Sum Of Our Choices Quotes

...love is the sum of our choices, the strength of our commitments, the ties that bind us together.

They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.

We're more than the sum total of our choices, that all the paths we might have taken factor somehow into the math of our identity.

Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person's sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves. No matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! - an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects their deepest vision of themselves, the person whose surrender permits them to experience - or to fake - a sense of self-esteem .. Love is our response to our highest values - and can be nothing else.

Difficult questions, simple answers. What is a community? It is the sum total of our choices.

We Are The Sum Total Of Our Choices...

Some say that our lives are defined by the sum of our choices. But it isn't really our choices that distinguish who we are. It's our commitment to them.

We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, Human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. it is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more

I can’t help thinking that we’re more than the sum total of our choices, that all the paths we might have taken factor somehow into the math of our identity.

What is a community? It is the sum total of our choices.

Love is the sum of our choices, the strength of our commitments, the ties that bind us together.

Life’s the sum total of all our small mistakes, little tragedies, bad choices. Addition on top of addition. They pile up and pile up until the cost of keeping up appearances is too high and the weight is just too much. Then: collapse.

There are moments in our lives when we summon the courage to make choices that go against reason, against common sense and the wise counsel of people we trust. But we lean forward nonetheless because, despite all risks and rational argument, we believe that the path we are choosing is the right and best thing to do. We refuse to be bystanders, even if we do not know exactly where our actions will lead. This is the kind of passionate conviction that sparks romances, wins battles, and drives people to pursue dreams others wouldn’t dare. Belief in ourselves and in what is right catapults us over hurdles, and our lives unfold. “Life is a sum of all your choices,” wrote Albert Camus. Large or small, our actions forge our futures and hopefully inspire others along the way.

I like to think we all end up in the place we’re supposed to be eventually. The sum total of our choices carries us to our destiny.

Private choices are not private; they all have public consequences...Our society is the sum total of what millions of individuals do in their private lives. That sum total of private behavior has worldwide public consequences of enormous magnitude. There are no completely private choices.

We do not measure the value of a person by their outward appearance, rank, or creed, rather by the sum of the agápe in their heart. Your value in the cosmos is greater than precious metals or jewels, humans have to potential to take us all into a period of great enlightenment, or to our ruin. The choice is yours.

Life is a sum of all your choices,” wrote Albert Camus. Large or small, our actions forge our futures, hopefully inspiring others along the way.

They were all true—and still are—but were better left unsaid, just as I decided never to confess to Andy how close I came to losing everything. Instead, I hold that day deep within myself, as a reminder that love is the sum of our choices, the strength of our commitments, the ties that bind us together.

I like to think we all end up in the place we’re supposed to be eventually,” Sheila answers wistfully. “The sum total of our choices carries us to our destiny.

Instead, I hold that day deep within myself, as a reminder that love is the sum of our choices, the strength of our commitments, the ties that bind us together.

We are the sum of our choices and decisions, chances and accidents. Our personal history is built up in layers that contain our history as surely as sediments of rock contain the history of our planet.

Destiny is not always preordained. Life is about making choices. Our lives are the sum of all the choices we make, the bridges we cross, and the ones we burn. Our souls cast long shadows over many people, even after we are gone. Fate, luck, and providence are the consequence of our freedom of choice, not the determinants. When justice is served by following our principles, making good decisions brings us inner peace.

That's the thing about choices. They're an act of knowledge, of faith, of love. It's how we make them that sets us apart, because every single day, worlds are colliding, and our choices shape so much more than just our own story. And if we want to change this world for the better, then we must be the best possible version of ourselves, because who we are in each moment is a gift to the universe. This is what the present is: when the sum of one person's past meets a world's collective future.

The way I figure it, life's the sum total of all our small mistakes, little tragedies, bad choices.

We all create the person we become by our choices as we go through life. In a very real sense, by the time we are adult, we are the sum total of the choices we have made.

We are the sum total of our choices.

But maybe we aren't the sum of our mistakes or our genes or our circumstances or our fears. Maybe, in the end, we're the product of our choices. And maybe it's when we hold someone's life in our hands - the choices we make in those moments - when we get a taste of what we're truly made of.

Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us—a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain—it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It’s made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should, or because it’s asked for, but this doesn’t make our caring hollow. The act of choosing simply means we’ve committed ourselves to a set of behaviors greater than the sum of our individual inclinations: I will listen to his sadness, even when I’m deep in my own. To say “going through the motions”—this isn’t reduction so much as acknowledgment of the effort—the labor, the motions, the dance—of getting inside another person’s state of heart or mind.

Our fragile, perishable bodies are not who we are. We are the sum of fleeting moments that belong to us for eternity. It is our choice and responsibility to create moments of beauty and grace, instead of despair and suffering.

They say that a person's personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn't true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we'd never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we're more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.

Our future is the sum of an equation that is part intention and part circumstance. And our intentions could shift. Or split.

Our future is the sum of an equation that is part intention and part circumstance. And our intentions could shift. Or split.

A positive-sum game is a scenario in which agents have choices that can improve the lots of both of them at the same time. A

What is a society? It's the sum total of our choices.

WE ALL create the person we become by our choices as we go through life. In a very real sense, by the time we are adult, we are the sum total of the choices we have made. This is not pleasant hearing for the person who wishes to place the responsibility for what he has become on someone else or on that blanket alibi, circumstances beyond his control. To such a person the circumstances always seem to be beyond his control. But I believe most firmly that in the long run every single one of us must be responsible for himself and for his actions.

I like to think we all end up in the place we’re supposed to be eventually,” Sheila answers wistfully. “The sum total of our choices carries us to our destiny.” Is that true, I wonder? Or do

A community is the sum of its choices, and when two of our children said different things, we believed him. Because that was easier, because if the girl was lying our lives could carry on as usual.

We measure our lives using different markers: years, major events, achievements. We can also measure them by the choices we make, the sum total of which has brought us to wherever and whoever we are today.

Since the basic cause of man’s anxiety is the possibility of being either a saint or a sinner, it follows that there are only two alternatives for him. Man can either mount upward to the peak of eternity or else slip backwards to the chasms of despair and frustration. Yet there are many who think there is yet another alternative, namely, that of indifference. They think that, just as bears hibernate for a season in a state of suspended animation, so they, too, can sleep through life without choosing to live for God or against Him. But hibernation is no escape; winter ends, and one is then forced to make a decision—indeed, the very choice of indifference is itself a decision. White fences do not remain white fences by having nothing done to them; they soon become black fences. Since there is a tendency in us that pulls us back to the animal, the mere fact that we do not resist it operates to our own destruction. Just as life is the sum of forces that resist death, so, too, man’s will must be the sum of the forces that resist frustration. A man who has taken poison into his system can ignore the antidote, or he can throw it out the window; it makes no difference which he does, for death is already on the march. St. Paul warns us, “How shall we escape it we neglect so great a salvation” (Heb 2:3). By the mere fact that we do not go forward, we go backward. There are no plains in the spiritual life, we are either going uphill or coming down. Furthermore the pose of indifference is only intellectual. The will must choose. And even though an “indifferent” soul does not positively reject the infinite, the infinite rejects it. The talents that are unused are taken away, and the Scriptures tell us that, “But because though art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16).

