Limited Will

Choice-less Starting

Sometimes, at conception, parents choose to have a child. More often than not it just happens. Parents do not choose which child they will have, a genetic lottery selects which features will grow.

We do not choose who our parents will be.  After birth years pass before we even become aware of choice, much less those made by parents.  We do not choose the society we are born into, the planet we appear on, or even the star around which we zoom.

We are thrust into existence with out our intent.

After birth a long period of time passes where we are driven by simple responses to senses: emotional at best, instinctual at worst.  Our family, society and environment put upon us what we can learn, what we can know, providing a framework of what we can be.

The demands of being drive us until we finally become aware of our own existence, only gradually do skills develop allowing mastery of body and desire.


Life Divided

A third of our lives are dissipated in sleep.  Dreams only a small part of this unconscious portion of our lives.  Making choices within dreams can be a rare treat, a momentary fantasy of self control.

Eating consumes another thick slice of life; finding things to put in our belly, chewing and swallowing, seeking a place to relieve the unused excess.  These autonomous actions, rarely reach our conscious thought, much less require considered selection.

Taking pause to rest, even in the midst of our labors, it is healthy to let the mind wander a bit.  Day dreaming is the flip side to focus, a time to deliberately not act, to stay our hands from making choices become real.

Who among us chooses at each moment to make their heart beat, ears hear, or skin itch?  Indeed our bodies function mostly without mindful intervention.

Another piece of life is used putting on clothes, taking them off again, brushing teeth, grooming bodies, and maintaining the space to live in.  These actions are in the main conducted with wandering thought, by rote and habit.


Reality Intervenes

Living among others, we often find choice limited.  The needs of spouse and children, family and friends, even society at large limit the range of choices available.

Habits formed from expectations guide much of our time.  Listening to other's tell about their own thoughts is necessary to keep relationships healthy.  Caring for children and the aged demand attention from other choices that might be made.

Work demands action from us.  Boss or customer schedules toil where we attend and interact.  Plans made by others guide our activity.  We do what is required of us in order to gain those resources necessary for life.  Making a choice to work, is followed by many demands we do not choose.

Sometimes, the world intrudes in more harsh ways.  Accidents happen.  Government requires time to pay and then file tax.  Things wear out and break requiring attention to maintain our lives.  Natural disasters and weather can interrupt our intent.


Room for Will

The moments of choice that transcend our environment, ignorance, and emotion are small.  In a life of 80 years we are lucky to have but a few where our own will can be expressed.

The considered choices we are able to make, much less implement to our plans, are often so slight as to fade into insignificance.

Even the simple act of selecting from a menu at a restaurant requires we wait for the menu, scan the options, filter those that will not suit, and then, only then, make a choice about what we might eat.

Each selection made, each choice of will, requires two separate activities: assessment and decision.

Our choices begin by comparing our desires.  What of all our current wants should have a priority.  A part of the brain determines value of each, categorizing them by immediacy, risk, and reward.

We then must begin to consider potential actions, what could we do that might result in realizing what we want.  Picking which path might get us to the end of our desire.


Decision Fatigue

Deliberate acts based on the choices require effort and time.  Everyday we face small decisions both major and minor.

Our thoughts are occupied with comparing and choosing.  Rarely does this process happen instantly.  Different parts of our prefrontal cortex, our fore-brain, hold symbolic patterns, metaphors of desire, potential solutions, and determine choice.

Making choices wears us down.  We expend focus and energy.  With no nerves sensing the usage of our brain, we feel no fatigue, but the brain does tire from exertion. No matter how sensible we attempt to be, we can not make decision after decision without paying a biological price.

The more choices we make in a day, the harder each one becomes.  Like a weight lifter, we tire from the exertion.  As we make more and more choices, we start to look for shortcuts, even become reckless, are more prone to act on impulse.

Experiments have clearly shown that there is a finite store of mental energy available for exerting will. When people resist the desire to eat a donut, they become less able to resist other temptations.


