at Glendalough
Moral licensing turns out to be, at its core, an identity crisis. We only reward ourselves for good behaviour if we believe that who we really are is the self that wants to be bad. From this point of view, every act of self-control is a punishment, and only self-indulgence is a reward. Moving beyond moral licensing requires knowing that who we are is the self that wants the best for us – and the self that wants to live in line with our core values. When this happens, we will no longer view the impulsive, lazy or easily tempted self as the “real” us. We will no longer act like someone who must be bribed, tricked or forced to pursue our goals, and then rewarded for making any effort at all.
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| — | McGonigal, Kelly; Maximum Willpower. Macmillan |
The more important objection is that the fact that a certain behavior is common does not negate its being corrupt. Indeed, as is true for government abuses generally, those in power rely on the willingness of citizens to be trained to view corrupt acts as so common that they become inured, numb, to its wrongfulness. Once a corrupt practice is sufficiently perceived as commonplace, then it is transformed in people’s minds from something objectionable into something acceptable. Indeed, many people believe it demonstrates their worldly sophistication to express indifference toward bad behavior by powerful actors on the ground that it is so prevalent. This cynicism – oh, don’t be naive: this is done all the time – is precisely what enables such destructive behavior to thrive unchallenged.
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| — | Glenn Greenwald, “Correspondence and collusion between the New York Times and the CIA” |
Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water
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| — | Friedrich Nietzsche |
The Act of Planning
The act of planning is what matters, more than the plan itself.
Even if the plans change entirely, even if you throw away the plan as soon as it is finished - the fact that you have planned enables you to make better choices.
Lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.
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| — | Richard Wiseman, summarising “The Luck Factor” |
I’m concerned about the potential for anthropogenic climate change to irrevocably damage ecosystems and biodiversity, and cause a lot of human suffering. I’m also excited about the potential of new technology to mitigate the damage by reducing carbon emissions.
I found myself thinking about the technologies I’ve read about that could help, and below I’ve collected some of my favourites that, in my amateur opinion, have the potential to greatly reduce carbon emission in residences, commerce and wheeled-transport.
“Uploading the Mind’s Eye”
Nervous about the procedure but knowing that his organic-casing has been feeling kinda rundown lately (he tripped and scuffed an elbow the other day, plus his nose has been running for at least a week now), Franklin MacMurray settles down into the chair as the Robo-Assistants start threading the wires through his pupil and under his eye and he can hear the familiar crunch of the connections clicking into place.
The downloading of his Virtual Soul (a compilation of his memories, thoughts, feelings, personality— all that makes him, him) and subsequent uploading into a new organic casing has become remarkably easy, but still… as they hook up everything and he feels the memories be duplicated and pulled out, Franklin always feels regretfully uneasy. He can’t shake it.
Plus, he doesn’t need a new body (the current one works fine, just a bit slow is all), but with the deals they got now it’s sooooo cheap to upgrade, and they have all these amazing features… yeah, he probably won’t use 99% of them, but he thought the same about the Clearview Retin-A after all, and he doesn’t know what he’d do without it.
Besides, it’s almost his birthday. He’s allowed to give himself a nice gift.
The dreamy glow that the absence of self brings is tingling through his body, acting as a natural sedative, and Franklin knows it won’t be long now before the transfer is complete. While he can’t “see” his thoughts and memories in his head, he can still feel them being sorted and compiled in the new frame…
But something… something feels off. He can sense the gaps in his memory that everyone has (you can’t remember everything, of course), but instead of them remaining empty and void, he can feel something… new being installed. Something foreign.
He tries to hone in on the blank gaps in his consciousness being artifically filled, but as his sense of self drains away he finds it harder to focus… the outrage he feels over this invasion becomes more and more difficult to muster and maintain…
All he knows, is that that is not him. Something must be going wrong, they’re not meant to put anything besides me in the new me…
It must just be some mistake, he tells himself. It has to be.
As the last bits of his Virtual Soul are downloaded and everything fades to black, he swears that he will remember it… when he wakes up, he will get to the bottom of this. He will fix it. They can’t do this.
Unbeknownst to Franklin, however, this is the 5th time he has made this promise to himself.
And just like before, the memory of it all is left in the dead husk of his former body, which is soon to be melted down and reappropriated into various breakfast cereals, off-brand kitty litters, and glue.
Franklin wakes up, confident in who he is, but subtly unrecognizable from who he was.
Posted 8/22/2012
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In youth, we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollections of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous and long-drawn out…But each passage year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse.
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| — | William James, ‘Principle of Psychology’ (1890) |