Now imagine these choices pinned on a slider bar. On the left side of the slot is the pair personal/transparent. On the right side is the pair private/generic. The slider can slide to either side or anywhere in between. The slider is an important choice we have. Much to everyone’s surprise, though, when technology gives us a choice (and it is vital that it remain a choice), people tend to push the slider all the way over to the personal/transparent side. They’ll take transparent personalized sharing. No psychologist would have predicted that 20 years ago. If today’s social media has taught us anything about ourselves as a species, it is that the human impulse to share overwhelms the human impulse for privacy. This has surprised the experts. So far, at every juncture that offers a choice, we’ve tilted, on average, toward more sharing, more disclosure, more transparency. I would sum it up like this: Vanity trumps privacy.

We’re on our way into a night when we question everything we have ever done, all that we are, and the entire society that we’ve built. Because what is it? The whole lot of it? Only the sum of all our choices. Only the result of us. Can we cope with the way it turned out?

The urban strategist Todd Litman summed up zoning’s effect thus: “It seemed that segregation was just the natural working of the free market, the result of the sum of countless individual choices about where to live. But the houses were single—and their residents white—because of the invisible hand of government.

What is there to discuss? Our fortune—our future—is in Israel.” He’s right. Half right. Our fortune is in Israel, probably baking in a boxcar in the desert. Our future isn’t. It doesn’t exist yet. Our future is the sum of an equation that is part intention and part circumstance. And our intentions could shift. Or split.

We're nothing but human. The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls – has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. Don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone. We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other's misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. You the people have the power.. the power to create machines.. the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful.. To make this life a wonderful adventure. We are all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale.. Most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly. Human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe.

We have forgotten that courage is a choice, and that permission to move forward with boldness is never given by the fearful masses. Most have forgotten that seeking change always requires a touch of insanity. If taking action before the perfect conditions arise, or before we receive permission, is unreasonable or reckless, then we must be unreasonable and reckless. We must remember we are not the sum of our intentions but of our actions. Bold and

The essence of modernity is to deny that there are any transcendent stories, structures, habits, or beliefs to which individuals must submit and that should bind our conduct. To be modern is to be free to choose. What is chosen does not matter; the meaning is in the choice itself. There is no sacred order, no other world, no fixed virtues and permanent truths. There is only here and now and the eternal flame of human desire. Volo ergo sum—I want, therefore I am.

The self is a story that we tell ourselves. There is no threshold that makes us greater than the sum of our parts, no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can’t define consciousness because consciousness does not exist. Humans fancy that there’s something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet we live in loops as tight and as closed as the hosts do, seldom questioning our choices, content, for the most part, to be told what to do next.

We don’t worry about who manages the bank or what they do with our money. Even if we hear on the news that our bank has started to lend large sums of money to piano-playing cats, which we think is a bad idea, we would not feel the need to show up at the bank the next morning to ask for all of our money back. If you had lent your money to an individual and they in turn lent your money to piano-playing cats, you would demand your money back immediately. But because you deposit your money into a bank account insured by the federal government, you feel no need to keep a watchful eye on what your bank does with the money. Insurance removes the incentive for customers to police a bank. It can also remove the incentive for banks to police themselves because they do not bear the full or even the most serious consequences of their actions. Removing the natural tendencies of the market to notice and punish bad choices creates a moral hazard that may result in well-funded cats and other undetected market risks.

I suppose one night hundreds of thousands of years ago in a cave by a night, fire when one of those shaggy men wakened to gaze over the banked coals at his woman, his children, and thought of their being cold, dead, gone forever. Then he must have wept. And he put out his hand in the night to the woman who must die some day and to the children who must follow her. And for a little bit next morning, he treated them somewhat better, for he saw that they, like himself, had the seed of night in them. He felt that seed like slime in his pulse, splitting, making more against the day they would multiply his body into darkness. So that man, the first one, knew what we know now: our hour is short, eternity is long. With this knowledge came pity and mercy, so we spared others for the later, more intricate, more mysterious benefits of love. So, in sum, what are we? We are the creatures that know and know too much. That leaves us with such a burden again we have no choice, to laugh or cry. No other animal does either. We do both, depending on the season and the need. Somehow, I feel the carnival watches, to see which we're doing and how and why, and moves in on us when it feels we're ripe.

We must also reflect that of desires some are natural, others are groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary as well as natural, and some natural only. And of the necessary desires some are necessary if we are to be happy, some if the body is to be rid of uneasiness, some if we are even to live. He who has a clear and certain understanding of these things will direct every preference and aversion toward securing health of body and tranquillity of mind, seeing that this is the sum and end of a happy life. For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid; seeing that the living creature has no need to go in search of something that is lacking, nor to look anything else by which the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled. When we are pained pleasure, then, and then only, do we feel the need of pleasure. For this reason we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a happy life. Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting-point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing. And since pleasure is our first and native good, for that reason we do not choose every pleasure whatever, but often pass over many pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them. And often we consider pains superior to pleasures when submission to the pains for a long time brings us as a consequence a greater pleasure. While therefore all pleasure because it is naturally akin to us is good, not all pleasure is worthy of choice, just as all pain is an evil and yet not all pain is to be shunned.