Limits to Free Will

Even if we do not accept that our existence is pre-determined, that fate does not rule us, that our choices are not an illusion; our free will is fleeting at best.

Harsh environments, social, financial, and environmental, radically reduce our chances to prosper.  When our lives are full of hard choices, when we our focus must be on finding the next meal, the next place to sleep, resolving crises after crises, we use up our ability to create a better existence for ourselves.

When the affluent expect others to make choices like theirs, they assume others have the mental reserve to act as they do.  Picking one's self up by their bootstraps requires more effort than picking which stock to buy next.

Children gradually develop their ability to exercise free will, so we must help them make choices until are able to do it on their own.  This requires us to put aside our own choices for their survival.

Judging the success and failures of others, without being able to sense the energy expenditure of choice, is an illusion.  This does mean we have to accept their poor choices, but rather we ought understand they have limits to choosing.

When we choose to judges others harshly, we use up some of our own capacity to act with our own free will.

Holy Foxes

When you're told to dig a foxhole the first thing that comes to your mind is the simple joy that you won't be marching anymore that day. Then the realization that you have hours of a different kind of manual labor sinks in as small shovelfuls of dirt begin to pile up. That was my perspective because, thankfully, I never had to dig one under enemy fire.

In movies, you rarely see the actual process. In movies you may see a few shovel fulls of dirt representing what can be an hours long process. In some ways it feels like digging your own grave while at the same time trying to make a way to save your skin.

Foxholes are defensive positions where you use the ground itself as protection from enemy sight and weapons. There are lots of rules about digging them. Simple holes they are not. If you have time to consider the terrain you are in and where the potential enemy fire might be coming from, you think in terms of intersecting lines of fire, placing each hole in your unit at tactically important locations allowing you to see and protect each other.

Foxholes are not all dug at once. Depending upon the conditions, the hole may be just deep enough to cover your body while you are lying down. If you plan to stay awhile, you dig deeper until your whole body can be under the surface of the earth. Room for grenade sumps at the bottom, slopes to allow water to drain, stones and sticks placed to give you a firm footing and avoid wet feet are just a few of the features one can add. For longer stays, you may even dig trenches to connect holes together allowing movement. Sandbags can add some height. Local fauna can provide camouflage to hide from prying eyes.

In modern warfare you need to be aware of body heat from infrared signatures; both by line of site on the ground and from aircraft and satellites looking down on your position. You must attempt to break up patterns formed by heat and shape so that eyes can not sense your presence. Finding ways to comfortably locate weapons for stable, secure and accurate firing positions becomes a temporary obsession of the foxhole maker.

Often there are only two or three of you in any given hole. If you are lucky you only spend a few hours in the hole as you take turns sitting farther away from the front line. If you are unlucky you remain in the hole for days, with breaks only to relieve your bodily functions or fetch some chow. Never being able to lay down, sleep is rare treasure.

Spending hours in a hole in the ground with other men gives plenty of time to talk. Conversation passes the time. You get to know each other very well in such close quarters. Body odors, physical quirks, and breathing patterns are the least of the intimacies shared. Quiet whispers are the sweet relief that keep you alert to what is going on in the world outside your hole. You share things about yourself no lover or parent will ever know. This time of bonding can be crucial to building mutual trust.

From personal experience, I can say there are many myths about these inglorious holes. I've spent nights talking with atheists in foxholes. Anyone who tells you it doesn't happen hasn't been in one. Members of my platoon were gay, but that didn't matter to any of us. We all knew each other and the idea that sexual politics of any kind mattered seems silly. Questions of religion, race, creed, sexuality, were meaningless for those who must have trust. We had to trust each other. We had to have each other's back. And we did.

