The Decision-Making Spectrum

*From my old Friendster Blog site written on Dec 25, 2006.

I have always asked myself, "What makes a decision wise?"

People will go, "Oh, you just know it when you make one".

Well, its true. But here's something that's a little bit technical on how we've been making up our minds every single time we make a decision.

First, here's the spectrum that's been introduced to me:

Now, let's examine it carefully. There are actually two main parts of how we balance a decision. First part on the far left is Conscience, or the Ethics.

Ethics, as we all know, is the do's and don'ts of life. This is right, and that is wrong. It has a 'motherly' characteristics in it. It's always been our mom who told us what to do and what not to do. The Conscience will also tell you if your motive is constructive or destructive. If you're too dependent on this, Dr Paul calls it as "Being top heavy on superego".

Intuition, on the other hand, is described as the 'fatherly' set of mind-directions. Our dads teach us how to live, and how to survive in the real world. He would tell us if a situation or environment will be constructive or destructive for us once we make a certain decision.

Lacking any of the two will cause trouble, of course. If everyone is "top heavy on superego" (by caring too much about what's right and what's wrong), we might live in a world without any oil platforms right now. This is because drilling for oil costs us the environment, and damaging the environment is BAD.

Similarly, if we know really well how to get around life situations, but we're lacking conscience to remind us of life's do's and don'ts, we might behave just like Enron - a once-big-and-strong American company with a popular symbol of willful corporate fraud and corruption. They took money from people because they know that the situation was financially-constructive. Unfortunately, they we're lacking ethics. The company announced bankruptcy in late 2001.

So, all of us have to balance the two in order to make wise decisions, everytime we need to make one. If we truly take into account both ends of the spectrum, we will get to Wisdom - the middle point.

And what will you get out of making wise decisions thru wisdom?

Freedom. It is the 'currency' that people will trade for you.

The public, or the people around you will grant you freedom if you make good decision for them. Society loves individuals who is full of wisdom. A great example might be our very Prophet, Muhammad (peace be upon him). This is why world leaders are usually chosen among those with wisdom (Well, except for Bush - he has his own special case).

Until then, I wish luck for all of us. This is the last part of the psychology theories. This is all that I have to share with you. Hopefully we'd be able to use all of it for the betterment of the religion, society, and for our beloved country, Malaysia. (kind of a direct translation from 'agama, bangsa dan negara', LOL)

I'll talk to you soon.