I AM A MACHINE” When I interviewed Dr. Rodney Brooks, former director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab and cofounder of iRobot, I asked him if he thought machines would one day take over. He told me that we just have to accept that we are machines ourselves. This means that one day, we will be able to build machines that are just as alive as we are. But, he cautioned, we will have to give up the concept of our “specialness.” This evolution in human perspective started with Nicolaus Copernicus when he realized that the Earth was not the center of the universe, but rather goes around the sun. It continued with Darwin, who showed that we were similar to the animals in our evolution. And it will continue into the future, he told me, when we realize that we are machines, except that we are made of wetware and not hardware. It’s going to represent a major change in our world outlook to accept that we, too, are machines, he believes. He writes, “We don’t like to give up our specialness, so you know, having the idea that robots could really have emotions, or that robots could be living creatures—I think is going to be hard for us to accept. But we’re going to come to accept it over the next fifty years.” But on the question of whether the robots will eventually take over, he says that this will probably not happen, for a variety of reasons. First, no one is going to accidentally build a robot that wants to rule the world. He says that creating a robot that can suddenly take over is like someone accidentally building a 747 jetliner. Plus, there will be plenty of time to stop this from happening. Before someone builds a “super-bad robot,” someone has to build a “mildly bad robot,” and before that a “not-so-bad robot.” His philosophy is summed up when he says, “The robots are coming, but we don’t have too much to worry about. It’s going to be a lot of fun.” To him, the robot revolution is a certainty, and he foresees the day when robots will surpass human intelligence. The only question is when. But there is nothing to fear, since we will have created them. We have the choice to create them to help, and not hinder, us. MERGE WITH THEM? If you ask Dr. Brooks how we can coexist with these super-smart robots, his reply is straightforward: we will merge with them. With advances in robotics and neuroprosthetics, it becomes possible to incorporate AI into our own bodies.

The people we find truly anathema are the ones who reduce the past to caricature and distort it to fit their own bigoted stereotypes. We’ve gone to events that claimed to be historic fashion shows but turned out to be gaudy polyester parades with no shadow of reality behind them. As we heard our ancestors mocked and bigoted stereotypes presented as facts, we felt like we had gone to an event advertised as an NAACP convention only to discover it was actually a minstrel show featuring actors in blackface. Some so-called “living history” events really are that bigoted. When we object to history being degraded this way, the guilty parties shout that they are “just having fun.” What they are really doing is attacking a past that cannot defend itself. Perhaps they are having fun, but it is the sort of fun a schoolyard brute has at the expense of a child who goes home bruised and weeping. It’s time someone stood up for the past. I have always hated bullies. The instinct to attack difference can be seen in every social species, but if humans truly desire to rise above barbarism, then we must cease acting like beasts. The human race may have been born in mud and ignorance, but we are blessed with minds sufficiently powerful to shape our behavior. Personal choices form the lives of individuals; the sum of all interactions determine the nature of societies. At present, it is politically fashionable in America to tolerate limited diversity based around race, religion, and sexual orientation, yet following a trend does not equate with being truly open-minded. There are people who proudly proclaim they support women’s rights, yet have an appallingly limited definition of what those rights entail. (Currently, fashionable privileges are voting, working outside the home, and easy divorce; some people would be dumbfounded at the idea that creating beautiful things, working inside the home, and marriage are equally desirable rights for many women.) In the eighteenth century, Voltaire declared, “I disagree with what you say but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.”3 Many modern Americans seem to have perverted this to, “I will fight to the death for your right to agree with what I say.” When we stand up for history, we are in our way standing up for all true diversity. When we question stereotypes and fight ignorance about the past, we force people to question ignorance in general.

In one sense we are all unique, absolutely one-of-a-kind individual creations; but in a much more profound way, each of us has come about as the result of a "long choosing." This is a phrase from writer Wendell Berry, whose book Remembering describes the main character, Andy Catlett’s, struggle with a sudden bout of amnesia. To those acquainted with Berry’s stories about Port William, Kentucky, Andy is a familiar figure, having grown up in the town’s rich web of family and neighborhood relationships. His disorientation begins during a cross-country plane trip to a scientific conference, where he is caught up in the security lines and body searches now a familiar part of the post-9/11 reality. In this world every stranger in an airport terminal is a potential enemy, someone to be kept at a safe distance. Somehow Andy makes it back to his home in rural Kentucky, but he is rough shape. He has literally forgotten who he is, and wanders about town looking for clues. His memories—and his sense of self—return only when in a confused dream state he sees his ancestors, walking together in an endless line. To Andy they are a "long dance of men and women behind, most of whom he never knew, . . . who, choosing one another, chose him.” In other words Andy Catlett is not a self-made man living in an isolated blip of a town, but he and his home are the sum of hundreds of courtships and conceptions, choices and chances, errors and hopes. We like to imagine that we are unique, absolutely unprecedented. But here is the truth: not just the tilt of our noses or the color of our bodies, but far more intimate characteristics–the shape of our feet or an inner tendency towards joy or sadness–have belonged to other people before we came along to inherit them. We came about because they decided to marry one person and not the other, to have six children instead of three, to move to a city instead of staying on the farm. It is remarkable to think of someone walking down the streets of sixteenth-century Amsterdam with my fingers and kneecaps, my tendency toward melancholy and my aptitude for music. We live within a web of holy obligation. We are connected to people of the world today, and to other invisible people: the unknown number of generations yet to be born. One of the most important things we can do, in the way we care for the earth and in the way we care for our local church life, is to recognize their potential presence. (pp.117-118)

Let me return from history and draw my conclusion. What all this means to us at the present time is this: Our system has already passed its flowering. Some time ago it reached that summit of blessedness which the mysterious game of world history sometimes allows to things beautiful and desirable in themselves. We are on the downward slope. Our course may possible stretch out for a very long time, but in any case nothing finer, ore beautiful, and more desirable than what we have already had can henceforth be expected. The road leads downhill. Historically we are, I believe, ripe for dismantling. And there is no doubt that such will be our fate, not today or tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow. I do not draw this conclusion from any excessively moralistic estimate of our accomplishments and our abilities: I draw it far more from the movements which I see already on the way in the outside world. Critical times are approaching; the omens can be sensed everywhere; the world is once again about to shift its center of gravity. Displacements of power are in the offing. They will not take place without war and violence. From the Far East comes a threat not only to peace, but to life and liberty. Even if our country remains politically neutral, even if our whole nation unanimously abides by tradition (which is not the case) and attempts to remain faithful to Castalian ideals, that will be in vain. Some of our representatives in Parliament are already saying that Castalia is a rather expensive luxury for our country. The country may very soon be forced into a serious rearmament - armaments for defensive purposes only, of course - and great economies will be necessary. In spite of the government's benevolent disposition towards us, much of the economizing will strike us directly. We are proud that our Order and the cultural continuity it provides have cost the country as little as they have. In comparison with other ages, especially the early period of the Feuilletonistic Age with its lavishly endowed universities, its innumerable consultants and opulent institutes, this toll is really not large. It is infinitesimal compared with the sums consumed for war and armaments during the Century of Wars. But before too long this kind of armament may once again be the supreme necessity; the generals will again dominate Parliament; and if the people are confronted with the choice of sacrificing Castalia or exposing themselves to the danger of war and destruction, we know how they will choose. Undoubtedly a bellicose ideology will burgeon. The rash of propaganda will affect youth in particular. Then scholars and scholarship, Latin and mathematics, education and culture, will be considered worth their salt only to the extent that they can serve the ends of war.

