The Report on the Screen

A man sits at his computer with a report on the screen. His manager wants him to recalculate one of the metrics on a different basis. On the new basis the number looks good, and so will his review at year’s end. Only, changing the basis would cover up a problem another team is in the middle of producing. The report goes only to management; that team will not see it. The problem will surface on its own next quarter.

He knows this. He also knows that if he does not change the basis and hands the report in as it is, his own year will be a hard one.

He has to decide. This series is about someone standing exactly there. It does not choose for him. It describes the position itself: what kind of place it is, and what a person standing in it is actually doing. What it wants to answer, in this first essay, is one question: when a person decides something, what is it that he does?

The answer turns out to be a pattern of sentences, and every later essay speaks in it. So it is worth building carefully.

Not-Doing

The first thing he gets clear is this: he will not change that number.

To see what that step is, first see what it is not. It is not that he first set himself a goal called honesty and then derived from it that the number must stay. He did no such derivation. He saw the thing and knew he would not do it. The goal only became sayable afterwards: if someone asked him why, he might say honesty, or might not be able to say, or might give a reason he himself would find wrong the next day. The reason can be misstated. The line was really drawn.

That is the first thing a person who lives by his own law does: he negates doing something. Call it not-doing. And what gets struck out is not always an act. Before I will not change the number there was an earlier stroke: he does not regard that team as people it is fine to keep in the dark. That strikes out a way of regarding people, not an action. The two strokes sit at two levels, and the difference will matter.

Not-doing is not passivity. A person leaves undone far more than he ever does, and almost all of it he never thought about — that is not not-doing, that is simply nothing happening. Not-doing is thought about. Something comes in front of you and you strike it out. Striking out is an act. Nobody sees it and no report records it, and it is the very first thing he did in this matter.

Nor is not-doing the same as not-allowed. Not-allowed is what someone else, or an institution, says to me. Not-doing is what I say to myself. When the rules forbid something and I also do not do it, that is two things lying on top of each other, not one. Withdraw the rule and the not-doing is still there.

Cannot-Not-Doing

He leaves the number alone. And then he notices a second thing. The team still will not see the report; their problem will still surface on its own next quarter. He could simply not change the number, say nothing, hand the report in, and let others find out or not. Nothing forbids that. He sits there and finds he cannot do it. He cannot not tell the people on that team.

That is the second thing: he negates not doing something. Call it cannot-not-doing. The phrase needs to be said exactly. Nobody is forcing him — his manager wants the opposite. Nor is conscience forcing him, if conscience means something standing outside him. It is his own law speaking: in this position, not telling has been struck out; and with not-telling struck out, telling has become something he cannot not do.

Here is the place most easily misread in the whole series. It is tempting to think: strike out everything you cannot do, and what remains is what you must do. Try it on the report and it fails at once. He struck out change the number. What remained was not go and tell the team; what remained was a wide field — say nothing, resign, talk to the manager once more, send an anonymous note. Striking one thing out does not turn another thing into a cannot-not. Cannot-not-doing is a separate stroke. It is a second act, not the remainder of the first.

Sometimes two such strokes collide. Suppose telling the team would get the young colleague who produced the first draft, on the manager’s instructions, pushed forward to take the blame — and he equally cannot not shield her. Both are his own. This time only one can go first.

Where does shield her come from? Not from some value he once signed up to — he need never have owned a line like don’t let juniors take the fall. It stands on three things: the fact that she really would be pushed forward; his position, in which he does not regard her as someone who may carry another’s blame — the same level as not regarding the team as fine to keep in the dark; and his judgment this time that he can protect her. While all three hold, the line holds. Change one — the manager relents — and the line changes with it.

He picks one. The line he did not take is not thereby cancelled: its conditions are still there — she could still be pushed forward — so it is still in his name. And he does not use I had no choice to countersign it away, as though it never mattered. Which one goes first this time is his judgment. Whether the other still stands depends on its own conditions. Those are two different things.

Three Kinds of What Is Left

After two strokes, the report looks like this in his hands: change the number — struck out; not tell the team — struck out. What is left? Things unrelated to the matter were never in this judgment and do not count. What is left comes in three kinds.

One kind is open either way, and he has already judged it so. Tell them face to face or by email; whom to tell first; whether to offer the manager a wording both sides can live with. None of these is struck out and none is made a cannot-not. This stretch is where his freedom lives. Most of the difference between people shows up here: the same refusal to change the number, the same cannot-not about telling — and the telling can look entirely different, because here judgment and a person’s own sense of style do the choosing.

One kind he is still weighing. Tell them today, or after the report is in? Too early and the report may be pulled back for rework and the team still won’t see it; too late and the team loses more days. This is already in his consideration; it is simply not decided. It is not a remainder. It is still inside this judgment, waiting for him.

