“In the end, promises are words” (Alice)

 

“I promise…I will definitely attend the ceremony” I said to my most trusted friend and I was pretty sure in my mind that “I will”, though usually, I avoid such formal ceremonies. But lo! the day came and I was back home so late that I could not dare to go out once again in the thunderous clouds, amidst the sporadic lightning. I, therefore, de-adventured to attend the ceremony and took the risk of her wrath. I had no words to apologize, though I did somehow, I can understand that my words, “I apologize’’ remain mere ‘words’ for my bare bones of promises. True, I was feeling guilty too, because obligation – a part of promise – was not kept.

There is nothing new in the phrase ‘I promise’. Time and again we use this phrase for something like promise to wash the dishes or promise to stop smoking etc., because the word reinforces the integrity in relationships and holds a lot of emotional value when one breaks it. Every new promise imposes a new obligation of morality on the person, who promises, and this new obligation arises from his will which is one of the most mysterious and incomprehensible operations that can possibly be imagined, i.e. transubstantiations (borrowed from David Hume).

Breaking promise is fidelity to promise, a decline of trust too. This explains how a promise can bind us to act of why we should be morally obliged to obey the rules of the practice of promising. I remember, once I lend a huge amount of money to a close friend and he said I promise I will pay back the loan, but unfortunately, he failed to keep his word. I was so outraged that I broke all relationships with him. Or when I promise, “I…take you to be my wedded spouse…” and he does the same, we’re changing the nature of our relationship from that of two single people to that of a committed couple. However, this time I was on the verge of losing my friendship for several years. Therefore, making a promise is, indeed, a profound act that encapsulates the possibility of hope on the other side.

It is true when circumstances change, one is left with no other choice but to break the promise and no longer remains the prisoner of an impossible promise. At that crucial hour, one should be prepared to explain why it is broken, ready to be apologized for breaking the promise. …the guilt which follows, after one breaks a promise, is sometimes too hard to handle and ends up affecting one’s social life.

The duty to keep a promise is a ‘categorical imperative’. Any further proof of this imperative is simply impossible––indeed as impossible as it would be for a geometer to prove that I need three lines to construct a triangle. The absolute moral imperatives do not give us any latitude, nor any instruction to handle situations when a promise is not kept accordingly, since it is important for one’s self-esteem and confidence ….. The erosion of faith in ourselves over time is letting us down, perhaps one does not see oneself as a valuable item. Losing that trust from others and for ourselves is difficult to gain back. Undoubtedly, the broken vows leave the fractured image of one.

Thus, promises are of special interest to ethical theorists, as they are members of a family group, like–– moral obligations vows, oaths, pledges, contracts, treaties, and agreements which are important elements of justice and the law, though a long and tangled one. The central dialectic within this ‘normative power’ corpus is pitted against the legal power often.

But the bizarre and weird type of promises and commitments is that of political candidates to woo voters. People ridicule that politicians’ penchant for promise-breaking is shaped by several compromises….. If making a promise causes voters to elect a particular leader, breaking the same promise causes voters to dislike the same leader. The upshot is that if trouble detecting politicians’ betrayals would provoke a shrill – if not hysterical – public chorus of disapproval remains in the air: “I will never vote for him again!” If this sounds hyper-intellectual, let me point out that the politicians are already familiar with this strategy. However, the public is too irrational. In a deep sense, politicians break their promises because the public tolerates dishonesty. Yes, one can blame politicians for lying; but as a wise, old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” And there you are!! Politicians get away with breaking promises. Political speech that is considered to be flat-out lies is called “campaign promises,” promises that are never executed.

The verbal obligation, which our father and grandfathers used to keep, no longer exists now, because the oral commitments are non-binding and are usually not considered official. Thus the 17th Century saw the emergence of a new strand of moral theory, one that employed the notion of a mutual agreement or contract between the members of a community as a device for grounding moral principles. Once acceptance has taken place, a binding contract has come into existence and both parties are legally bound by its terms. A party who fails to perform its obligations under the contract is said to be in breach of contract and is liable to compensate the other party. The aptness of game-rule, i.e. ‘rules of thumb’ merely guides us, but the ‘practice’ view of rules is always logically prior to them. Constitutive rules, like the rules of football, are necessary for us to perform game-based actions like ‘striking out’. But when one is on the ground one has to show the ability to perform, mere rules are not sufficient.