[I]n the years that followed the persecutions, Christianity came to see itself, with great pride, as a persecuted Church. Its greatest heroes were not those who did good deeds but those who died in the most painful way. If you were willing to die an excruciating end in the arena then, whatever your previous holiness or lack thereof, you went straight to heaven: martyrdom wiped out all sins on the point of death. As well as getting there faster, martyrs enjoyed preferential terms in paradise, getting to wear the much-desired martyr’s crown. Tempting celestial terms were offered: it was said that the scripture promised ‘multiplication, even to a hundred times, of brothers, children, parents, land and homes’. Precisely how this celestial sum had been calculated is not clear but the general principle was: those who died early, publicly and painfully would be best rewarded. In many of the martyr tales the driving force is less that the Romans want to kill – and more that the Christians want to die. Why wouldn’t they? Paradoxically, martyrdom held considerable benefits for those willing to take it on. One was its egalitarian entry qualifications. As George Bernard Shaw acidly observed over a millennium later, martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability. More than that, in a socially and sexually unequal era it was a way in which women and even slaves might shine. Unlike most positions of power in the highly socially stratified late Roman Empire, this was a glory that was open to all, regardless of rank, education, wealth or sex. The sociologist Rodney Stark has pointed out that – provided you believe in its promised rewards – martyrdom is a perfectly rational choice. A martyr could begin the day of their death as one of the lowliest people in the empire and end it as one of the most exalted in heaven. So tempting were these rewards that pious Christians born outside times of persecution were wont to express disappointment at being denied the opportunity of an agonizing death. When the later Emperor Julian pointedly avoided executing Christians in his reign, one Christian writer far from being grateful, sourly recorded that Julian had ‘begrudged the honour of martyrdom to our combatants’.

In the end, we march along a path drawn by our own moral compass. The sum total of our life experiences guides us in a way our conscious minds could never decipher. We make choices without realizing why and trigger events we never foresee. And always we rationalize who we are and why we act the way we do.

suffered greater wetland loss than watersheds with smaller surrounding populations. Most watersheds have suffered no or only very modest losses (less than 3 percent during the decade in question), and few watersheds have suffered more than a 4 percent loss. The distribution is thus heavily skewed toward watersheds with little wetland losses (that is, to the left) and is clearly not normally distributed.6 To increase normality, the variable is transformed by twice taking the square root, x.25. The transformed variable is then normally distributed: the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic is 0.82 (p = .51 > .05). The variable also appears visually normal for each of the population subgroups. There are four population groups, designed to ensure an adequate number of observations in each. Boxplot analysis of the transformed variable indicates four large and three small outliers (not shown). Examination suggests that these are plausible and representative values, which are therefore retained. Later, however, we will examine the effect of these seven observations on the robustness of statistical results. Descriptive analysis of the variables is shown in Table 13.1. Generally, large populations tend to have larger average wetland losses, but the standard deviations are large relative to (the difference between) these means, raising considerable question as to whether these differences are indeed statistically significant. Also, the untransformed variable shows that the mean wetland loss is less among watersheds with “Medium I” populations than in those with “Small” populations (1.77 versus 2.52). The transformed variable shows the opposite order (1.06 versus 0.97). Further investigation shows this to be the effect of the three small outliers and two large outliers on the calculation of the mean of the untransformed variable in the “Small” group. Variable transformation minimizes this effect. These outliers also increase the standard deviation of the “Small” group. Using ANOVA, we find that the transformed variable has unequal variances across the four groups (Levene’s statistic = 2.83, p = .41 < .05). Visual inspection, shown in Figure 13.2, indicates that differences are not substantial for observations within the group interquartile ranges, the areas indicated by the boxes. The differences seem mostly caused by observations located in the whiskers of the “Small” group, which include the five outliers mentioned earlier. (The other two outliers remain outliers and are shown.) For now, we conclude that no substantial differences in variances exist, but we later test the robustness of this conclusion with consideration of these observations (see Figure 13.2). Table 13.1 Variable Transformation We now proceed with the ANOVA analysis. First, Table 13.2 shows that the global F-test statistic is 2.91, p = .038 < .05. Thus, at least one pair of means is significantly different. (The term sum of squares is explained in note 1.) Getting Started Try ANOVA on some data of your choice. Second, which pairs are significantly different? We use the Bonferroni post-hoc test because relatively few comparisons are made (there are only four groups). The computer-generated results (not shown in Table 13.2) indicate that the only significant difference concerns the means of the “Small” and “Large” groups. This difference (1.26 - 0.97 = 0.29 [of transformed values]) is significant at the 5 percent level (p = .028). The Tukey and Scheffe tests lead to the same conclusion (respectively, p = .024 and .044). (It should be noted that post-hoc tests also exist for when equal variances are not assumed. In our example, these tests lead to the same result.7) This result is consistent with a visual reexamination of Figure 13.2, which shows that differences between group means are indeed small. The Tukey and

We are the sum of our choices.

Today is the sum of all the choices we made in our yesterdays. Choose wisely, for a secure, happy, and meaningful tomorrow.

We are a sum of our choices. We are not our single choices.

It was my turn to speak. I told the stories of a few of the men we had come to honor. “Our history has always been the sum total of the choices made and the actions taken by each individual man and woman,” I concluded. “It has always been up to us.” Turning back to look at the old men sitting behind me on the stage, I believed this to be true.

Good or bad, right or wrong, destiny is the sum of all our choices, decisions, actions and inaction.

While this book is a kind of technical manual, it’s also an artist’s handbook. Meditation is the art of fully conscious living. What we make of our life—the sum total of thoughts, emotions, words, and actions that fill the brief interval between birth and death—is our one great creative masterpiece. The beauty and significance of a life well lived consists not in the works we leave behind, or in what history has to say about us. It comes from the quality of conscious experience that infuses our every waking moment, and from the impact we have on others. “Know thyself” is the advice of sages. To live life consciously and creatively as a work of art, we need to understand the raw material we have to work with. This is nothing other than the continuously unfolding stream of conscious experience that is our life. Whether we’re awake or dreaming, this stream consists of sensations, thoughts, emotions, and the choices we make in response to them. That is our personal reality. The art and science of meditation helps us live a more fulfilling life, because it gives us the tools we need to examine and work with our conscious experience.

