Decision (glossary entry)

Decision is involved in making plans, chossing tasks, and so on. Most of the more important issues are covered under the priorities topic. The rest of this article concerns the substantial folklore that has built up around "decision".

The Word's Latin Roots and Relation to Time

It is often mentioned that decide comes from Latin words meaning to cut off. The implication is that when making a choice, the un-chosen options have been "cut off" and are permanently inaccessible from that point forward.

If the decision is accompanied by a physical action, this might indeed be true. But most of the time, the thing that has been cut off is limited to the time in which the decision took place.

For example, someone might "decide" to go on a trip, and then purchase a ticket and tell their friends. However, the trip has not yet happened, that is in the future. Nothing has been "cut off" yet, beyond the purchasing and the telling. The decision to buy the tickets and tell the friends does not magically bind the unfolding of future events. When it comes time to actually go to the train station or airport, etc., only then does it become possible to "cut off" the possibility of going or of not going.

So what has actually been decided is to make a plan, and perform some actions (tasks) persuant to that plan. The fulfillment of the plan (its stated goal) has not yet occurred, and in fact the plan can be changed later — and probably will, if for example the person determines later that the trip would be a bad idea.

Decisiveness and Gender Personality

David Deida has a philosophy that assigns decisiveness to the masculine archetypes.

The masculine makes decisions, the feminine lets another person decide for them.

Deida uses the term "flowster" to describe a feminine mode of behavior that "goes with the flow" by letting another person decide. Such a person abdicates decisiveness to the other partner (a partner playing the masculine role, usually a man) and this allows her to "open up" the feminine qualities of the Maiden, Mother, Crone and Queen.

This page was written in the "embarrassingly readable" markup language RHTF, and was last updated on 2014 Aug 01.

s.27