Thus, when Leaders make a habit of breaking promises, the subordinates adopt the same policy; they consider this as a good conversation skill or a diplomatic path to handle situations. This spreads like a virus in the Organization, bringing down the moral values of an organization.

I have come to see the strange paradox of making commitments to myself. I do not remain the same person, who promised to exercise daily regardless of heavy rain or to forego daily sweets regardless of the craving. One often succumbs to temptation with calm and even with finesse. Many resolutions are made and remade and made again, eventually, they drag my feet. Greeks use the strange word akrasia for this sort of situation, i.e. lack of command or weakness of will. Breaking a promise can be so sudden that it appears that one really has lost one’s mind.

I can bear in my mind just the opposite: how my father, who was a chain smoker, left smoking when half of the cigarette was in between his fingers. He never lifted it again. We, amusingly, kept that part of the cigarette for a long 24 years in our table-desk, until we shifted to a new place—a special kind of promise or vow, he made to himself and he kept it throughout his life.

Nietzsche once writes: What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence – even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!’…. Do you want this again and innumerable times again?” …. The hardest part of this eternal return is to own up to the tortures that we create for ourselves and for others.

When individuals and companies don't deliver on their brand promises, they fail to maintain the uniqueness of self-identity and their brand loyalty among their customers. “Customer service is our passion”—the slogan defeats the very purpose of the brand.

What would the Ramayana be without the vow given to Kaikeyi by King Dashratha? Or would the course of events and the internecine bloodshed have been averted had Bhishma not taken his monstrous oath of lifelong celibacy and relinquishing his rights? The premise of both the epics, interestingly, hinges on promises, resolutions, and oaths. While Bhishma’s is a self-imposed vow, the one by King Dashrath becomes an enforced plea, an anguished order, and eventually a burden to be borne by his own death and the travails of his son Ram, who is exiled for fourteen years. But in both cases, the resolutions are the trigger points; they change the narratives swiftly and radically. …. The resolution hardens thereby into a command, which Ram, unhesitatingly obeys, considering it mandatory, breaking which was inconceivable for him.

An inspection of the Performative utterances, as claimed by J. L. Austin's speech act theory, employed by the various strange characters in Alice’s books sometimes reveals the possibility of functional alien social structures and justifies the relativity of our own social structures—A Victorian world that Carroll mocks. “I am under no obligation to make sense to you”….the mad hatter cried out. At the risk of being verbose …“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first—verdict afterward”. Austin pointed out that the utterance of a statement like “I promise to do so-and-so" is best understood as doing something — making a promise is generating the action of making a promise — rather than making an assertion about anything. It refers to a not truth-valuable action of "performing", or "doing" a certain action. Just as one’s movement of hands is casually performed, so one pronounces the statement, “I promise”. ….Making promises are important in a way to keep others’ trust so that a liar can get the needed funds. Many people are pretty casual about making promises. As a result, promises are frequently made at the drop of a hat with no real intention of keeping them. “Let’s go to lunch,” “I’ll call you later,” and “I’ll be there in five minutes” are all examples of throwaway promises that are frequently made but seldom kept. Mere writing about the bare bones of promises and ignoring the rich fabric of life in which they occur facilitates the quintessence of promises to vacuous. If promises are binding, there must be a reason to do so, say, my reason to let you use my car tomorrow, which is binding on me. Similarly, the promissory has a duty to perform the promised act because it is a promise.

There are exceptions; acts that one cannot promise to perform. For example, a promise to exterminate homo sapiens or all primate species would not be binding. One may think that so long as such exceptions are rare they do not undermine the suggestion that promises are content-independent.

But can breaking a promise is moral? Hey friends!! Imagine that someone told you that the dam holding a reservoir of water was about to break, but made you promise not to tell anyone. You could keep the promise and let the town get flooded, or you could break the promise and make sure everyone gets out safely. Once again, there is an idea of the greater good that is more important than the moral obligation between two individuals. What if lying is better for your own safety and self-preservation?

Thus, “the promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present”. Lord Kŗşņa broke His promise for the sake of his devotee Bhīşma on the one hand, who promised to compel Lord Kŗşņa to take a weapon, and to protect his friend Arjuna on the other hand from the fierce attack of Bhīşma––finally, my friend! Look deep into the texture of life!

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”.