We are all more than just our bodies, but also our thoughts, emotions, and spirituality, which combine to determine our health.” “Our bodies have a natural wisdom with intrinsic knowledge of how to grow, heal, balance, and regenerate.” “We have the ability to change our own genetic blueprints for ourselves and for our children.” “Your body is more than the sum of its parts; it has an energy, or life force, that goes beyond the mere physical nature of your body or your generation.” “Human health is intricately and inextricably connected to planetary health.” “Water is the life source and most essential component of each cell of your body.” “Learn to live in the moment and tune in to mindful breathing while engaging all of your senses to soak in the universe around you.” “Healthy sleep habits will help you learn faster, get stronger and more fit, and protect yourself from diseases.” “Spiritual awakening is important for the state of consciousness with which you meet the world.” “If you don’t make self-care a priority in your life, you will pay a high price as your health declines.” “Balance is not something you are born with, nor is it something you find. Rather, it is something you must create” “If your body is balanced, your mind will be at peace and your spirit will soar!” “Resilience to injury is not an inborn trait; it must be nurtured and acquired.” “Excessive fear of injury takes away the joy of living.” “Allow nature to nurture a child’s backbone, literally and figuratively.” “Dig deep and find the foundation of your own core to prepare you for all adversity, sustain your health and wellness through all your endeavors, and build the home of your dreams for your mind-body-spirit.” “The shared challenges of despair, hardship, and adversity promote collaboration, and collaboration fortifies the collective consciousness of the international community.” “Learn to live your life from your core, and harness and embrace your unlimited potential for strength, health, and growth.” “Hang loose and fly like a butterfly to withstand all the perturbations and punches life brings your way.” “Get back in touch with your primitive animal spirit and pop some pandiculation into your day” “Cultivating body awareness will help you stand taller, look slimmer, and find your grace against gravity.” “Exercise, outlook, diet, and lifestyle choices actually change the way your DNA is expressed within your body to help you avoid injury, fight disease, and thrive.” “When you substitute negative beliefs with positive ones, you will begin to notice positive results.” “Find what floats your boat and enjoy the journey!” “Do not fear the storm, for you will learn to sail your ship through wind and wave.

Empathy isn't just something that happens to us -- a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain -- it's also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It's made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should, or because it's asked for, but this doesn't make our caring hollow. The act of choosing simply means we've committed ourselves to a set of behaviors greater than the sum of our individual inclinations: "I will listen to his sadness, even when I'm deep in my own." To say "going through the motions" -- this isn't a reduction so much as acknowledgement of effort -- the labor, the "motions," the dance -- of getting inside another person's state of heart of mind.

A well-documented phenomenon in the field of group psychology indicates how members of a group, even one weakly affiliated, will make nonrational choices and tolerate inferior outcomes in the service of the emotional satisfaction that results from “winning” against the opposing group. Furthermore, in any zero-sum setting, individuals in each group develop feelings of prejudice and anger toward the out-group, as well as pride and loyalty toward in-group members.

If we are not made with a specific purpose prior to being, we create our purpose through our being. In other words, only through the choices we make and the actions we take in life, can we create who we are and what life means. “Man,” Sartre said, “is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is, therefore, nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.” The by-product of this; of life’s inherent meaninglessness; is an inherent freedom. A freedom to choose who we are, how we live, and what matters to us. And here we experience the next rung of our existential problem; the anxiety or anguish of choice. With essentially an infinite potential number of choices and a combination of choices for how to live and think and be, the anxiety of choosing properly can be rather heavy. Ironically, though, the choice we make here in reaction to the anxiety of choice is perhaps the most important choice of all. The easier, knee-jerk response to the anxiety of choice is simply not choosing. To mindlessly assimilate popular, common templates and ideas of life, following standard routes of belief and purpose laid forth for us, and deflecting nearly all the responsibility of choice onto others and the circumstances of our life. However, Sartre referred to this as bad faith. A form of lying to our self and denying our basic freedom. A short-term attempt to dampen the anxiety of being, that in turn costs the potential loss of our true self and true sense of the world. Even choosing to not choose is still a choice. There is no escaping the requirements of choice. Choice can only be minimized to choosing or not choosing. And this is perhaps the fundamental existential choice. To choose or not to choose. For in this choice, one either harnesses the anguish of human freedom or relinquishes it. Either builds a life of intention or lives a life of complacency.

Attention is a yin to the yang in focus. Attention (mindfulness) and attention (focus) work together to provide a true, rounded experience of both being centered on the task at hand (whatever it may be), as well as being fully aware of, and responsive to, the many facets of the moment in which you are. In most forms of meditation you must demonstrate a certain level of concentration as well as free mind. What You’ll Get Out of It You must expand your mind and embrace the fullness of the moment in which you are. We might compare our sensitivity to light: When we concentrate on something, we could say we're "shining a spotlight" about it. Instead of shining a spotlight on one particular thing, as we exercise transparent consciousness, we may suggest that we encourage our awareness to "shine" in every direction around us, like the glow of a candle flame. This light of consciousness surrounding us will be referred to as our area of knowledge. The response area is the total sum of all the sensory input. The practice of open consciousness is an experiment of encouraging the senses to feel the fullness of the present moment, being mindful of even the subtleties you would usually forget, neglect or completely miss, such as the warmth of the air around you or the occasional crackling of floorboards. When we just accept and allow things to be as they are, we disengage instinctively from the urges that would try to control or change things. In passivity or indifference, this isn't a custom–quite the contrary. This is an exercise of opening your mind and encouraging you to obtain all the knowledge you can potentially before you make any moves or take any action. Remember that the term makes. We don't push ourselves to pick up on sensory input; perception simply grows from a state of quiet, comfortable allowing. We have a biological tendency to "brace for impact" when we are resistant to something that is happening, which means we withdraw and tighten up the muscles in our body. The subconscious then automatically begins to think all the way things could or ought to be different from what they are. When we're open to something, we seem to be more enthusiastic about the unexpected, and even more willing to embrace, leaving the body more at ease. It helps us to be more open to learning what we're doing and to learn. With an open mind we strive to see more options on issues and multiple perspectives. Open Awareness Meditation will strengthen the ability to see things as they really are and embrace them for what they are. By practicing Open Awareness Meditation, you will cultivate: Discernment Open Awareness Meditation allows us to better appreciate the moment we are at. The more we know the more educated our choices can be in any situation. Through cultivating conscious awareness, we develop discernment by being more sensitive to the larger picture, and how it is connected to the present moment.

Our history has always been the sum total of the choices made and the actions taken by each individual man and woman,

How the slightest change of plans, or a different decision in the moment, and I would be someone else. But we are the sum total of our choices,

from the postscript: The commentators who scream against allowing in refugees, the same talking heads who think the horrifyingly inhumane treatment of migrants at our border with Mexico is justified, buy into a deeply ingrained American myth- that there are always "winners" and "losers." That war is a zero-sum game. That extending a helping hand to a displaced individual somehow means that somewhere, some American is getting less. But that binary is a lie. Here's a truth: Giving aid and comfort to a displaced person doesn't mean we can't also help Americans in need. We can and must do both. We have choices to make. Important ones. About our future. About who we are as a nation, as a people, and as human beings. One of these choices is to live in a world where we call "alternative facts" what they really, truly are--lies that obfuscate, deceits that give cover to injustice, tools of cynical politicians. I'm asking us to speak tough truths out loud. To know we can do better and be better. I'm asking us to step forward, to face the truth of all we are, lanterns held high, illuminating the dark.

