advice

A bad paraphrase of Sartre: you are always solely responsible for your own decisions. Even if you ask someone's advice, planning to do what they say without condition or qualification, who you choose to ask is in some sense based on your knowledge of them as a person, and what you think they'll say. Example (his): you can't decide whether to collaborate with Vichy France or join the Resistance. You don't know what to do, you're not sure who you can confide in, so you decide you'll ask your priest, and do whatever he tells you you should do. Except that the priest already has some kind of side in the debate--some priests were collaborators, some resisted, and so on--and so no priest can provide an "objective" decision. Though the priest may choose for you whether to collaborate or resist, you have already chosen whose authority you will defer to, and so have already made up your mind.

My interpretation: when asking someone for advice or giving advice to another person, there is never just an objective problem, but also the subject position of the advice-giver. Remember that nobody, no matter how good a friend, can give you objective advice, and remember that the advice you give anybody will be boxed-in by your own subjectivity, so please by all means acknowledge your limitations before advising.

The reason I bring this up is because I was recently asked for advice by a friend. It was advice about something pretty serious, like a course-of-beginning-of-adulthood decision, and there definitely wasn't any clear-cut answer. Of course, being a sensible person, this friend had asked other people besides me for advice, and in the course of our discussion, the opinion of a mutual friend, "X" (to avoid ambiguity with the confidentiality-preserving noun "friend"), was mentioned. I wasn't trying to completely discredit X's advice to my friend, but as soon as I heard what ze had recommended, I thought of what Sartre had written, and immediately responded by undercutting X's advice with the line, "Well, that's a good point, but X would say that, since [ze] made a similar choice when faced with a fairly similar decision a few months ago. I mean, look at where X is now." I then proceeded to offer my own advice, while hedging a little, because I didn't want to discredit X's advice, only to recognize where it came from.

After talking to my friend, I started to think more explicitly about what Sartre actually said. I hedged my own advice, but I didn't really think about it as coming from a subject position of my own. This is to say, at the time, I didn't see nearly as similar a decision at any point in my life, so on the surface, it's not like I had an "obvious opinion" that I was sharing. But, in fact, it was a *big* decision that I was talking about with my friend. Even if I hadn't come across the same situation, those first steps away from college and into adulthood are still composed of analogously-large decisions. Even if mine aren't the same as my friend's, I have a subjective orientation already.

Thus, the question that was raised is, if X is "the friend who will recommend [specific course of action after college]", which friend am I? Am I the friend who recommends not jumping straight into grad school because of fears of burnout? (yes) Am I the friend who recommends moving out of the house because it feels responsible and grown-up? (probably, although I haven't ever actually gone apartment-hunting) What else am I?

In other words, what does my being here, in Hong Kong, in my job/life situation mean? What does it say about the kinds of decisions I make, the kind of advice I would be expected to give? It's not too egocentric to bring the discussion from a serious decision a friend is making back to my own life, is it? (maybe, but maybe not if I'm writing about it as a generally-applicable example) Is where I am now why people don't ask me for advice very often? (probably) Is it weird that I look for excuses to apply Tiger Balm just because I like how it smells? (uh, I got distracted)