What Defines a Person? Part 1

It's an easy answer I suppose. Most people that I have talked to, have said their actions. I think that this is a good starting point to be sure. I think there is more to it though. Just leaving it there and not exploring further seems like just accepting the easy answer. Though there is a reason why the Mark Twain Quote "Actions speak louder than words, but not nearly as often," has caught on as a popular saying. After all, talk is cheap. But isn't talking an action. The word "speak" is a verb, and a verb is used to describe an action. This is in the very least a good example of the precedent that some actions, have more value associated with them, than others. Possibly even so on a basis of effort put in. It takes more effort to bake a cake, than to buy one from the store. This also seems to establish that people associate words, at a low value, and nearly everything else, at some value higher.

The Scale

Values

Well, we have some sort of scale that we place the value of actions upon. For the purposes of right now lets make it a normalized axis from 0 to 1.0 where 0 is a meaningless action, that has very little weight on how it defines us as a person, and one it is something that is fundamental to defining a person. At this point in time I am not going to worry about the difference between good and bad. So, as of right now, a good action and a bad action that have the same impact on how we define ourselves, would have the same value. For example, if we defined telling someone they had something in their teeth, as .1, and if we defined littering a piece of paper as a -.1, then as of right now, they both have the same value of .1, while in reality they do have different values.

What is the scale a measure of?

It is also important to understand what the scale is a measure of. Is it a measure of the action's impact? Is it a measure of effort put into the action? Differing answers to What is the scale actually measuring results in entirely different organization of the scale of actions. Does intention have a factor in an action's value at all? If so, how much? If my intentions are purely good, but a horrible result happens, does it wash out? The path to hell is paved with good intentions after all. This dear reader, is where I must start making decisions that you might disagree with, though I encourage creating your own metrics for measuring actions, and applying them to the scale. I feel that the most interesting scale is a measure of the impact the actions had on the greater scheme of things. I say greater scheme though we certainly have a locus of control, most of us do not have an impact on the greater scheme. The majority of our actions only effect those near us, while for others, their decisions can and do affect the greater scheme. So take this as a part of the normalization of the scale. That a 1 on the scale, represents the maximum one might reach on their own respective schema that they can reach. If their reach is millions of people, then a 1 is them affecting all of them. While if their reach is only 1 then it is them affecting that 1 person. This might have some side effects that I am not aware of at this point in time. Hopefully it does not alter this scale in weird ways though.

Basics

Well, I suppose the next part is to break down the basics of what an action is. An action can be broken down into three parts. Intent, Execution, Result. All actions start with an intent, I intend to get to the door. Then comes the execution of the action, I walk to the door. And finally, the result of the action, I am now at the door.

Intent

What does Intent have on the impact of the action? This is what we are measuring actions by on our scale after all. Well, it affects what actions we are willing to choose. If my objective is to get to a place. It does not make sense that I would take an action that does not in some way, forward that goal. This gets a little trickier, the more complicated we make the situation, and inter-layering goals. I intend to win the game. Then I must put multiple goals into action at the same time and execute in such a way, that I am advancing as many goals as I can at the same time in order to achieve the proper result. Though, Intent is useful in pruning options of actions that we may take, it has little affect on the results of the actions we have chosen to take. So, this is still a worthy thing of discussing, in terms of what defines a person, but currently we are focused on a scale that sorts actions on it, which it seems to have little to do with. I am realizing that this is going to be a very long entry...

Execution

What does execution have on the impact of the action? Well a lot. A poor execution of a good Idea, can lead to a bad result. A result, that could have a greater negative impact, than the positive impact if it was executed perfectly. These variations, also have no consistent way of determining the result based on how well the action was executed. This is the basic premise of "The Butterfly Effect" where a butterfly flapping its wings could cause a typhoon. If I drop a knife that I was trying to hand to someone, because they needed it to cut some fruit (good intent), but I drop it (bad execution), a multitude of results could happen, from them or me having a knife in their foot (bad result), or it just hitting the result (neutral result). Now we might say that this example, with the bad result has a decent impact, but does not define who you are as a person. Well, a one time event sure, it doesn't define who you are, but if you consistently are unable to complete the task, then it starts having an impact on who you are as a person. This also implies that a certain amount of what defines us as people is competency in the actions we take. Such as checking the stage lights on a set, one of them falls landing on someone, it would be called a freak accident. As it is an unlikely result to occur from a task. The execution, though may not be the person checking the light's fault, was poor. And a poor result happened from it. Now this starts happening multiple times, even if it is just random chance, people are going to start associating that person with something bad. But to say that the action of checking the stage lights is always bad based on these result, would be foolish, as the result is unlikely. Thus, an action is in a kind of superposition, where until it is preformed, the result is not chosen and we cannot assign a guaranteed placement for an action on the scale. What about things like attempted murder? That is to say, if someone attempted to kill someone and fail. The intent, is bad, the execution is poor, and the result is good (no one died). Does that make this a good action? Certainly not. Maybe even saying that the result is good is a mistake, on the scale I am tempted to say that the value should be near 0, as in this example nothing had changed, except for maybe the perpetrator possibly going to jail. This is just to say that under the current guidelines a poor execution does not guarantee a good nor bad outcome

Results

So, what do the results of an action have on the impact of that action? Well, I would say all of it. If me giving a pizza to 2 people, then that action has an impact on at least 2 people. This seems to be the basis of the scale that we are looking at. While, intent is how we choose possible actions that we take, and execution give a pool of results that an action could have. The result is what this scale actually measures.

Since this is taking longer than expected. I am just posting this as of right now. I will come back to this at a future point in time. But a lot happened in my life and it is now April 1st. I will probably come back and fill this out to have been finished with the scale. But I will create a later post in order to expand on this topic in the future.h1>What defines a person?