"Why can't he just choose to change his patterns?"

Somebody said this to us last night apropos of a close friend who engaged in what appears to be really stupid, self-destructive behavior, over and over again. She seemed to think that it was as simple as choosing what to have for dinner; if not that simple, it was as simple as quitting smoking.

But I think "choosing to X" in these three cases (patterns, smoking, and dinner) is completely different. Choosing what to have for dinner is easy and really is a discrete choice with so few entailments and ramifications that it is easy to understand (maybe using a Kahneman etc framework for determining the preference structure, etc). Choosing to quit smoking (or, say, doing heroin) is as easy to *choose* as dinner insofar as it is easy to name and conceptualize, but such a choice involves huge ramifications and readjustments and thus is quite tricky.

As far as choosing to change patterns - can one even make a "choice" about such a diffuse thing? Perhaps to make a choice one has to be able to objectify through language a bunch of options, each of which has a label? (Note that one can start to act differently without making such an explicit choice, so I am not talking about all possible actions, just a certain type of action.) Choosing a new referential whole means thematizing the referential whole as a whole. This thematization might be possible with the modern novel (!), but it is very, very difficult.


Random thought on the future and Dasein and LH in my fieldsite: if we classify all the transition reasons, 80% or so them are forward looking -- in order to get married, etc. I am sure a few people might say "in order to get away from blah", but that is both rare and evidence of a big problem in a person's life. Even if it is true, I don't think my interviewees often put their decision in terms of ending something. Interesting.