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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Excellence requires intentional effort on our part

Donald Clegg The Spokesman-Review

I have a couple of questions about the nature of excellence.

Can one excel without knowing that one excels?

Or, let me try it this way: Is excellence, by definition, intentional?

I disliked the movie “Forrest Gump,” not only for well and truly butchering Winston Groom’s fine satirical novel, but also for its hackneyed portrayal of likable idiot as moral exemplar.

Never mind the whole vengeful God thing – Jenny dying, most likely of AIDS, because of her sinful past.

Tom Hanks’ Forrest always does the right thing, is a war hero, pingpong whiz, and a heck of a good shrimper.

But the fact is that he’s a clueless moron, and is simply lucky: The right things just happen to him, without his intention.

Moral philosophers and their kin, especially in the legal world, ascribe a world of meaning and significance to the difference between intentional and accidental behavior, as well they should. Negligent homicide, for instance, is quite a ways removed from murder in the first.

Intentionality is key, so let’s use this same criterion in looking at excellence.

Developmental psychologist Bertram Malle and a couple of his colleagues from the University of Oregon have done some interesting recent research into intentionality. They give it these five components:

“An action is considered intentional if the agent has (a) a desire for an outcome, (b) a belief that the action will lead to the outcome, (c) an intention to perform the action, (d) skill to perform the action, and (e) awareness while performing it.”

I think that’s a pretty nifty framework, all the nicer for being backed up by empirical data, and so, as usual, I’ll be glad to steal it for my own purposes. (When it’s golden, take it, and then make it your own.)

Let’s look at Forrest again, using Malle’s skeleton, taking it as a given, just for the moment, that excellence is intentional.

I’ll give him a pass on the first two, desire and belief. Intention? I don’t think so. There’s an awful lot of “it just seemed like the thing to do” in his actions, implying that events just transpired without his involvement, so to speak.

Skill’s an interesting one, as Forrest turns out to be a savant at the pingpong table. He doesn’t intend to be a good player; he just is.

Finally, awareness, without which no action is fully intentional.

Let’s say I go to bed harboring severe animosity toward my neighbor, who’s just been driving me crazy. I have a desire to kill her, belief that a gun will do the job and an intention to shoot her, though I haven’t worked out the details, and I don’t think it’ll take much skill to pull the trigger.

So I go over, in the middle of the night, and do the deed. However, I’m sleepwalking when the homicide takes place. Did I commit murder? Not a chance.

Here’s how Malle put it to participants in the study: “They decided to do something and then did it with full awareness of what they were doing.”

And Forrest isn’t in the least fully aware of what he’s up to. Still, he behaves as a “good” person. So, is he?

Awareness is key to the whole issue, and there’s nothing in the world that a casual observer can do to decide the issue, as intentionality and awareness are not readily viewable from the exterior.

I hold that any positive outcome without intention and awareness is just plain dumb luck. But, unfortunately, we may not always be able to tell the difference.

Skip Forrest Gump. Watch “Being There,” with Peter Sellers’ Chauncey Gardener as the moron about to become president. (DéjÀ vu, I know.)

The Good and the Excellent don’t just happen. You have to work at them.

This is, of course, a facet of my humanistic stance toward life. It’s part of my answer to folks who tell me that a lack of belief in God somehow severs all moral bonds.

It’s the opposite, actually, as knowing that this life is all I have is a powerful reason for making it a good one.

People are people, some good, some rotten to the core. Faith in God is no more guarantee of moral behavior than belief in the Tooth Fairy.

Neither, of course, is my lack of belief.

But when I foul up, I know whom to blame – not whom to expect to give me a “Get Out of Jail Free” card, just because I ask.