I think this essay raises many good points, but doesn’t grapple with (to me) the hardest part of wholesomeness: when do I ignore parts of the whole?
I think that sometimes you make the choice not think about something for a while. For instance, trivially, you can only track so many hypotheses in detail. While I am designing a product that I think will change the world, I will spend most of my time considering different hypotheses for what sort of product users want, and considering how to quickly falsify them and iterate. I will not spend a ton of time questioning whether capitalism is even good for civilization. Insofar as I’m choosing to give this product a shot, that is not a good use of mental resources—the assumption questioning comes before, and after (and occasionally in the middle of I have exceptional cause for a crisis of faith).
To me the hard question of wholesomeness is about knowing when you’re choosing look away from a thing because on reflection it’s not worth the cognitive space to be tracking it as a consideration, and knowing when you’re doing it improperly because it’s painful or emotionally draining or personally inconvenient to keep looking at the thing.
(And that emotional cost itself is a factor to be weighed on the scales.)
Some written guidance on this would be valuable, I’d say.
Basically I agree that you sometimes have to not look at things, and I like your framing of the hard question of wholesomeness. I think that the full art of deciding when it’s appropriate to not think about something be better discussed via a bunch of examples, rather than trying to describe it in generalities. But the individual decisions are ones that you can make wholesomely or not, and I think that’s my current best guess approach for how to handle this. Setting something aside, when it feels right to do so, with some sadness that you don’t get to get to the bottom of it, feels wholesome. Blithely dismissing something as not worth attention typically feels unwholesome, because of something like a missing mood (and relatedly, it not being clear that you’re attending enough to notice if it were worth more attention).
There’s also a question about how this relates to social reality. I think that if you’re choosing not to look at something because it doesn’t feel like it’s worth the attention, then if someone else raises it (because it seems important to them) it’s natural to engage with some curiosity that you now—for the space of the conversation—get to look at the thing a bit. You may explain why you don’t normally think about it, but you’re not actively trying to suppress it. I think the more unwholesome versions of not looking at something are much more likely to try to actively avoid or shut the conversation down.
I don’t think that this view described in your second paragraph stands up to scrutiny.
Like, suppose that you are designing a product etc., and I ask you whether you’ve considered that perhaps capitalism is not even good for civilization. “I choose not to think about that right now” is not a coherent answer. Either you have already thought about that question, and have reached an answer that is compatible with your continuing to work on your product or whatever (in which case you can say “indeed I have considered that question, and here, in brief, is my answer”)—or else you should, in fact, pause and at least briefly consider the question now, because your answer will affect whether you should continue with your project or else abandon it.
In other words, if the questioning came before, then just give the answer you found. If the questioning comes after… well, that’s too late. The questioning shouldn’t come after. If there’s possibly some reason why you shouldn’t be doing the thing you’re doing, then the best time to figure that out is before you started, and the second best time to figure it out is right now.
“I’ll question my assumptions later” typically means “I’ll question my assumptions never; I simply want you to go away and not bother me.”
I think this essay raises many good points, but doesn’t grapple with (to me) the hardest part of wholesomeness: when do I ignore parts of the whole?
I think that sometimes you make the choice not think about something for a while. For instance, trivially, you can only track so many hypotheses in detail. While I am designing a product that I think will change the world, I will spend most of my time considering different hypotheses for what sort of product users want, and considering how to quickly falsify them and iterate. I will not spend a ton of time questioning whether capitalism is even good for civilization. Insofar as I’m choosing to give this product a shot, that is not a good use of mental resources—the assumption questioning comes before, and after (and occasionally in the middle of I have exceptional cause for a crisis of faith).
To me the hard question of wholesomeness is about knowing when you’re choosing look away from a thing because on reflection it’s not worth the cognitive space to be tracking it as a consideration, and knowing when you’re doing it improperly because it’s painful or emotionally draining or personally inconvenient to keep looking at the thing.
(And that emotional cost itself is a factor to be weighed on the scales.)
Some written guidance on this would be valuable, I’d say.
I largely think that the section of the second essay on “wholesomeness vs expedience” is also applicable here.
Basically I agree that you sometimes have to not look at things, and I like your framing of the hard question of wholesomeness. I think that the full art of deciding when it’s appropriate to not think about something be better discussed via a bunch of examples, rather than trying to describe it in generalities. But the individual decisions are ones that you can make wholesomely or not, and I think that’s my current best guess approach for how to handle this. Setting something aside, when it feels right to do so, with some sadness that you don’t get to get to the bottom of it, feels wholesome. Blithely dismissing something as not worth attention typically feels unwholesome, because of something like a missing mood (and relatedly, it not being clear that you’re attending enough to notice if it were worth more attention).
There’s also a question about how this relates to social reality. I think that if you’re choosing not to look at something because it doesn’t feel like it’s worth the attention, then if someone else raises it (because it seems important to them) it’s natural to engage with some curiosity that you now—for the space of the conversation—get to look at the thing a bit. You may explain why you don’t normally think about it, but you’re not actively trying to suppress it. I think the more unwholesome versions of not looking at something are much more likely to try to actively avoid or shut the conversation down.
I don’t think that this view described in your second paragraph stands up to scrutiny.
Like, suppose that you are designing a product etc., and I ask you whether you’ve considered that perhaps capitalism is not even good for civilization. “I choose not to think about that right now” is not a coherent answer. Either you have already thought about that question, and have reached an answer that is compatible with your continuing to work on your product or whatever (in which case you can say “indeed I have considered that question, and here, in brief, is my answer”)—or else you should, in fact, pause and at least briefly consider the question now, because your answer will affect whether you should continue with your project or else abandon it.
In other words, if the questioning came before, then just give the answer you found. If the questioning comes after… well, that’s too late. The questioning shouldn’t come after. If there’s possibly some reason why you shouldn’t be doing the thing you’re doing, then the best time to figure that out is before you started, and the second best time to figure it out is right now.
“I’ll question my assumptions later” typically means “I’ll question my assumptions never; I simply want you to go away and not bother me.”