It’s important to attempt understanding the processes that lead to our mistakes. Unless one does not care for making any number of errors at random moments, some which might lead to dire consequences, it becomes relevant to living a good life, to be thoughtful of why we do what we do.
To answer the question, we can either look at other people’s mistakes and trace back or we could look at our own.
The benefit of looking at other people’s mistakes to understand why they made them is twofold; we wouldn’t be subjective or biased (i.e. affected by cognitive dissonance) and we might notice consequences or patterns of action that the doer themselves has difficulty in noticing because of their blind spots or limited perspective.
However, the negatives of analyzing others’ errors weigh heavier for the process of arriving to the most rational conclusions. For one, we might have a prior opinion about the other person’s action(s) being good or bad, not based on logic, reason and fairness, but tainted by our preference and how it has affected us. This also recognises that while one action might be good and beneficial to some, they might be the opposite to others. In this way, we would need to add a layer of awareness against our biases towards ourselves about other people’s actions.
…it is rarely so simple and fair to say that the person who made a mistake wanted to make that mistake or understood their action to be a mistake and did them nonetheless. In evaluating others, compassion, fairness and a level of objectivity is required. We must be wary of our own preferences and biases when evaluating anyone, others and ourselves…
The second issue is that we don’t have access to the thought process and planning and perspective of the doer. We cannot say what the person was thinking exactly when they did what they did. In this moment though, it is safe to assume that people do what they think they should do. This includes within itself an aspect of what they want to do and what they think is right to do. Depending on the person, each of these elements take up different amounts of space. Maybe one person gives more attention to what they want and only barely thinks of what is right, and maybe someone does the opposite. It does remain, however, that unless the two can be reconciled, the action won’t happen. Meaning that, if one thinks an action is right but doesn’t want to do it, they usually won’t do it and if one thinks that an action they want to do isn’t right, they won’t do it as well. Such reasoning might be explained by cognitive dissonance and similar theories of psychology where the conclusion seems that, again, people do what they think they should do. Recognizing this also has the implication of compassion towards those who make mistakes. Because we recognize that they were not thinking unjustly or had evil intentions.
Now, some might say, at this point, that actions like killing or abduction for example are evil and unjust. I would agree! The actions are such but the actor is either doing them out of a mistaken and limited understand that the action is what they should do or because they have defects in their faculties of thought. To clarify the second, I mean that it might for instance be in a moment of rage or desperation, when reasoning has been set aside by strong emotions.
Indeed, when looked at with attention and justice and reason, we can conclude that the judgement of people based on their actions is not a reasonable thing to do. Of course in compliance with societal rules and regulations, one must always face the consequences of any action. However, it is rarely so simple and fair to say that the person who made a mistake wanted to make that mistake or understood their action to be a mistake and did them nonetheless. In evaluating others, compassion, fairness and a level of objectivity is required. We must be wary of our own preferences and biases when evaluating anyone, others and ourselves.
This also leads to the conclusion that, in order to properly understand why mistakes are made, the soundest method for an individual is introspection and looking at our own mistakes. This might be uncomfortable because it would require confronting oneself and admitting to errors we might rather forget, but if done with self-honesty, love for oneself and patience, we might understand ourselves and forgive some of our deepest mistakes.
Orange Stoic 