One thing I did notice in foxholes. There were no corporations. I knew no rich man's son there, only us middle class and poor. We were volunteers slammed together at random. Some of us hoped to get college degrees with money provided by the government after service. Others were making a career of the army and this was just part of the job. A few where running away from bad homes or lives. One man from a foreign land had volunteered so he could become a citizen and move his family to our fair land. I even know one private who had a choice of joining the army or going to jail. While I guess we were all patriotic, we didn't talk about that much.

Any soldier who has been in a foxhole, knows of dirt. He knows of “hurry up and wait”. Of filthy hands and sweaty feet. Of frozen cold fingers and sweat streaming down his back. Of hours upon endless hours of boredom. Foxholes are unpleasant.

Whenever I see a soldier now, so many years on, the first thing I see is who they might be in a hole next to me. A kind of special respect, of brotherly love fills my soul. For this, I always try to make sure I tell them “thank you”. Thank you for digging the holes where none of us want to go. Thank you for your service where no one can see. Thank you for making me be in the land of the free.

Edges of our Freedom

Freedom is so basic to our culture we tend to take it for granted. When asked “Should we be free?”, citizens of western societies will consistently answer “Yes”. When you ask about the specifics, the answers vary widely and the reality of freedom becomes less certain. To understand this, lets take a journey around Ireland and see what we can sea.

Borders of Ireland

 Ireland is a island bordered by only sea. At some point, it appears, Ireland ends and the sea begins.

How long is the border of Ireland? Where is that border between land and sea? If we draw a simple triangle around Ireland we can get a rough estimate of just how long that border is.

Closer borders
are longer

Even at a glance, this border is not quite right. So lets break up the sides of our triangle and add some more triangles make our calculation more accurate. Notice how the length is now longer?

Clearly we are still guessing at the length of the Irish border. Farther and farther we can bring in the detail by adding more and more triangles. At some point we start to outline every bay and inlet, every bump and cranny visible to the human eye all along the coast. We could stop there, at what the eye can see, and call ourselves done. The border of Ireland has been found on a practical level.

Borders are hard
to define

If accuracy is our claim and desire, then 'being practical' isn't good enough. If we want to be as good as we can be, we must continue the mapping of triangle even further. Each pebble, each grain of sand, each molecule, each atom, and even to the level of each quark needs be measured.

The closer we look at the border between Ireland and the sea, the longer Ireland's coast becomes. This process can go on into infinity, or surely beyond the ability of our minds to understand and value.

Finding the edges of freedom is similar to finding the edges of the land. We can say “Here is land.” and be sure of it. We think we know what freedom is and sometimes it seems very clear. We can say “Here is water” and know that it is not land. Such too is lack of freedom known to us.

But when we try to say where freedom begins and ends, the closer we look the harder it is to tell. If we want to be accurate, if we want to be more than practical, we must consider more carefully the boundary of freedoms.

Women desiring votes were scandalous

 Freedom of speech is such beast where the borders are long and winding.

It is clear that 'freedom-land' should allow us to express our opinions, unmolested by government or citizens. The idea that we should be able to freely exchange ideas allows all of us to learn more and find a more perfect union between us.

We do not however allow all speech. The "freedom-less ocean" does not allow individuals to cause others clear and present danger. Inciting violence, fighting words, is likewise not permitted. Lying under oath is not considered just in the land of freedom.

Freedom's border in focus

The closer you look at the border between freedom of speech and immoral behavior the longer the line becomes to understanding the limits of our freedoms.

This is true for all our freedoms. Freedom of religion does not include those that practice cannibalism. Freedom to bear arms does not include nuclear weapons. Protections for assemblies of people do not grant the right for lynch mobs to form.

In each moment, we change the boundaries of our freedoms, much as the coast of Ireland is not fixed. In little ways, here and there, the coastline grows and shrinks.

Freedoms can get extended or be taken away. Examples of this are numerous; the extension of voting rights to un-propertied men, women and to lower age groups has increased our coast lines of freedom.

