How should we proceed, then, especially if we want to make a rational decision?
I was trained as an economist at the University of Chicago. We were taught that economics is the guide to making rational choices in life. We were taught that everything has a price; everything involves giving up something to have something else. Nothing is of infinite value. But as I’ve studied the lives of some of history’s great thinkers, I have come to believe that when it comes to the big decisions of life, those principles can lead us astray.
Take Darwin’s list. At first glance, making a list of pluses and minuses seems like a rational approach for dealing with any problem, wild or tame. The technique is probably as old as Eve in the garden facing the wild problem of whether to eat that fruit. (Minuses: It will annoy the Head Gardener, ignorance is bliss, gaining knowledge may come with unexpected downsides. Pluses: Snake seems like a pleasant fellow, forbidden fruit is sweetest, and so on.) But as we’ll see, the cost-benefit list that Darwin constructed is less helpful than it might appear. Let’s take a look at part of it:
Marry
Children — (if it please God) — constant companion (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one — object to be beloved & played with — better than a dog anyhow — home & someone to take care of house — charms of music & female chitchat — these things good for one’s health — forced to visit & receive relations but terrible loss of time.
Not marry
No children (no second life), no one to care for one in old age. — What is the use of working without sympathy from near & dear friends — who are near & dear friends to the old, except relatives
Freedom to go where one liked — choice of society & little of it — conversation of clever men at clubs — not forced to visit relatives & to bend in every trifle — to have the expense & anxiety of children — perhaps quarelling — loss of time — cannot read in the evenings — fatness & idleness — anxiety & responsibility — less money for books &c — if many children forced to gain one’s bread — (but then it is very bad for ones health to work too much)
Perhaps my wife wont like London, then the sentence is banishment & degradation into indolent, idle fool
Darwin managed to come up with more minuses than pluses if he married. Though he didn’t write it down explicitly, it’s pretty clear what he considered the biggest minus: If he married, he’d have less time for his scientific research and be less productive. He might not become a great scientist. Staying single seemed to be the rational option.
Darwin desperately wanted to know if he would like marriage more than staying single. But his list tells us more about Darwin than it does about marriage. His list of pluses and minuses — especially the pluses — is the list that someone would make who has never been married and has no access to the upside of the inner life of a married man. Darwin’s ignorance is part of the reason his negatives about marriage (Banishment! Degradation! Idle fool!) are so emphatic and his positives are so mild (female chitchat). His cluelessness helps us see just how hard it is to make what looks like a rational decision.
And notice that there’s little in Darwin’s list about devotion to another human being or love or the pleasures and pains of cleaving to another person, ideally for life. Nothing about the pleasure of making someone else happy, nothing about the opportunity to soothe his spouse’s sorrows. It’s all about him, which makes sense; he’d never had a partner. How would he know about the power of a shared life?