Are people really doing the best they can do?

Are people really doing the best they can do?

Here’s an article which answers, Yes, and the author’s favorite word and notion is “tool kit”:

https://sarahdaurizio.medium.com/are-people-really-always-doing-the-best-they-can-4e7ccf3b6720

My inclination is to discard the question – which is, to me, the equivalent of the response that Steve Alley, Brené Brown’s husband, gives to the question, which the article quotes:

“I don’t know. I really don’t. All I know is that my life is better when I assume that people are doing their best. It keeps me out of judgment and lets me focus on what is, and not what should or could be.”

Alley is content to leave the answer a mystery. Ok, I’ll say he discards any answer, not the question itself. And he discards utility in notions of should or could, which are inextricably inevitable in parsing the question and wordsmithing any explanations. 

My inclination too comes from parsing the words to pieces. Which is what I believe such authors to be doing also. Try it yourself; talk it out. You can’t avoid discussing what meaning to ascribe to “best.” And you’ll inevitably insist on the phrase, “in the moment.” 

However, as you might guess, what I find most objectionable are the terms “tools” and “toolkit.” To me, this is what imprisons the author into irreconcilable, circular nonsense. And it explains to me why Alley discards the matter. Put most simply, you can’t divorce any notion of tools from the notion of fixing. 

I use a tool to fix something broken – to restore it to what it should or could be, not what is. When broken, it’s not its best.

As far as the “doing” in “doing one’s best,” the implication of “in the moment” is inevitable. It strips away “did” and “will do.” It attempts to situate “best” in a context utterly lacking the logic required to understand what best means. The word and idea have no meaning apart from poor, good, better, best. And that framework is incompatible with “in the moment” and “what is.”

Alley and I have no logical choice but to reject it all, while the author pretends she has a choice unavailable to the rest of us. Alley’s response involves pretending, so the author is comfortable getting nowhere real.

I can appreciate the value of lifehacks and tools and toolkits and therapy that help a psyche navigate a quandary. Alley says he uses the hack of pretending so that he’s not fruitlessly distracted from the present by the should or could. Bravo.

Psychology and cognitive sciences are rather indisputable about our unconscious inclinations to fabricate explanations for our actions. In experiment after experiment, research subjects make up explanations for responses that the experimenters control. Do we fabricate our own positive attitude that people are doing their best, in order to serve our own egos? We might pretend others are doing their best so that we can pretend that we are too.

In her efforts to fix her life, this author made herself and her loved ones miserable. Then she suggests yet another fix – cultivating the illogical notion that people are doing their best. I would suggest her problem is rooted in not only answering, but also simplifying the questions she obsesses about. The ego insists on fundamentalizing so that it can declare itself right (and/or others wrong).

I see this author as wanting to fix the blood-and-dust moment on the arena floor – in direct contradiction to Brené Brown’s metaphor that she quotes . It’s seen as a broken state. Achievement, success, striving, earning… All these western values that devalue “what is.” In this value system we can’t attain contentment with anything short of best, so if we are not to be miserable, we must pretend that less-than-best equals best. That’s a tragic formula certain to fail.

To underscore the inescapable framework of this obsession, I just look at the article’s subtitle: “A meditation on what the ‘best we can do’ really means, and why sometimes it means taking the pressure to succeed off.” Pressure. Success. Sometimes (in a moment). What it “really” means… That’s obsessive. The ego must know the “real” meaning, intolerant of mystery. It cannot tolerate discarding its obsession with real and best. But Allen suggests that it must:To underscore the inescapable framework of this obsession, I just look at the article’s subtitle: “A meditation on what the ‘best we can do’ really means, and why sometimes it means taking the pressure to succeed off.” Pressure. Success. Sometimes (in a moment). What it “really” means… That’s obsessive. The ego must know the “real” meaning, intolerant of mystery. It cannot tolerate discarding its obsession with real and best. But Alley suggests that it must:

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

If I’m ok with that, perhaps I’m just pretending. 

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Neil D.  2025-06-18