FROM the moment we awake, we choose: will be get up right now or lie there remembering dreams. But not merely that. Sometimes we are in the ‘liminal state’, to use the words of a philosopher, when, for instance we have to choose between undergoing an operation for cancer or using other treatments; between shutting down a city threatened by contagion or not shutting it down when famine will kill the poor.

We are split. Indonesian has