Ever do or something and then immediately regret it? Or how many of us can say that we were so stupid when we look back on our teen years and remember something of our not so finest moments. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the present us could go back and talk to the past us and warn them of their own stupidity? Imagine where we would be if we knew then what we know now! It would almost be a perfect world…but would we ever learn our lesson? Sure a lot of terrible or embarrassing catastrophes would be avoided, we wouldn’t have worn that dress or dated that one guy, but what would become of the personality? Could we grow as individuals? Would we loose the expression the “wise old man”? Perhaps it is better to live and learn.
In Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World, Ono makes a series of what one might call poor decisions and, like most of us, he looks back with regret with a familiar attitude of “it was so simple, why didn’t I see it in the first place!?” Like most of us, when Ono makes, what he believes to be, the right decision then it turns out to be a very bad decision, he displays hindsight bias. Unfortunately Ono makes several important choices with his career that lead to very ill-fated outcomes.
Firstly, Ono decides that his talents are better put to use in the political world. So he puts away his geishas and brings out his war brushes. Now, in his defense, Ono is only doing what he thinks he can to support his country and rally the men to war, after all is it really all that uncommon for men to want to contribute their specials skills to help their beloved country in times of uncertainty? Having decided to cut his ties to the “floating world” of art, a man named Matsuda tells Ono of how the government is trying to “wake up artists and introduce them to the real world” (172). This speech, and a brief tour of some of the more ghetto parts of town, is the final straw in convincing Ono that his path lies with politics. Later he will look back and blame himself for helping to send many men to their unnecessary deaths. With his decision comes power and influence Ono could not have possible foreseen.
This power is displayed when one of Ono’s students is taken, arrested, beaten, and changed forever at Ono’s simple mention that someone ought to give Kuroda a “talking-to for his own good’” (183). He completely takes the blame for the harassment of his student and the suffering of Kuroda’s family and continues to blame himself for it years later. However, how was he supposed to know the “Committee of Unpatriotic Activities” would take him so seriously (183)? Hopefully from this incident Ono learned to be a bit more discrete with whom he decided to share his thoughts and opinions with.
Trying to end on a more optimistic note, hopefully Ono, along with the rest of us, can recover from past mistakes and use the lessons that they teach us to avoid making similar mistakes in the future. Is Ono a better man for making mistakes? It really depends on whether or not he can learn from them. Personally, I think Ono still pities himself too much to really take any lessons away from his mistakes. He can’t understand that at the time of the decision he made it with all the best intentions to help his country in it’s time of need. Looking back of course he is going to see the error of his ways, the trick is learning from his mistakes. So far he seems incapable of doing so. This is unfortunate because what good are mistakes if you can’t pick yourself up and learn from them? Sure it might seem really bad at the time, and maybe for a while after that, but living in the past and blaming yourself never made anything better.
So I implore you, be sad for a while if you must, but if nothing else in your hours of constantly replaying those tragic crossroads in your mind, take notes of what you did wrong and decide how next time you can be ready to face a similar problem and over come it. Do not be blinded by the hindsight bias, sulking never made anything better and it certainly doesn’t help you learn life lessons and become a better person.
2 comments on Blinded by the Light....of Hindsight?
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I agree with U. I think that learning from previous mistakes is very important to people grown up. Therefore, to regret makes your situation not to improve. It is sometimes important to regret things. However, you should also learn things from regression. For sure.