And one kind this judgment did not handle at all. For instance: does he want to stay at this company? It bears on the report — the report is what brought it in front of him. But this judgment neither struck it out, nor made it a cannot-not, nor put it on the scale. The framework calls this a remainder: something that bears on what this judgment is doing, and lies outside what it handles this time.

Left is exactly the word. He need not decide today whether to resign. He also cannot pretend the question is not there, and still less treat it as settled because he did not settle it today. It may come back to him in a while, and then it will be another judgment. The remainder of one judgment is often the starting point of the next.

One more thing has to be pinned down here. A remainder gives possibility, not a push. Should I stay? sitting there will not push him toward resigning, nor toward staying. Only his own judgment and choice push him. There is no motor in this framework called a remainder.

Why Cannot-Not, and Not Ought

Someone may ask him: what makes you say you cannot not tell that team? The series does not answer with ought, and the reason is not squeamishness. Ought is the grammar of a command, issued to a person from outside — and even when the one issuing it is his own reason, the sentence still has the shape of a command. I ought has a further weakness: a rule poured in from outside can be spoken in exactly the same words. The phrase cannot tell the difference.

Cannot-not does not issue a command. It says that, in this position, something cannot be cancelled. That is closer to his own law. It does not guarantee that the thing really comes from him — how colonisation is recognised is the business of the next two essays. And what cannot be cancelled comes in two layers.

One layer is how people are regarded. He does not regard that team as fine to keep in the dark; anyone standing in this position cannot cancel that. It is shared because everyone standing here has acknowledged that people are ends. Where judgments can meet across persons, it is mostly in matters of how people are regarded.

The other layer is what to do this time. Going to tell the team is his judgment — from his own law, from the facts, from timing, from whether there is another way. This layer can be questioned: he cannot fend off why? with because that is my judgment. It can be revised: if he learns the team already knows, telling them is no longer a cannot-not. It can be blocked: his manager gets to him first, or he falls ill. Two people who both treat people as ends can judge this layer quite differently — another might go to the manager first rather than to the team — and that does not show either has left the position.

And he can leave. He can, in this one matter, leave the position: for the sake of his own year, regard that team as fine to keep in the dark, change the number, say nothing. If he really does, the series does not judge him; in this matter that cannot-not is simply no longer his. Leaving goes item by item — leaving here does not make him, from now on, someone who does not treat people as ends. Only one thing is blocked: saying I treat people as ends and that team can be kept in the dark at the same time. Not because anyone forbids it, but because the two sentences cannot sit in one person.

Who Draws the Line

Every stroke above was his. Who tells him where to draw? No rule can. Applying a rule to the thing in front of you is a step no further rule can supply; any set of rules meant to replace judgment still needs someone to decide whether this case fits. Rules, facts, reasons and feelings all come in as material. Applying, weighing and taking the result up can only be done by the one who judges. That is all judgment means here — not a special cleverness, but the capacity to strike out, to make a cannot-not, and to leave the rest standing.

He has something to go on: the sense that doing a thing sits smoothly, or sits wrong. Changing the basis sat wrong with him; not changing it and going to tell them sat right, even though the consequence would hurt. That gives his judgment a direction — a place to turn round and ask: is this my own law unfolding, or is some other measure deciding for me? It is only a clue. What you are used to also feels smooth; anything new feels awkward. The feeling can be trained crooked by habit; it proves nothing about where a thing comes from; and it can never be used to judge anyone else.

And he can judge wrong. Perhaps that team knew already. That kind of error can be checked now — look at their recent records. He can also be caught out by a question: a colleague asks whether he is going to tell them for their sake or to feel all right himself, and in answering he finds he has not thought it through. Checking facts and being asked are the two correction points available on the spot. Another kind of error cannot be checked now — mistaking some unease from elsewhere for his own law. That waits for looking back, which is the third essay.

He decides: today, before he leaves, in person. He had a heap of reasons — the team’s trouble gets worse the later it is found; his own review; the junior colleague; the report is due today; the honesty he took on long ago. The reasons did not produce the action. The same reasons could support telling today or after the report, in person or by email. They are also not measurable on one scale: the team’s loss, his review, her risk, today versus tomorrow come from different sources and involve different people, and cannot be converted into one number to see which is biggest. He still compares — which risk is greater, when is better, whether he can manage it. But the comparing happens inside this one matter, and when it is done the line is still his to draw.

That is the pattern the rest of the series speaks in. Not-doing. Cannot-not-doing. Open either way. Still weighing. Remainder. It does not say he judged right. It does not say everything he drew came from his own law — that is the third essay. It does not say that drawing it means he will manage to carry it out — that is the fourth. It gives no method for deciding. It gives a way of seeing what one is doing.