How to Make a Good Decision: Six Ways of Seeing

Whether to take a job. What to buy. Which school. Whether to launch a product. We make decisions all day, and most of them run through the same three questions, often without our noticing. Do I like it? Is it good for me? What will I gain?

Those are real questions. But Madhyasth Darshan points out that they are only half of the questions a human being can ask, and the half that keeps changing. This post sets out all six, and a way to use them.

This may sound like saying liking, health and money don’t matter. They do. The point is that they can’t be the whole decision, because they change, while justice, resolution and truth don’t.

Six ways of seeing

In Manav Vyavahar Darshan (मानव व्यवहार दर्शन), Shri A. Nagraj says that all human behaviour can be seen through six views. Each is measured against something different:

• Liking or disliking (प्रिय-अप्रिय), measured against the senses. Does it please me?
• Benefit or harm (हित-अहित), measured against the body. Is it good for my health?
• Profit or loss (लाभ-अलाभ), measured against things and services. What do I give, and what do I get?
• Justice or injustice (न्याय-अन्याय), measured against behaviour, our relationships. Does it fulfil what my relationships ask, so that both sides are satisfied?
• Resolution or its absence (धर्म-अधर्म), measured against clarity. Does it resolve things, or create new problems?
• Truth or untruth (सत्य-असत्य), measured against experience of how things actually are. Does it fit reality?

The book adds a pointed observation. Behaviour guided only by the first three views is what it calls inhuman. Behaviour guided by justice, resolution and truth is humane.

Three views that change, three that don’t

Later in the same book, the six are divided in a second way. Liking, benefit and profit are changing views (अनित्य दृष्टि). What I like today I may not like next year. What is good for my body at twenty may not be at sixty. What is profitable this season may be a loss the next. Justice, resolution and truth are unchanging views (नित्य दृष्टि). What is fair between two people stays fair. What resolves a problem stays resolved. What is true stays true.

And the book says plainly what follows: decisions made on the changing views inevitably bring agitation. They have to be remade every time the mood, the body or the market shifts.

The book makes a matching distinction about satisfaction. Satisfaction of the senses is momentary. Satisfaction of the intellect lasts longer. Satisfaction from experience of how things really are is permanent.

“A decision made on what changes has to be remade every time things change.”

How to use the six

Here is a way of using the six views that we find helpful. It isn’t a procedure from the book.

1. Write down the options. Two or three real choices, not one choice and “don’t”.

2. Ask the unchanging questions first. For each option: Is it just, does everyone it affects end up satisfied? Does it resolve the problem, or create a new one somewhere else? Does it fit how things actually are: the body’s needs, the family’s real enough, the way nature renews?

3. Set aside any option that fails. If an option is unfair to someone, or solves one problem by creating another, or depends on something untrue, no amount of liking, benefit or profit will make it a good decision. It will only make it a tempting one.

4. Let the changing questions choose among what remains. Now ask: which do I like best, which is healthiest, which costs least for what it gives? Here these questions are exactly the right ones. They choose well among good options. They just can’t tell good options from bad ones.

An example

A small food business is deciding how to pack its products. Option A is cheap plastic. Option B is paper. Option C is reusable jars that customers return.

Justice: who else is affected? The customers, who pay for disposal; the neighbours near the waste dump; the people who come after. Plastic passes its costs to all of them. Resolution: does it solve the packing problem without creating a new one? Plastic creates a waste problem elsewhere. Truth: does it fit how nature works? Plastic doesn’t return to the soil. Option A is set aside.

Paper and jars have effects of their own, depending on where they come from, how far they travel, how they are washed, how often a jar really comes back and how well each protects the food. Comparing them properly means looking at those, and some uncertainty will remain. Between them, the changing views decide: which do customers like, which keeps the food fresh and safe, which can the business afford? Either may be a good decision. Neither will have to be regretted if rules on plastic tighten. We look at decisions like this in How to Decide What to Produce.

And the planet?

A great deal of the damage done to the earth comes from decisions made on liking, benefit and profit alone. Each one may be reasonable on its own terms. But none of those three views can see the soil, the river or the next generation. Justice includes everyone a decision affects, resolution refuses to move a problem somewhere else, and truth asks whether a decision fits how nature actually works. Together, they bring the earth into every decision without anyone having to remember to. We look at what that means for taking from the earth in How Much Should We Take from the Earth?

And our happiness?

Many of our regrets are decisions made on a changing view that later changed: a purchase we stopped liking, a job taken only for the pay, an argument won at the cost of a relationship. Decisions that pass justice, resolution and truth rarely need regretting, because those don’t change. That steadiness is close to what Madhyasth Darshan means by a resolved present, and we look at it in How to Make Happiness Last.

A protocol to try

Take one decision you are facing this week, large or small. Write six lines, one for each way of seeing: liking (does it please me?), benefit (is it good for my health?), profit (what do I give, and what do I get?), justice (is it fair to everyone it affects?), resolution (does it solve the problem without creating a new one?) and truth (does it fit how things actually are?). If no option passes all six, note which line you are choosing to give way on, and why.

Notice which lines were easy to fill and which you had never thought to ask. Then make the decision, and notice whether it feels different.

Limitations

• The book calls conduct guided only by the first three views “inhuman”. That is a strong word. We read it as a description of a way of deciding, not a judgement of people.
• Our English words for the last three views, justice, resolution and truth, are approximations. We use “resolution” for dharma (धर्म), which means much more in Madhyasth Darshan than any single English word.
• The truth view, seeing how things actually are, depends on understanding that Madhyasth Darshan says comes through study. It isn’t available instantly just by asking the question.
• Putting the last three first and letting the first three choose is our own way of using the views. We haven’t yet tested it widely.

References

1. Shri A. Nagraj, Manav Vyavahar Darshan (मानव व्यवहार दर्शन), p. 24 (three kinds of satisfaction: of the senses, the intellect and experience), p. 25 (the six ways of seeing and what each is measured against), p. 71 (conduct guided by justice, thinking by resolution, experience by truth), p. 112 (changing and unchanging views)
2. Madhyasth Darshan Paribhasha Sanhita, समाधान (resolution), p. 188; न्याय (justice), p. 103