The Fallacy of Action

Have you noticed that the attitudes, beliefs, and actions of both the truly deluded and the wise visionary are eerily similar to the outside observer? Which are you? Which do your actions represent?

Self-help and personal development gurus love to tell you to “quit being lazy and get in action”, regardless of how you feel. And, to have a plan and a goal for that action.

That advice sounds so logical and unassailable, and it also misses the point of life.

On the subject of a successful life, we love to discuss the correct direction and degree of our actions. As you know by now, “correct” is a judgment, and judgment is both logical and the opposite of life.

Being in action is one of those sacred cows of self-help; never questioned, never challenged. Yet, in matters of life and our experience of it, it’s never what you do, rather why you do it. What you do is the merely the logic of it, why you do it is the humanity of it. One is universal, the other is personal.

If that sounds contrary to what you’ve always been taught, it’s because it is. Remember that old admonition that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”? That is life as seen through the lens of logic.

Logic is stuff that always sounds like it should be true, but has no relevance to your actual experience.

Logic can be viewed as “shared truth”. Regardless of its contribution to your life, if you are the only one to hold a logical belief, it wouldn’t matter how logical it is until it is adopted by at least one other person. In that sense, logic is not a seeker of truth, logic is a seeker of agreement.

In modern times, most of us seek guidance from logic rather than raw experience (the stuff of the human spirit). As the number of our species grows, logic is required more and more because “shared truth” is how societies function in their ability to communicate and cooperate.

Yet a satisfied (enlightened) life is never a shared truth, rather always and only a personal truth. It simply cannot be described or encouraged through a plan, formula, language or any other observable and measurable quality, like “being in action”.

The only path to what we all seek is one of personal discovery.

Here lies the real issue: any action made in an agitated or inauthentic state will not bring you closer to a satisfying result, only a correct one. Yet, it still goes by the name of “action”. Until your actions are spiritually guided (a.k.a., with emotion), the action will produce only corrupted results, and provide only a distraction from the real prize of life. Let’s call that empty action.

Obsessives of all sorts justify their manic behaviors with the belief that their actions, regardless of their motivation, will enhance their life. These include workaholics, extreme exercisers, serial daters, or anyone who goes about a repetitive task with fierce determination and unwavering consistency. This is not the stuff of life; this is the stuff of obsession.

“Being in action” is just a euphemism for “being obsessive”

But it is becoming more clear as time goes on that what the success coaches promote as “being in action” is just a euphemism for “being obsessive”. What we know about obsessives is that they are numb to the experience of their actions. Without experience as the guiding beacon, the action becomes empty.

Rather than the experience of it, we mostly measure the success of our actions in terms of recognition from the greatest number of people. This is the “agreement” that logic so desperately seeks.

Obsessives — especially those whose actions are glorified by society, such as extreme fitness practitioners, many entrepreneurs, anorexics, etc., have one thing in common: their benchmarks for success are determined by something quantifiable: miles run, money made, pounds lost.

Quantifiable outcomes never serve humanity, only logic.

An obsession is engaging in something observable, and considered to be praise-worthy by most, yet results in the destruction of the aspects of life for which our spirit yearns. And we, as outside observers, contribute to this destruction by heaping praise upon them based solely on observable “action”.

It is not action-for-action-sake that produces the results of a better life. Rather, this better life is found in our willingness to participate in the process emotionally. But emotional participation is not an observable quality.

When we participate emotionally, we do so for results that are unseen and unseeable.

The only success in life that matters is not determined by whether you were in action or not. Success in life is found in your willingness to challenge the seemingly unassailable edicts of logic. In this life,the only quality that matters is not what you do, but why you do it.

I can’t give you the “why” because that is only revealed by your willingness to participate in the process. But I, and you, can refuse to say that a successful life is based on something that it is not.