The category of choice is closely allied to that of consent. The alliance
may not be a natural one. Choice and consent have often been called together
to supply the metaphysical underpinnings of an ethic of personal liberation.
According to this ethic, any act committed by choice and with the consent of
all parties to that act is not only intrinsically innocent of harm, but
additionally serves to bolster the human dignity of the actor. Personal
agency, guided by freely taken choices and freely given consent, is held up
as the ultimate object of political liberation; its realisation, to the
maximum possible degree, is taken to be the final goal of progressive
thought and action.

I've written before about consent, usually in order to say that the concept
is unstable and that evidence for this instability can be found in the
qualifications - "informed", "adult" and so on - that we often find we need
to apply to it. Choice is a similarly unstable concept, and for similar
reasons. Choosing "the lesser of two evils" - to prostitute oneself rather
than permit one's children to become malnourished, for instance - one might
reasonably complain that one's choices were adversely circumscribed:
whichever way it falls, such a choice cannot be said to be innocent of harm
or to contribute much to human dignity. Conversely, a choice made between
equal, or equivalent, goods - deciding which ski resort to visit this year,
or what colour of Porsche to purchase - arguably lacks ethical substance:
one might as well toss a coin, or consult an astrologer. The choices it's
important to have the right and freedom to make for oneself are of a
particular order. I would say that "choice of words" in the context of
writing a poem belongs to that order, and can even be thought of as
exemplary with regard to it. It is a choice that matters because in
exercising it one is also exercising a responsibility: the wrong choice
might well be harmful, might well injure the human dignity of oneself and
others, and even the best choice may be freighted with hazard.

Some accounts of mental illness - R. D. Laing in particular - have stressed
the poetic or constructive aspects of delusion and aberration. Laing sees
delusional attitudes and aberrational behaviour as strategies in the
"patient"'s reclamation of a psychic integrity that society at large, and
subsequently the institutions of psychiatry, have tried to suppress, steal
or make untenable. Laing speaks as if the "patient" had a *right* to his
delusions, as if they were his *choice* (if perhaps an "unconscious"
choice), as if they expressed that person's desire for an authentic selfhood
(as against the desires of just about everyone else around him). Society's
alleged concern for the suffering of the mental invalid is, according to
Laing, a mask for its overwhelming need to make him conform.

Laing's is a peculiar version of the personalist ethic I sketched above,
although the extreme antagonism it postulates between the interests of the
patient and those of society is emblematic of one of personalism's besetting
vices. The best answer I can give to Laing is that in some cases human
beings live in compassion for one another, and that it is possible to treat
somebody as an object of compassion without "objectifying" him - that is,
without condescension or the will to dominate. Sometimes compassion demands
that one abstain from colluding with others' delusions, or validating their
self-destructive behaviour. At this extreme, compassion has a lot in common
with outright enmity: Nietzsche says somewhere that a true friend is a "hard
bed" to his suffering comrade, an unrelenting opponent of every unworthiness
in him. I don't know that I'd want Nietzsche as a mate, but there are times
when one wishes one had someone of the sort on hand to help one sort oneself
out.

Homeless people do of course make choices, the same as everybody else. It's
not uncommon for young people to move out of their parents' home, not
because they've been evicted or because they're being molested but simply
because the relationships within that household have utterly broken down
(often for reasons to do with mental illness, as it happens). At the start
of this year, a temporarily homeless friend slept for a month on a mattress
in the front room of my house. A couple of years ago we sheltered a young
woman escaping a violent marriage for a couple of nights. Her decision to
leave that marriage was a hard and brave choice, upon which her dignity and
perhaps more arguably depended; but her homelessness was an unwanted
consequence of that choice, not its intended object.

Dominic