How can we do the right thing.

How can we do the right thing?
Force Majeure

If you had lived in Germany in 1939, would you have helped protect Jews or gone along with their systematic extermination? If you had been an MP 10 years ago, would you have milked your expenses for what they were worth? And if you and your family faced a threat, would you protect them or save yourself?

We all like to think that in such situations our basic decency would shine through, but we can never know. This is the central theme of Force Majeure, in which an avalanche suddenly threatens to engulf a Swedish family enjoying lunch on the terrace of a plush ski resort. The husband and father, Tomas, flunks his test. Instead of trying to shield his wife and children he runs away, not forgetting his precious smartphone.

In the aftermath, several characters try to excuse him. “In situations like these you’re not always aware of what you do,” says one. “You try to survive.” Aristotle would not have been satisfied by this or the other excuses offered in Tomas’s defence. He would have insisted that in those few seconds, Tomas revealed his character.

Aristotle’s insight was that we rarely have the time or opportunity to sit down and think about what the best thing to do is before acting. Indeed, a good person does not have to do this. To become good you have to practise being good by cultivating the habits of goodness. Only then will you find yourself doing the right thing almost automatically. If you practise thinking about what you want to be and doing what is necessary to become that person, when you are tested you will be able to do the right thing without thinking.

We can pretend that Tomas just had a moment of madness where his primal survival instinct took over, but his wife, Ebba, knows better, and so do we. He did what he did because he loves himself and his phone more than he loves his family. We can see this in the small details of daily life. For example, before the incident, Ebba asks him from the bathroom whether he is checking his phone and he lies and says no. This isn’t a terrible crime in itself, but Aristotle would have said it was just one more small contribution to a pattern of behaviour that made him the cowardly narcissist he is. Every time he chooses to lie rather than admit to himself and others that he is too obsessed with his phone he becomes that little bit more self-centred.

Force Majeure tells us what Aristotle knew: unpredictable events happen, random “acts of God” for which no one is responsible. But how we respond to them is not random, and responsibility for that lies squarely on our own shoulders.

This was seen very well in our Munar trip a few years ago. we were nearly 55 of us travelling , this was on our way  back. most of the men had gone ahead to reach thrisur with a friend who owned a five star hotel there to make arrangements  for our dinner and fellowship before we took the train to chennai. and low we were women and children were stranded in the middle of the forest as the bus could not take the u turn bend on the return trip. we were asked to get off the bus our cell phones did not work people panicked as we were in the middle of actually nowhere. and a large crowd of 48 people to be transported from that forest. we hailed a lorry and managed to get in a few oldies in the front with the driver they have a bench behind the drivers seat and the rest of us at the back. the agitation and the way people behaved was an experience few of us will remember for a life time. then the luggage which was left in the bus had to be hauled onto the lorry too as the bus was incapable of travelling the 45 minutes joirney all hell broke loose. what an experience it was. can well imagine poor thomas then. what he did was pure nature. so it is very important. to be in control. practice alone can save one.

I too firmly believe that one can not judge until the moment has arrived and one does things either it is force of habit or instinct. that is the moment to perform.