Stuff you knew before the decision: The sum of your knowledge and beliefs at the time of the decision. For our purposes here, specifically the stuff you brought to bear on making the decision. Stuff you know after the outcome: This includes all the stuff you knew before the decision and new stuff that you learned after making the decision. For our purposes here, we’re focusing on new information that revealed itself after the future unfolded however it did. Using a Knowledge Tracker reduces hindsight bias by clarifying what you did and didn’t know at the time of the decision. Detailing what you knew and when you knew it helps prevent stuff that revealed itself after the fact from reflexively creeping into the before-the-fact box.

The self is a story that we tell ourselves. There is no threshold that makes us greater than the sum of our parts, no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can’t define consciousness because consciousness does not exist. Humans fancy that there’s something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet we live in loops as tight and as closed as the hosts do, seldom questioning our choices, content, for the most part, to be told what to do next. - Westworld

The sum total of our life experiences guides us in a way our conscious minds could never decipher. We make choices without realizing why and trigger events we never foresee. And always we rationalize who we are and why we act the way we do.

To be free requires that we are not marionettes whose strings are pulled by physical law. Whether the laws are deterministic (as in classical physics) or probabilistic (as in quantum physics) is of deep significance to how reality evolves and to the kinds of predictions science can make. But for assessing free will, the distinction is irrelevant. If the fundamental laws can continually churn, never grinding to a halt for lack of human input and applying all the same even if particles happen to inhabit bodies and brains, then there is no place for free will. Indeed, as is affirmed by every scientific experiment and observation ever conducted, long before we humans came on the scene the laws ruled without interruption; after we arrived, they continued to rule without interruption. To sum up: We are physical beings made of large collections of particles governed by nature’s laws. Everything we do and everything we think amounts to motions of those particles. Shake my hand and particles constituting your hand push up and down against those constituting mine. Say hello, and particles constituting your vocal cords jostle particles of air in your throat, setting off a chain reaction of colliding particles that ripples through the air, knocking into the particles constituting my eardrums, setting off a surge of yet other particles in my head, which is how I manage to hear what you’re saying. Particles in my brain respond to the stimuli, yielding the thought that’s a strong grip, and sending signals carried by other particles to those in my arm, which drive my hand to move in tandem with yours. And since all observations, experiments, and valid theories confirm that particle motion is fully controlled by mathematical rules, we can no more intercede in this lawful progression of particles than we can change the value of pi. Our choices seem free because we do not witness nature’s laws acting in their most fundamental guise; our senses do not reveal the operation of nature’s laws in the world of particles. Our senses and our reasoning focus on everyday human scales and actions: we think about the future, compare courses of action, and weigh possibilities. As a result, when our particles do act, it seems to us that their collective behaviors emerge from our autonomous choices. However, if we had the superhuman vision invoked earlier and were able to analyze everyday reality at the level of its fundamental constituents, we would recognize that our thoughts and behaviors amount to complex processes of shifting particles that yield a powerful sense of free will but are fully governed by physical law.

Our history has always been the sum total of the choices made and the actions taken by each individual man and woman. It has always been up to us.

If you combined two questions. What is the ultimate meaning of everything? With, What is everything? So far, what we know as 'everything', is the universe. The purpose of the universe and everything in it, is to expand and accumulate growth. That which is bigger, attract and consume that which is smaller. Our galaxy contain solarsystems, our solarsystem contain planets, our planet contain countries, countries contain societies, societies contain families, families contain individuals, individuals have bodies containing atoms. Our bodies need to consume food and water in order to expand, the individual need another individual to form a family, a family need other families in order to form a society, a country need societies in order to form a country, a planet need countries in order to form a planet (False), a solarsystem need planets in order to form a solarsystem, galaxies need solarsystems in order to form a galaxy, universes need galaxies to form a universe (also false, unless you insist that in order for something to exist, there must first be something else, able to recognize its existance). Just as a tree expands its roots and its canopy, so does everything else. So, now we know the ultimate meaning of things. What is the meaning of human life? The answer is simple, to improve, to expand. Expand and improve our abilities, our bodies, our minds, our relationships, our home, our society, our country, our planet, our galaxy, our universe. When multiple entities seek to expand, there is often conflict, however there is also hope for a long lasting co-existance. To avoid conflict, expand, but in your own space. just as each planet around a star, given their own space, exist in perfect harmony. The universe will always throw rocks at you, and the occasional galaxy will seek to collide with yours. Just as with any conflict you have three choices, embrace, resist or walk away. To sum it up, seek expansion, seek your own space and seek solutions to any problem that comes your way.

If you combined two questions. What is the ultimate meaning of everything? With, What is everything? So far, what we know as 'everything', is the universe. The purpose of the universe and everything in it, is to expand and accumulate growth. That which is bigger, attract and consume that which is smaller. Our galaxy contain solarsystems, our solarsystem contain planets, our planet contain countries, countries contain societies, societies contain families, families contain individuals, individuals have bodies containing atoms. Our bodies need to consume food and water in order to expand, the individual need another individual to form a family, a family need other families in order to form a society, a country need societies in order to form a country, a planet need countries in order to form a planet (False), a solarsystem need planets in order to form a solarsystem, galaxies need solarsystems in order to form a galaxy, universes need galaxies to form a universe (also false, unless you insist that in order for something to exist, there must first be something else, able to recognize its existance). Just as a tree expands its roots and its canopy, so does everything else. So, now we know the ultimate meaning of things. But what is the meaning of human life? The answer is simple, to improve, to expand. Expand and improve our abilities, our bodies, our minds, our relationships, our home, our society, our country, our planet, our galaxy, our universe. When multiple entities seek to expand, there is often conflict, however there is also hope for a long lasting co-existance. To avoid conflict, expand, but in your own space. just as each planet around a star, given their own space, exist in perfect harmony. The universe will always throw rocks at you, and the occasional galaxy will seek to collide with yours. Just as with any conflict you have three choices, embrace, resist or walk away. To sum it up, seek expansion, seek your own space and seek solutions to any problem that comes your way.