The sea of not free

Freedoms can be retracted or limited to protect us. Speed limits inhibit our freedom of movement. Pharmaceuticals are controlled in order to save lives. Copyrights limit the freedom to copy others speech for profit. Weights and measures are standardized to keep us fair and honest with each other.

We should cherish our freedoms and protect them. We should also not forget that all freedoms have boundaries that are not definable, that get longer and longer as you look at them. The simple answers may be easy but are frequently not the accurate ones.

Our government exists to help us define the edges of our freedoms in our time.

Just Be Claws

I caused my coffee to brew.

I got the beans out, ground them, put filter in pot.

I filled up the water, poured just the right amount.

I plugged machine into wall, turning it on.

I watched clear become my desire of dark, rich brown.

I caused the coffee to brew.

I did not grow the coffee.

I did not make the grinder, filter, or pot.

I did not make or lay pipes allowing water to flow.

I neither designed nor built the machine.

I was only a link in a long set of chains.

I did not cause the coffee to brew.

Normally we think of cause and effect as simple. Something is done that makes something else happen. A useful way to live in the day-by-day. Cause and effects usefulness betrays the more complex, the more subtle, the more beautiful of what the reality is.

Kitty Lust

Causes require connections. I open the tuna can, the cats come. The can and cats must be setup a special way in order for cause and effect to work. Each cat must be within ear shot of the opener or they do not know of the potential tuna. If the basement door is closed the feline returning from the litter box may be unable to reach the can in the kitchen. Most of the time, we do not think about the special setup that allows causes and effects.

Causes do not always have the same effects. My cats Pan and Dora run to the kitchen when I open a can. Do I cause Pan-Dora to run? The creatures smell food and follow their desire for tuna. The fact that I'm the one opening the can means nothing to Dora or Pan. If I allow them to gorge themselves on the tuna and wait a few minutes to open another can, they do not often come running again, rather lick their paws and ignore can, tuna, and me.

Dreams of my cats

Different things can cause the same effect. Sometimes, when I'm cooking dinner, I'll open a can of peas or carrots or maybe tomatoes. You can hear the cats come bounding from where ever they lay, claws on wooden stairs launching themselves with abandon to their hoped for treat. Most of the time the can opener is not opening something they want. But just on the off chance it might be, they come anyway.

Effects follow causes. I have never once seen the Pan/Dora run to the kitchen expecting tuna while I am in another room. Maybe, when away from home, if I left a web-cam in the kitchen, I could detect such behavior; but I'm pretty sure it would be a waste of time. It seems safe to say that without the cause of the can opening, the kitchen running does not occur.

Cats think they are in charge

Some effects have many causes. We have a little plastic mouse with a red beaming laser light for a nose. If I push the button between the mouses ears the laser light lands on wall and floor much to amusements of my pets. Pan especially likes it when the light leads her from room to room.  She runs with all her might chasing the red darting prey. Getting Dora to run to the kitchen where the cans are opened is no mean feat. I can get Pan to do it a half dozen times before she tires and just watches the light move about. The opening of cans are not required for the cat to run to the kitchen with desire.

Correlation is not causation. Sometimes I make tuna fish sandwiches and put them in plastic bags. When I take these bags out of the fridge and open them to eat, a cat in range will come to investigate the smell. This led me to understand that it was not really the can that drove the cat, it was the tuna. The can is merely a correlation. The furry creatures had connected the sound of the can opening with the oily satisfaction of eating fish. The idea that because you relate one thing to another does not mean that one thing is the cause of another.

This seemingly little distinction, that correlation is not causation, leads us to a totally different sense of justice when cause and effect are applied to the law. Our sense of justice is closely tied to our innate ideas of cause. If you break the law you will be punished. The words 'you break' point to the cause and 'punishment' is the effect.

