followed your beloved spouse, directly into the grave. Is that something you could possibly want for your children?
You wail. You gnash your teeth and flail your arms and cry late into the night and hold your vigil. Death and suffering have struck you especially close to your heart, and you feel the loss, and you need to express it, but you must not let it consume you as well. If you let that happen, death wins. It claims two casualties for the price of one, and there is one less person working to prevent future suffering.
If you understand this, and you gird up your heart and throw yourself into your duties and refuse to distance yourself from your children… and cry and grieve, yes, in quiet moments, alone under the moon… the people around you may be shocked. They may persecute you, calling you cold or unnatural. They will say that you do not understand what it is to love.
They will be wrong.
It may seem to you, for a time, that life is not worth living to you anymore. But you will keep going because your spouse is not the only person you love, and is not the only person who needs you. Even if you believe it is a fact as normal and obvious as the sun rising tomorrow that you will be together again in heaven after you die… You should not then believe that the right thing to do is to hasten that reunion. There are still things left to do here first, and the right thing is to get them done.
The story I have just told is a story about the Sunk Cost Fallacy, applied to human life.
If you were to turn a blind eye to the needs of the world as it continues to turn, if you forget your duties in the pain of being robbed of something that was precious to you. If you couldn’t let go of someone or something you loved, even though there was no way to get it back. That’s the sunk cost fallacy leading you to neglect the people who still need you, and ignore the importance of things you still have the chance to save.
If, reading this, you can understand how much it hurts to let the dream that you could have been together with your loved ones forever fall away from you as something that can never happen; if you can understand how it could be tempting to follow that dream and step into the fire… but you can also understand why you have a duty to let go, for now, and focus on what can still be done… then take a moment to notice how it feels. The feeling of facing a lose/lose scenario, and having to make the best of a genuinely terrible situation.
Watch out for the moments in your own life when your heart sinks and you see something falling apart and you really, really, really don’t want it to. Remember your duties to the people that still rely on you. Remember that even if you can’t feel happy about it, there are other things you need to get done, and try not to let your despair cloud your vision while looking to see how much you can salvage out of the situation. That’s the key to overcoming the sunk cost fallacy.