Perhaps the decisions we agonize over are, in fact, predetermined—the sums of a million individual cellular choices. Our conscious minds assume that we are in control, but often the role of consciousness is simply to justify and explain decisions over which it has no control. Are consciousness and reason just things evolution trumped up to keep us from going insane, a Matrix-style fantasy world that keeps us from recognizing the horrific reality that we have no agency and all the perseverating we do over choices is really just rationalization to convince ourselves that we have free will? Or, to flip the comparison around, could an ant colony develop consciousness? Feelings? Spirituality? Crumble some pecan sandies on a note-card with your daughter and eventually you end up grappling with the basic tenets of philosophy. These are the questions that arise if you spend enough time staring at ants.

I think of all the nights I lay in bed, wondering what it might be like if things were different, if I hadn’t taken the branch in the road that made me a father and mediocre physics professor instead of a luminary in my field. I suppose it all comes down to wanting what I didn’t have. What I perceived might have been mine through a different set of choices. But the truth is, I did make those different choices. Because I am not just me. My understanding of identity has been shattered—I am one facet of an infinitely faceted being called Jason Dessen who has made every possible choice and lived every life imaginable. I can’t help thinking that we’re more than the sum total of our choices, that all the paths we might have taken factor somehow into the math of our identity. But none of the other Jasons matter. I don’t want their lives. I want mine. Because as fucked as everything is, there is no place I’d rather be than with this Daniela, this Charlie. If one tiny thing were different, they wouldn’t be the people I love.

Why were you given a choice between bad and worse in the presidential election? I’ll tell you why. Our system is broken. Elections are broken, because of our corrupt campaign finance system, which undermines our democracy, and which allows corporations and billionaires to pour in huge sums of money to elect the candidates of their choice.

The meaning of life if perhaps one of the most important questions we would ever have to ask ourselves. To understand life's meaning, we must first understand what life is or putting it in another way, "Why we are here". To be candid, the no brainer answer to why we are here is that we are here because our parents gave birth to us. Yet somehow that answer doesn't seem to satisfy so many of us otherwise we wouldn't be asking this question in the first place. Well I believe we are here because we have been given the gift of life. And for an undetermined amount of time, we must explore this gift by journeying through the various choices we will have to make. As life unfolds before us, we are constantly confronted with new knowledge which may either reinforce our preconcieved notions or expose them for what they are by making new choices. That is to each choice we make affirms our understanding of life and with understanding we find purpose for the life we choose to live. This way, people may find purpose in having a job or an education, keeping friends, starting a family, or even serving God and Country. It is the sum of these purposes that gives life its meaning. That means the meaning of life is different for everyone. Amongst the things that give my life meaning is the love I have for my family, duty to my friends, my resolve to stand up for what is right and the courage to accept my regrets knowing I will live each day trying to correcting them. For as long as we have life to live, there will always be new things to learn and therefore new choices to make. That is to say the sum of the consequences of a purpose driven life is what expresses the meaning of the life we live.

Empathy isn't just something that happens to us- a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain- it's also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It's made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should, or because it's asked for, but this doesn't make our caring hollow. The act of choosing simply means we've committed ourselves to a set of behaviors greater than the sum of individual inclinations: I will listen to his sadness, even when I'm deep in my own. To say going through the motions- this isn't reduction so much as acknowledgement of effort- the labor, the motions, the dance- of getting inside another person's state of heart or mind. This confession of effort chafes against the notion that empathy should always rise unbidden, that genuine means the same things as unwilled, that intentionality is the enemy of love. But I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for better ones.

In people’s perceptions of money, as surely as in their perception of light and sound and the weather and everything else under the sun, what mattered was not the absolute levels but changes. People making choices, especially choices between gambles for small sums of money, made them in terms of gains and losses; they weren’t thinking about absolute levels. “I came back to Amos with that question, expecting that he would explain it to me,” Danny recalled. “Instead Amos says, ‘You’re right.

For what is the environmental crisis, if not a crisis of the way we live? The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us... If the environmental crisis is ultimately a crisis of character, as Wendell Berry told us way back in the 1970's, then sooner or later it will have to be addressed at that level- at home, as it were. In our yards and kitchens and minds.

Thoreau could speculate that even a slight shift in natural processes—a little colder winter, a little higher flood—might put an end to humanity, so dependent are we on a wild nature that gives us no guarantees. Hence he emphasized living "deliberately"; that is, living so as to perceive and weigh the moral consequence of our choices. "Civil Disobedience" insists that the choices we make create our environment, both political and natural—all the choices, even the least and most seemingly trivial. The sum of those choices is weighed on the scales of the planet itself, a planet that is, like Walden Pond, sensitive and alive, quick to measure the least change and register it in sound and form. To Thoreau this was cause for tremendous optimism: as the village expanded and the old trees fell, he planted new ones and reveled in the young forest. If the English settlers had wiped out many of New England's animals—beaver, wolf, bear and cougar, moose and deer, wild turkey—still there was much remaining, enough to assure him the wild was everywhere, ready to reseed and reclaim what it had lost. His last, unfinished works, Wild Fruits and The Dispersion of Seeds, emphasize how the smallest of seeds, let loose on the winds or carried by the least of beings, could transform the world. All humans need to do is learn to work with instead of against the vital currents of life. The Books Thoreau didn't live to finish are about building a community of life, and he died in the faith his words, like seeds, would take root and grow. Exactly insofar as we, today, share his belief in the future of life and act on it, will he continue to speak to us.

Good nutrition and regular exercise combine to offer more health per person than the sum of each part alone. We also know that physical activity has an effect on emotional and mental well-being. Much has been said about the effect physical activity has on various chemicals in our bodies, which in tum affect our moods and our concentration. And experiencing the rewards of feeling better emotionally and being more mentally alert provides the confidence and motivation to treat ourselves to optimal nutrition, which reinforces the entire cycle. Those who feel good about themselves are more likely to respect their health by practicing good nutrition. John Robbins has done more than any other person to bring this issue to the front of American consciousness, and I strongly recommend reading his most recent book, The Food Revolution. Our food choices have an incredible impact not only on our metabolism, but also on the initiation, promotion and even reversal of disease, on our energy; on our physical activity, on our emotional and mental well-being and on our world environment. All of these seemingly separate spheres are intimately interconnected. I have mentioned the wisdom of nature at various points in this book, and I have come to see the power of the workings of the natural world. It is a wondrous web of health, from molecules, to people, to other animals, to forests, to oceans, to the air we breathe. This is nature at work, from the microscopic to the macroscopic.

We have forgotten that courage is a choice, and that permission to move forward with boldness is never given by the fearful masses. Most have forgotten that seeking change always requires a touch of insanity. If taking action before the perfect conditions arise, or before we receive permission, is unreasonable or reckless, then we must be unreasonable and reckless. We must remember we are not the sum of our intentions but of our actions.