We have law for reasons of causation

Consider the heroin addict who craves his drug like my cat craves tuna. His body drives him to acquire the drug. His desire overpowers his morality and he becomes able to make the mental leap that theft is a viable way to obtain the chemicals his body screams for. In this sense the addict has been driven to change his morality, his sense of justice by chemical demand.

We make assumptions about cause and correlations always with insufficient information. Can we say the addict is responsible, that he is the cause of the theft? Do we say the drug is the cause of the theft? Perhaps it was his mother who took drugs while he was in her womb that setup this chain of events? Or maybe the pusher who convinced him as a young boy that heroin was fun? Perhaps all are culpable, perhaps none.

Dora will often jump on the counter to look for tuna after I leave the kitchen. She knows that tuna was there and if I don't see or hear her jump onto the counter, there may be an unexpected treat. Dora also knows that if I find her there, or become aware, I will chase her down with a squirt bottle until fur is wet. Dora does not like wet fur. Not at all. When Dora wants the tuna, her desire often overpowers her sense of consequences. Sometimes I'm not around and she gets what she wants. Dora knows that the effect does not always follow the cause.

Human nature looks for the simple cause and the simple effect. Its useful, but not often accurate to assume the easy and direct relationship of cause and effect. So next time you judge remember to be 'just', 'be claws' it is the right thing to do.

Kill Them. Kill Them All.

Zombies.
Zombies want brains.
Zombies want my brain.
Zombies want my baby's brain.
Kill them.
Kill them all.
After all, they are just zombies.

Read the signs! They are here!

Pretend, for a moment, that the fictional but funly imagined Zombie Apocalypse has come. You have your shotgun. You know how to double-tap. Your chainsaw is well oiled and you've got plenty of gas. You're a fast draw and a faster runner and these are slow zombies.  Not the zombies from 28 Days Later, or The Dawn of the Dead.  These are zombies who shuffle along, whose fastest movement is slower than a Sunday stroll.

Our imagined zombies are just about totally independent from physical needs or wants of any sort. They do not eat for energy.  They eat just because it is what they do.

 Our zombies feel no pain. They have less mind than a slug, but more mind than a tree. They can open doors by accident, but ladders stop them cold.  Zombies are mostly not there at all, otherwise they wouldn't be zombies!

Zombie's Existentially

A good read.

Zombies are infectious. Their bite can make you become a zombie too, if they do not eat your brains first. According to “The Zombie Survival Guide” zombies became zombies because of a virus called solanum. Typically zombies are given an origin resulting from a virus or biological organism, disease, or some other source of physical damage. 

Zombies do not choose to be zombies, it just happens to them. Like cancer or the measles, there is no intent, there is no choice in getting the zombie sickness. You might want to say that “they could have tried harder to avoid it”. Try telling that to your eight year old boy picking his nose in the corner. Or your eighty-eight year old grandma drooling in her mid-day nap for that matter.

Many of us will just kill the zombies. The basic logic goes something like this; “They can infect me.  We will protect ourselves.  Zombies must die.” The desire for self defense is strong in we humans, especially when it comes to those we identify with as family.

After a little consideration you may well notice that when we take this view, we tend to say the word 'kill' rather than 'murder'. I kill the chicken for my diner, I do not murder it. Yet to the chicken and the zombie, our intent in murder or killing doesn't matter. It should matter to us.  Very much!

Animals slaughtered by necessity.

If we consider the zombies as humans with a terminal disease, then the word 'kill' gets a little bit harder to justify. If the zombie was your nice uncle Ralph, or the sweet old man next door who sometimes shovels your sidewalk when it snows, it would feel like 'murder'.  Even if you try to think you are doing them a favor. Have you ever heard of someone putting a clause in their will that says “If I become a zombie, please kill me.”? 

The threat that zombies pose is from instinct and not intent. How can we judge a zombie's character when they are obviously, and literally, dumber than door knobs? This reduction of the zombies brain to something less than human may give hope to the would-be-zombie killer to find some moral justification in their pursuit to eliminate zombies violently. To whit we must then ask; "Do zombies have a soul?"

