It is what it is

In an essay, Goodin asserts that the phrase “it is what it is” is one of the worst in the English language since it denotes resignation, even despair, while oozing with self-congratulatory smugness. It is a fatal combination, because one really should not be self-congratulatory about despair.

It is particularly sad when people use this phrase to rationalize their own disappointment. Sure, it is usually better to recognize reality, and to move on, than to rage and to gnash one’s teeth. Still, some realities can be changed. The phrase, instead, is a formula for settling and accepting reality, and sometimes we shouldn’t settle or accept the reality. Or if we do, we should not do so without thinking that the world is tractable and that somewhere there may be a solution to our problems. Or should we as the poet Dylan Thomas urged his father "burn and rave at close of day"--rather than surrender meekly to it.

“Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

The most common use of the phrase " it is what it is" lies in the idea that we should settle for life as it is   But there is a difference between “all that you want” and “all that you deserve”—and when you settle, you may fall short of both goals. 

Actually the phrase is always awful, but it is especially despicable when used by someone in a position of authority, who invokes it to dash the hopes of someone who is in a position of supplication. Imagine, for example, an employer telling a job applicant that she isn’t going to be hired, or a bank officer telling a would-be homeowner that he isn’t getting a loan, or a criminal lawyer telling a client that he’s going to have to go to jail, all of them explaining that “it is what it is.” "In such contexts," Goodwin states that  " the phrase is no explanation at all, and its use is a denial of both responsibility and empathy."

However settling, understood in terms of fixity, does have a number of virtues. First, it helps to promote planning. One advantage of a proper settlement is that it produces not merely an end but also a secure one. If we are in the midst of a fight, we might well hope to settle, because fights are ugly and potentially dangerous. Being “unsettled” is “worse than merely being “uncertain”—it is a sort of stultifying uncertainty,” one that “stymies your planning.” A major virtue of settling is that it provides people with fixed points, enabling them to organize their lives. It can be costly to make decisions, and if we have to make decisions about everything, those costs will quickly spiral out of control. After all people have limited cognitive capacities, and therefore we must “take some things as given” so that we can decide “what to do about some other things.”

Beyond reducing cognitive burdens and promoting planning, Goodin contends that settling is indispensable to commitment, trust, and confidence. Our characters are defined by our commitments to certain projects, principles, and values; unless those commitments are settled, they are not commitments at all. Put constantly up for grabs, they cannot have an appropriate place in your life. Trust itself requires fixity. If you are not fixed in certain relationships and practices, people cannot trust you. And confidence—with respect to ourselves, others, and states of the world—will not exist without a lot of settlements.

Goodin is careful to distinguish settling from three closely related concepts with which it might be confused. First, settling is not merely a matter of compromising. When you make restitution to someone you have wronged, and thus “settle up,” you are not compromising at all. Second, settling is not necessarily conservative. You might settle on an abstract theory, and work hard to implement it, and it might involve radical reform. You might settle on a plan of life that requires you to help bring about dramatic social change. Third, settling need not be a form of resignation (or it-is-what-it-is-ism). One reason to settle is that you cannot decide everything at once, and settling frees you up to pursue other matters. You settle on X in order to pursue Y, and in pursuing Y you are anything but resigned.

True, it sometimes makes sense to switch from settling to striving. You might decide to re-open a matter that you had thought fixed. Perhaps you have won the lottery, and it is time to consider a new place to live. Perhaps nothing dramatic has happened or changed, but a set of small developments, taken cumulatively, suggest that you really should consider a new job in Boston. This last point suggests a problem, or maybe even a paradox, which is that settlements are not really rational unless people are prepared to update their commitments in light of what they learn—in which case they might not be counted as settlements at all. We also need to settle in order “to clear the decks and free up resources.” Striving requires settling.

But when should you settle? 

Economists would answer that the answer depends on two factors: the costs of decisions and the costs of errors. Suppose that you are looking for a job. You get an offer, and while it is not ideal, it is certainly not bad. If you decline the offer and keep looking, you might be able to do better, but you might also do worse, and end up with nothing at all. If you accept the offer, the costs of decision will fall to zero. The problem is that premature settlement can impose large error costs, in the form of economic and other losses. The same, of course, is true if you decide not to settle. A bird in the hand may not be worth two in the bush, but a bird in the hand is a lot better than no bird at all.

To decide whether to settle, people will need to assess the potential outcomes and their various probabilities. If you have an excellent chance of doing a lot better, you probably ought not to settle. And in making these judgments, you will be alert not only to the matter at hand, but to the range of decisions that you are facing, and hence to whether a decision to settle will make it easier to focus on more pressing matters.

What the economic literature does not sufficiently investigate are the emotional consequences of settling on the one hand and continued striving on the other. If you settle, you may end up kicking yourself, which is, well, unsettling, and corrosive. You have lost option value, which may be painful, and you might have forfeited a far better outcome, which may be worse. Settling can also produce the phenomenon of “adaptive preferences,” through which people adapt their desires to their situations. Adaptation can reduce or even eliminate distress, but if people are adapting their preferences to a bad situation, it runs into problems of its own. On the other hand, not settling can make people crazy. If you refuse to settle, you may be in a state of some anxiety, which may make it exceedingly difficult to plan and perhaps to do anything else.

Thus when all is said and done, the phrase “it is what it is” isn’t all that bad. By moving on to other concerns, we make striving possible. After all settling is not always resignation. It is a fact that no human life can do without resignation. We have to resign ourselves to that fact. But there  are choices to be made in regard to when, and how, and with what attitude do we approach the rest of our life. 

And in that I am with the poet, "“Do not go gentle into that good night,......Rage, rage against the dying of the light " before you go.