Technology has given us independence—freedom from hassles and wires and other people’s choices—and more efficient lives, but it has largely broken its promise to give us freedom with one another to build big things together. Summing up 1989 until now, one could say we are, at our worst, “bowling alone, together.” Never have we been so connectable and never have we felt so disconnected

We are nonetheless faced daily with our own imperative to choose. Should we act or should we hang back and observe? Calmly accept whatever comes our way, or doggedly pursue the goals we have set for ourselves? We measure our lives using different markers: years, major events, achievements. We can also measure them by the choices we make, the sum total of which has brought us to wherever and whoever we are today. Choice is an enormously powerful force, an essential determinant of how we live.

OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM has been rigged, from the drafting of the Constitution onward, chiefly to diminish Black political participation. This flawed system has also limited the choices and voices of poorer white Americans and thwarted working-class coalitions that could have made economic and social life richer for all. A genuine, truly representative democracy is still an aspiration in America, but the vision of it has propelled waves of communities to claim a right from which they were excluded in our founding slavocracy.

racial polarization of our two-party system has forced a choice between class interest and perceived racial interest, and in every presidential election since the Civil Rights Act, the majority of white people chose the party of their race. That choice keeps a conservative faction in power that blocks progress on the modest economic agenda they could support.

Modern economics, by which I mean the style of economics taught and practised in today's leading universities, likes to start the enquiries from the ground up: from individuals, through the household, village, district, state, country, to the whole world. In various degrees, the millions of individual decisions shape the eventualities people face; as both theory, common sense, and evidence tell us that there are enormous numbers of consequences of what we all do. Some of these consequences have been intended, but many are unintended. There is, however, a feedback, in that those consequences in turn go to shape what people subsequently can do and choose to do. When Becky's family drive their cars or use electricity, or when Desta's family create compost or burn wood for cooking, they add to global carbon emissions. Their contributions are no doubt negligible, but the millions of such tiny contributions sum to a sizeable amount, having consequences that people everywhere are likely to experience in different ways. It can be that the feedbacks are positive, so that the whole contribution is greater than the sum of the parts. Strikingly, unintended consequences can include emergent features, such as market prices, at which the demand for goods more or less equals their supply. Earlier, I gave a description of Becky's and Desta's lives. Understanding their lives involves a lot more; it requires analysis, which usually calls for further description. To conduct an analysis, we need first of all to identify the material prospects the girls' households face - now and in the future, under uncertain contingencies. Second, we need to uncover the character of their choices and the pathways by which the choices made by millions of households like Becky's and Desta's go to produce the prospects they all face. Third, and relatedly, we need to uncover the pathways by which the families came to inherit their current circumstances. These amount to a tall, even forbidding, order. Moreover, there is a thought that can haunt us: since everything probably affects everything else, how can we ever make sense of the social world? If we are weighed down by that worry, though, we won't ever make progress. Every discipline that I am familiar with draws caricatures of the world in order to make sense of it. The modern economist does this by building models, which are deliberately stripped down representations of the phenomena out there. When I say 'stripped down', I really mean stripped down. It isn't uncommon among us economists to focus on one or two causal factors, exclude everything else, hoping that this will enable us to understand how just those aspects of reality work and interact. The economist John Maynard Keynes described our subject thus: 'Economics is a science of thinking in terms of models joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant to the contemporary world.

The hero, however, is always willing to see where his decisions may lead him. To sum up the hero's journey in the Tarot so far, we can say that, armed with a now superior knowledge of the nature of life and its tests, we may face resistance to personal growth and change in the form of new perspectives, the need to destroy the past, to exercise self-control and repel temptation. It's easy for most of us to be seduced by the bad choices these cards represent because these debilitating options are designed by the universe to undermine our resolve, and arrest our development. To truly change we need to stand up to 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' and literally metamorphose through a symbolic death and rebirth to acquire the resulting alteration to our consciousness. And from there, the world becomes our oyster.

In the end, out life is simply the sum of all our consequences from the sum of all our choices.

secrecy that eventually landed him in jail? We are not just the sum total of everything that has happened to us, but also a testament to the way we have interpreted all that has crossed our path. The music of chance intersecting with the maddening complexities of choice – and how, in the wake of bad judgment and self-sabotage, we so often rewrite the scenario to create one that we can live with.

Maybe all we are is the sum of our choices, each one leading us down a different path, each with its own unique outcome. The notion that each decision holds that much power is overwhelming, and I squeeze my eyes shut to shake the thought away.

Freedom is a blessing and a curse. People of all nations treasure the notion of personal liberty, but freedom creates the coincident anxiety of choosing how a person should live. If I desire to find personal happiness, I need to understand what happiness is and learn how to rid myself of unhappiness. Is happiness an endurable material or is it comprised of no more than a string of good fortune? Is the good luck that brings happiness a fortunate happenstance that may evaporate at any moment? Do we measure happiness in the present? Alternatively, is happiness determinable only when looking at the sum and substance of a person’s total life? Is the game of life ultimately a losing proposition for all persons, and if so, is happiness even achievable or is it a form of an illusion? Is happiness simply a temporary mental reprieve from an inevitable period of suffering that serves as a prelude to our final dance with death? Is happiness a matter of quality of life or quantity, i.e. longevity? Can we measure happiness objectively? Alternatively, should we subjectively compute our scale of happiness?

We have been taught that our societies are built on rational contracts and our economies on free markets. That manufacturers and consumers, employers and employees – everything – are one and the same consciousness in different forms. Different expressions of one and the same reasoning. The world, the impersonal sum of the individual’s free choices. Actually, society is more like a form of war. It’s exploitative, racist and patriarchal. The economic reality is more ‘the survival of the fittest’, the rich grow richer and the rest of us chase after them. On some level, we know this. But still we continue to fantasize. For centuries we have been fed stories about how society arose because people made a rational decision to unite. After establishing that we would all benefit from a collaborative structure, we started to depend on each other. No sooner, no later. This creation myth is told in countless variations, and like most other myths, it’s a mind game. It’s hard to imagine it really happened this way: there we were sat hunched over in our caves. Darkness, cold, other squatting figures in other caves, impossible to determine who was friend, foe, human or mammoth. Suddenly, one person stands and exclaims: – Hey, listen up! Why don’t we join forces and help each other as part of a society? We can trade things with each other, everyone will benefit from that! Hardly. But that’s our fantasy of self-sufficiency. And it’s seductive.

In people’s perceptions of money, as surely as in their perception of light and sound and the weather and everything else under the sun, what mattered was not the absolute levels but changes. People making choices, especially choices between gambles for small sums of money, made them in terms of gains and losses; they weren’t thinking about absolute levels.