Soul Brothers and Sisters?

Spirits in the world.

If you believe in dualism, that humans have an immortal soul, a separate from the body piece of the universe that makes up your mind or spirit, then you must ask "Does the soul still inhabit the body of a zombie?"

Consider for a moment a person in a vegetative state like a coma. Do they still have a soul? If you can answer 'yes' to the presence of a soul, then morality well may push you to save the zombies soul, to care for it, to make it at peace. We, as the superior mind, have a responsibility to care for those less fortunate; for shouldn't a person and even a society be judged for how it cares for the least of its souls?  Run like hell from the zombies. Build a barricade to hide behind, quarantine all the zombies in a pit, but do not under any circumstances kill them, for it is murder plain and simple.

Destroying barrels was fun!

On the other hand, the dualist who thinks the zombie's soul has already left their body can chain-saw away at will. Since zombies are just inanimate matter like a brick, the word 'kill' does not even apply. Zombies are already dead. In fact, it is good and proper to take pleasure killing zombies.
I would recommend whistling while you work at your de-zombification.  Singing an old chain gang song like “De Camptown Races” would be a wonderful way to spend an afternoon with friends while slicing and slashing and double-tapping; doing your duty for your fellow man.

Empirically Void?

The inventor of utilitarianism
looks a bit like a zombie.

What though, if you believe the there is no soul, but rather that the mind is emergent from the body? Your monist philosophy would dictate a different kind of assessment on the morality of whacking and hacking at the zombie critters. Thoughts on morality here fall into two camps; consequence and categorical.

The consequence, or sometimes called utilitarian, view is that questions about morality should be looked at in terms of what would be the greatest good. How do we help the most people? The consequence moralist would ask the question “If I terminate the zombies existence will it benefit more people?” Since clearly one zombie can infect many non-zombies, the zombie has got to go. With haste! The sum of the people saved must be greater than the sum of the people hurt. As long as I am saving non-zombie lives, its good and proper to grind zombie flesh.

If however, you think the golden rule should apply, then you would be taking the categorical idea and ask the question “If I became a zombie would I want someone to kill me?” Your answer to this question becomes the moral basis for whacking or running, double-tapping or containing. If you found yourself with a group of survivors, using logic and reason you would try to figure out together what is the group's view was. You would consider together what should be done if any of you became zombies. This would allow you to have the basis of law and order, probably on democratic terms about which zombies should be taken out.

Ummm.... Ooohhhmmm?

Lastly, a view from eastern philosophy.  The Buddhist tradition would absolutely forbid killing zombies.  This thought stream holds that killing is always a wrong thing to do.  The Buddha is said to have avoided killing any living creature, mosquito, ox, or human.  It is written in the Dhammapada "Everyone fears punishment; everyone fears death, just as you do. Therefore do not kill or cause to kill."

Would Buddha have survived the zombie invasion?  We may never know, but I rather doubt it, unless an impregnable fortress could be built to protect all non-zombie life.

Just Kill'em!

I do not know about what you would do, but I can speak for myself.

If come the zombie apocalypse and it is between a zombie or me, I would with great effort and little forethought be sure to separate its brain from its body.

 I'll shake them and break them nary pause to ask “is it right" or "is it wrong” or even “is there a better way”because...

Dad' gum' it! Im'a protect me and mine! Honey, wars the double-barrel? Git me dat der hatchet!  

And Kill Them!  Kill Them All!

Judging Leadership

Ronald Reagan's early leadership style.

My local coffee clutch has one member who was a US Marine. He was away from the barracks the morning of October 23, 1983 when the bomb went off killing 241 American servicemen. It is clear to me that this event is burned hard into his mind because of he has talked about it with us several times, his loss of friends and face. His words used to describe our national response are "we cut and run". He may still well desire revenge and could use the word 'hate' when speaking of Ronald Reagan.

