If I were you...

Taken literally, “if I were you” seems to be an entirely redundant turn of phrase. And yet we hear it a lot.

“If I were you, I would have turned left at that last junction.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t have called my boss a bitch.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t take that job.”

Often, the phrase is simply a convenient way to offer advice. We aren’t really thinking about what we would do if we were someone else; we are advising someone on what we think they should do or should have done. Or perhaps we’re just chatting about what we would do if we were in similar circumstances. Either way, there’s no problem.

But taking the phrase literally does offer us a very important tool for being more understanding, compassionate and forgiving towards other people in general. Take a moment to consider what you would actually have done if you were somebody else in some scenario or another.

Hopefully, after a little thought you’ll come to the somewhat unintuitive but ultimately inescapable conclusion that you would have done precisely what they did, whatever that was. Why? Because you were them. There is no getting around this simple but powerful fact. If you were in someone else’s shoes entirely – body, mind, soul (if you believe in such a thing), memories, environmental influences and more – there would be no extra part of you to make you do differently to them, and so you would do precisely what they did. Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan, Adam Lanza, George Bush, your mother-in-law, the guy that knocked you off your bike last year… everyone. If you were them, you would have done what they did.

But so what? How does this change anything? It may, but it may not. That depends on your current view of the world. But please do me a favour and try something: whenever someone annoys you or upsets you or otherwise does something you see as worthy of punishment or suffering, just remember this fact: if you were them, you would have done the same. You might not like it, but it is simple truth, and I wager it will make you see some things very differently.

And don’t stop there. Think about this the next time someone is talking about the justice system, too. How do we justify revenge (or retributive justice, as the more “civilised” among us like to call it)? With difficulty, I think. How can we condone punishment for its own sake whilst simultaneously admitting that we’d have done the same as the perpetrator if we were them? This thought experiment supports the ever-more-popular view that the purpose of the justice system should be protection of the public and prevention of reoffending. So do think about it, please.

Death and an introduction

I am not religious, but I used to be a fundamentalist Christian: I believed the Bible to be the infallible word of God and read it literally. There was no significant event in my life that changed this for me; I just gradually realised that I didn’t have any good reason to believe what I did. Naturally, the beliefs gradually faded as well. This transition had several effects on me, though none were as powerful as you might expect. The one I wish to discuss here is that I no longer believe in life after death.

I don't know what will happen when I die. I do, however, think I have a reasonable idea of what won't happen: I will not retain the sense of self I possess in life. As neuroscientist and popular author Sam Harris said*,

“… you damage areas of the brain and faculties are lost… You can cease to recognize faces, you can cease to know the names of animals but you still know the names of tools… what we’re being asked to consider is that you damage one part of the brain and something about the mind and subjectivity is lost. You damage another and yet more is lost… you damage the whole thing at death, and we can rise off the brain with all our faculties intact, recognizing grandma and speaking English.”

I do not think this view is very sensible.

The result of this is that my efforts in this life are wholly focused on this life, and not what may or may not come after. I find this view of death as “the end” very freeing: the fact that the actions I take throughout my life are colossally insignificant on a universal scale is liberating. But it is also very scary. What I have come to realise is that I do want to contribute something. Not on a huge scale, and maybe not at all, but I do want to try.

The question that therefore remains is simply “what do I have to contribute?” and the only answer I can come up with is my thoughts, however valueless they may be. And so, given the time constraints that life currently places on me, I plan to develop this blog with small, easy-to-read entries that I hope will have some positive impact on any readers. Please forgive me if I fail!

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6iHe0ra_UM&feature=player_embedded