Everything is arbitrary

There’s a philosophical insight which I find exceptionally useful in a huge variety of scenarios. It helps me understand other points of view, catch myself thinking irrationally, and find equanimity with things that might otherwise cause me a great deal of frustration.

I drove to my farm house once and saw a wombat crossing the road. As I came past the next day, I saw the same wombat dead on the verge, a road kill victim. A week later, it was significantly destroyed, presumably picked apart by magpies. A few weeks after that, it was significantly decomposed. A few months after that, it was a bare skeleton. Six months later, there were some scattered bones. A year later, there was nothing but dirt remaining.

As I watched this collection of atoms go from “wombat” to “not a wombat”, I had the slow dawning realisation that there was no distinct moment where the universe changed the definition.

The shift from wombat → not-a-wombat was a slow-moving process, and each of the descriptions and boundaries of the phases was applied completely arbitrarily, by me.

I had the realisation that everything is arbitrary.

A pile of mechanical components isn’t a car. Bricks, pine, and plasterboard are just building materials...

The point at which the parts become a car is arbitrary. The point at which the materials become a house is arbitrary. The Ship of Theseus thought experiment explores this realisation.

It's useful to realise that basically all of your beliefs are points on a spectrum that you reached by some arbitrary decision or another. It's useful to know that's true of others, too.

Americans that say they are "against gun control" because they have a "right to bear arms" are actually strongly in favour of gun control. I’ve never met one that thought you should be able to buy a nuclear weapon at Target.

My own beliefs about how humans should limit their impact on the "natural world" are completely arbitrary... as products of nature, everything we do is natural by some definition.

There’s a spectrum from natural → unnatural

From food → not food

From toy → tool → weapon

From bicycle → scooter → motorbike → motortrike → car

From right → wrong

From idea → ideal → human right

Even the point at which a collection of atoms becomes a person is arbitrary. Zoom in far enough on the boundary of your skin with the rest of the universe and you’ll see the distinction is extremely fuzzy. There’s nowhere in the universe which is “you”.

I think’s it’s useful to believe there’s a spectrum across physical space that goes from “less you” to “more you” and back to “less you” again on the far side. (If you strongly believe that everything inside your skin-sack is 100% definitely you, I invite you to carefully consider that belief next time you’re in the process of taking a shit).

Whenever I’m feeling strongly attached to a belief, I find it useful to check in on whatever arbitrary conditions are actings as axioms that underpin that belief.