Topic

Intentions

Intentions in this collection are almost always in trouble. Twain on the ease of giving up smoking — so easy, having done it thousands of times — is the most concise account of the gap between intention and action available in aphorism form. Bierce's meekness-as-patience-in-planning-a-revenge is the collection's darkest entry: what announces itself as virtue may be strategy with a longer horizon. Shaw's dreaming-things-that-never-were-and-asking-why-not is the most charitable entry, converting intention from mere wish into a form of moral imagination. Freud's great question — what does a woman want — is here under intentions because not knowing what one wants is the prior failure of intention. Rogers on communism-as-good-idea-that-won't-work is the pragmatic observation: intentions about social arrangements are measured not by their justice but by their operability. Butler's devastating entry on the only animal that can remain friendly with the victims it intends to eat until it eats them converts intention into a social performance: we are most sociable when we have already decided on the outcome.