That’s… a very interesting lesson to draw from that particular story, and I think I see how you get there… but I’m not sure you’re not unconsciously misreading things to support a position you know others oppose, specifically, endorsing the Proving. And I don’t want to muck up that thread, so I thought, hey, why not discuss your take on it over here? So…
See, they do make a choice. They make the choice not to try to kill one another. You might argue that it’s a terrible choice, that they’re choosing indecisiveness, but in the story, they both see the other’s knife, and both choose to step back.
It’s decidedly not indecision that drives the decision made by the members of the Clan. We know this. We’re told why the Clan splits:
The realization of betrayal splits the Clan, not the failure to follow-through on betrayal. Some might reject the indecisiveness as part of the third group, ‘who want nothing with either of them’, but that’s not the fundamental breaking point that shatters the Clan.
And beyond that, because we know they clearly do make that choice—we’re explicitly told that they both choose to put down the knives—I’m not sure you come to the take-away that they made no choice at all. They each made several, in fact: first, they chose to remain intractable in their position. Then they each chose to deal with a spirit (a terrible idea in the first place). Third, they chose to bring the daggers to a public gathering. Then each chooses to wield the dagger.
At this point, when they first see the dagger in the other’s hand, one of them could have chosen to seek reconciliation. But they don’t. One of them could have chosen to see it all as the manipulations of the spirit, and ask forgiveness… but they don’t.
It’s at this point that they become passive. And yes, that passivity plays into the destruction of the Clan. But even that passivity is a choice. At least, that’s what I was raised to believe: in order to do nothing… we have to choose to do nothing.