In my family, by marriage, is a young girl of intense faith. She exclaimed to me over this past holiday how proud she was to have been alive, although she was very young, when Ronald Reagan was our leader. Her view is that his voiced principles should be his measure and not his actions; his idealism is to be cherished; but he should not be held responsible for events during his office. She is inspired to service by his example. She desires purity. She could use the word 'love' when speaking of Ronald Reagan.

Even his enemies thought Robert E. Lee a good leader.

Lincoln, in his time, was so hated that a huge chunk of  my country split off and attempted to leave it, while others rallied around him in an attempt to establish a new principled order of the future. What then do we make of Napoleon or Alexander the Great? Great leaders who succeeded wildly at the beginning and failed miserably at the end? Can we say "they are good leaders"? Other examples of lightning rods and divisive leadership can be commonly found.

It would seem that subjective views are difficult to untangle from objective ones when we view leaders. A common view among historians is that only with time and distance can we gain useful perspective. This may be self-serving to historians I fear.

I wonder what criteria then should we use to evaluate a leader's performance? How can we not cherry pick, each from their own preconceptions?

A look to scholarship will define 'leadership' as the ability to get participants in a group to focus their attention and actions on the issues that the leader considers significant. Leaders accomplish this by three means: organization, communication, and decisions. Such abstract methods can lead to measurement of leadership effectiveness. Many large organizations like corporations and non-profit institution use abstract tests in an attempt to quantify someone's ability to lead.

The Organizer

Most leaders are highly restricted in the organization they lead. Leaders of large organizations, like corporate executive officers (CEO), often do not have the ability to structure the organization they lead in the manner they desire. Existing infrastructure, boards of directors, and market demand are the true masters determining success or failure in meeting the competing needs placed on large organizations. Leaders at best can push and shove on the existing infrastructure to lead.

The Communicator

Leaders who promise they can bring us the 'shining city on the hill', who push us to have a 'new deal', or promise a 'great society' are practicing good leadership communication skills. Projecting a future vision that we, as followers, can emotionally identify with and act upon is when we are led.  Communications for a leader is about projecting an idea from the top of a hierarchy or the center of a broad cast.  They convince us of to move our diverse viewpoints toward a common, shared view.  We expect then that good leaders will communicate in a way that provides unity more than division.

The Decider

Making decisions, being 'the decider' is what executives do. Picking and choosing objects and actions based on the information at hand are how the bricks get placed in the leadership wall. A good leader not only needs to know how to pick from alternatives, but how to pick which information to go get in order to make an informed decision. This ability to find facts, evaluate opinions, and maintain the ability to doubt is more critical than picking which way to go, which action to take.

The ability to lead, and the results may not be the same thing. Leadership appear to be about 'means', while results appears to be about 'ends'. When we look for effective leadership we expect 'winners' who achieve the goals that we already desire. We want 'peace in our time' and 'an end to poverty' and 'a mule and 50 acres for every man'. These desires, goals, end-points are where we wish to go, but are on the face of them are practically unachievable. Yet when choosing leaders, we frequently have these impossible idealistic goals in mind. We want to believe so badly this new person can lead us to our promised land.

Leaders do try their best.

We would like to think we can pick our leaders based on their past performance. The past predicts the future. This may be so some of the time. Purchasing a new good or service is much like selecting a leader. Both involve evaluating opportunities of the future based on performance in the past. When you purchase something, often a practitioner of the legal profession will include language that says something like "your results may vary" or "past performance is not necessarily an indicator of future performance". Such is an individual leader. We can only hope that their experience in the past will work for us in the future.

So next time you pick a leader, whether the boss you will work for in a new job, the captain of your pickup basketball game, or the leader of the free world remember; you may want to be inspired, you may want to achieve, but the measure of the leader is purely intuitive. You will only know the quality of the leader after the fact and even then, you will be only guessing at their and your success.