Don't walk through the fire! Walk through the fire!

alkjash writes about how following the rule ‘walk through the fire’ pretty much always makes one weaker if followed, so you should not follow it.

Isusr writes about how following the rule ‘walk through the fire’ can pretty consistently make one stronger if followed, so [given some preconditions, writes Isusr] you maybe should follow it.

This reads on the face of it like a deontic dilemma. Not all deontic-dilemmas-as-parsed-by-humans, just like not all questions-about-matters-of-fact-as-parsed-by-humans, can be dissolved. But I think this one can.

Don’t walk-through-the-fire as a rule.

Walk through the fire in the sense that if you see a Fire that it looks like ‘OH imma need to walk through that fire’, WALK THROUGH IT.

In school, my brain was trained to associate [not-walking-through whatever flaming hoops those Evil Teachers laid out before me [homework, after-school activities, doublethink]] with the immediate feedback of Teacher disapproval, which triggered guilt. So my brain got in the habit of automatically walking-through-the-fire. You see something painful that it looks like you might feel guilty if you don’t do? Do it. Don’t ask questions about how it will help you. Ha ha. The Evil Teachers are in control. And the rule worked, back then, because they were.

Later, I got free of the teachers. I realized that the person I had been, following that rule, was insane. I learned to love-things, care-about-things, reach-for-things, independently of whatever anybody else thinks about me. [I still faceplant a lot, but less than I did. Tsuyoku naritai.] And it is in this place, psychologically, that I can rationally apply a Walk-Through-Fire rule—by noticing when it feels like a certain Something will be painful, and yet it is something-to-be-done. To these Fires, I strive to give my brain the rule “Oh, that’s a fire? WALK THROUGH IT.” Scheduling an oil change, and giving friends tough news, have been Fires.

At the beginning of Atlas Shrugged, Eddie Willers is returning to his job at the subtly decaying Taggart Transcontinental.

“No, thought Eddie Willers, there was nothing disturbing in the sight of the city. It looked as it had always looked. He walked on, reminding himself that he was late in returning to the office. He did not like the task which he had to perform on his return, but it had to be done. So he did not attempt to delay it, but made himself walk faster.”

Should Eddie Willers have walked through that fire? I don’t know. Whether Eddie Willers knew better, only he can say.

Don’t walk through the fire! Walk through the fire!