Dear Readers, FC 150 was well received. Thank you all for that. There were a few interesting comments:
Tarun says: “Interesting and entertaining Pras! Over the past 38 years of married life, I have got better at making universal, all-encompassing statements minimising the strawman argument exposure. Success rate up from 0 to 1… I am clutching onto straws!! One thing is for sure, plastic straws need to be banned!”
Karthik says: “Many congratulations on completing yet another milestone!! 150 articles done and yet you made it look so easy!! You are becoming an RK Laxman in your own right!! In the corporate world, we use the term straw man for a draft presentation or proposal. Something that can be built upon or fine-tuned into a full presentation. Here's to many more straws as you approach a double hundred!!”
Krupa Murthy says: “I am baffled as to what levels of scholarship you reach to make your writings reach the summit and make it interesting to the ordinary and the intellectual, the stray and the ‘strawlwart’ (pun intended!) Have a pun weekend”
Rita Kapur comments: “Nice article….informative, funny and started my day with a smile.”
💭 Intentions & Pretensions
Each one of us is guided by different intentions at different points in our daily life. Intentions can be either bad or good. Bona fide intentions or mala fide intentions. Some intentions are also characterised as noble or honourable. ‘Intention’ is a state of mind. It represents a person’s desire to do or achieve something. If odds are stacked against it or if the person is a man of straw, the intention remains unrealised.
An intention remains in one’s realm of contemplation if it is not backed up by action. It then becomes an aspiration or desire. One can mistake intention to mean wishful thinking. The two are different. ‘Intention’ is backed by a desire, but wishful thinking is akin to daydreaming or fantasising. ‘Intention’ is not about past events but is about events ahead. Wishful thinking could be about the past and the future as well.
If a person intending to become a doctor studies hard, his intention is backed up by action. If that person fooled himself into believing that if he studied before the exams he could get grades to become a doctor, that would be wishful thinking that is unlikely to be a reality. Like we all know, it is wishful thinking if we hoped to see a corruption-free administration.
Whilst ‘intention’ is a mere state of mind, ‘intentionally’ is a depiction of reality. If I have the intention to create a problem for someone and if I did so, I can be accused of creating the problem intentionally. Somehow, the word ‘intentionally’ gets associated with unpleasant things.
One could be saying “I intentionally did not help him” but not be heard saying “I intentionally helped him”. It may be better to say “I helped him with good intentions” but then it seems to carry a note of regret as if helping him lead to some inconvenience or disappointment. Intentional, as an adjective, relates to something done deliberately. Intentionally relates to something done on purpose or wantonly.
Noble Intentions are founded on the belief that people are inherently good and even if they do something detrimental, they do so out of ignorance or being unaware of the consequences of their actions. If you gave a lift to someone and if that person is injured in an accident, not caused by your fault, your intentions remain noble and the accident does not alter that noble intent. You help extinguish a fire in an artist’s studio and in the process some of their works are damaged by the water you used. The collateral damage can be justified by the action taken.
There’s a movie by the name Noble Intentions. It is about a teenage boy who reluctantly turns to the streets to earn $6,000 a month for his mother's cancer medicine and quickly learns that street money doesn't come easy. When a family friend makes him a syndicate boss, jealousy and greed immediately turn his crew against him. With pressure mounting from all sides, he must choose between saving his mother’s life and saving his own. You can watch the trailer 🔗here.
Permit me to digress a bit into the legal terminology mens rea which is about the intent when a crime is committed. Take for example the famous Sec. 420 of the Indian Penal Code. We are all too familiar with the number 420 which is used to call someone a cheat. The person accused of cheating should be shown to have dishonest intentions to deceive. If such intention is lacking, the crime does not get established. This is what happened in the case of dishonoured cheques. Imagine X borrowed money from Y and gave a post-dated cheque, and if that cheque got dishonoured for want of funds. It could be difficult to accuse X of cheating Y and file a case unless it could be proved that X intended to cheat Y. Of course, this is now remedied by enacting Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, which prescribes a time-bound procedure for prosecuting people who dishonour cheques and fail to pay within the stipulated period. I wrote in one of my earliest posts about this. Please take time out to read 🔗https://mrprasanna.substack.com/p/filter-coffee-018
There are ‘good intentions’ and ‘bad intentions’. What separates good from bad is morality. The good or bad effect of an intention is a reflection of the outcome of an action. Take, for example, the advance medical directive (living will) by a patient that he should not be put on a life support system but should be allowed to die. A doctor may consider it immoral (or against his principles, even if laws permitted it) to follow that directive. Another doctor may consider it to be the right course as it would put an end to the suffering of a terminally ill patient writhing in agony. In reality, therefore, the implementation of the directive is dependent on whether the doctor considers it to be a morally permissible act. This leads to the inference that intentions are relatable to the moral value of the person and not of his action. If you are keen to know more about the advance medical directive please read 🔗Explained| Supreme Court’s order modifying guidelines given in 2018 Euthanasia Judgment | SCC Blog
I was unaware of the difference between intension & intention. Of course, they are, homophones, i.e. similar phonetically. But the meanings differ. Intention is a state of mind while intension is the opposite of extension, representing properties that are inherent in a concept, word or logic. If you think of a motor vehicle its ‘intension’ is that it is a vehicle for conveyance, but its extensions can be a car, a bus or a truck.
Pretensions are a manifestation of an intention which is insincere or make believe. In our daily life, we go through pretensions without being aware of it. Faced with someone’s pretension you can forebear or be polite. If someone met you for the first time and told you that he is very pleased to meet you, he is being polite. You might also respond: “likewise”, even if the chances of both of you meeting again are not in either’s contemplation.
If someone is holding forth on a topic which does not interest you, chances are that you pretend to be a keen listener out of politeness or if you have no choice. Pretension is not bad unless it is coupled with deception or misleading. A person can pretend to be a banker to extract information from you. One has to be careful not to fall prey to such pretensions motivated by dishonest intentions or ulterior motives.
It is interesting to know that pretension has an external dimension and is not an inherent characteristic of the pretender. A person can pretend in multiple ways. In the office, I can pretend to be working hard. At home, I can pretend to be very tired. As I watch TV, I can pretend to listen to my kid sharing a school experience. Pretensions have many colours and hues. But, I believe, behind each pretension there is an intention prompting the pretence.
In a lighter vein:
When I told my friend that I intend giving up drinking, he exclaimed “That’s the spirit” and put paid to my intention.
There once was a man who loved puns. They were his favourite kind of humour, and he would often spend time trying to come up with new ones. One morning he was feeling particularly inspired and thought up ten brand-new puns. And so he went about his day intending to use his new puns to get a laugh from his friends, but unfortunately, no pun in ten did.
Dear Readers, I am sure many of you have something to write about or share something of interest. Please feel free to mail me at mrprasanna@gmail.com, and I will be happy to include your post in FC as a guest-post!
Until next week, stay safe. Ciao.
We judge others by their action alone ; and we judge ourselves by our intention alone - I don’t know who said this, but find this to be so true!
All terms very simple defined. It's an art for sure. Thnx