The strongest passion in humans is not hunger, sex or power, although these are quite strong; the very strongest passion is laziness. The longer I study human beings, including myself, the more I am inclined to agree. Laziness is the strongest passion.” —-Carl Jung
The interesting thing in this article is that we aren’t only one person – we are a series of different personalities – changing over time.
The British philosopher Derek Parfit espoused a severely reductionist view of personal identity in his seminal book, Reasons and Persons: It does not exist, at least not in the way we usually consider it. We humans, Parfit argued, are not a consistent identity moving through time, but a chain of successive selves, each tangentially linked to, and yet distinct from, the previous and subsequent ones. The boy who begins to smoke despite knowing that he may suffer from the habit decades later should not be judged harshly: “This boy does not identify with his future self,” Parfit wrote. “His attitude towards this future self is in some ways like his attitude to other people.”
That’s really interesting… even apart from procrastination (ie, why do something when you can delegate it to your future self – who is sort of a different person, even a stranger). I have to think about the implications of considering my future self as a stranger. To extend the thought, do we think about our past selves as strangers? Should we?
Another thought?
Of course, the way we treat our future self is not necessarily negative: Since we think of our future self as someone else, our own decision making reflects how we treat other people. Where Parfit’s smoking boy endangers the health of his future self with nary a thought, others might act differently. “The thing is, we make sacrifices for people all the time,” says Hershfield. “In relationships, in marriages.” The silver lining of our dissociation from our future self, then, is that it is another reason to practice being good to others. One of them might be you.
Yes, I am a worrier. I worry too much about things I can’t stop – though I usually worry because I know there are things I can do to prepare and/or protect but I can’t really figure out what those thing are or what they should be. As I get old my worrying is getting a lot better though not for good reasons. I worry less because I don’t give a shit anymore.
One thing I have always worried about is the Yellowstone Supervolcano. Over the years I have looked at potential ash depths to see how much would make it to the Dallas area. Not smart – not healthy.
So, according to the linked article, nothing will happen in the next year at least.
Strike up a conversation every day Ask Interesting Questions Follow Your Curiosity Take Yourself on Dates Listen to Good Podcasts Open Yourself Up to Other Perspectives Tap Into Your Unique Passions
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Cathey MIller, Cathedonia
(click to enlarge)
Walking the Dogs
Craig was out for his daily constitutional, walking a figure-eight through the park a few blocks from his apartment. As he came across the little bridge he saw a woman walking two pit bulls on the path before him.
Because of recency bias he couldn’t admit to himself that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but he was sure he had never a woman more beautiful. It was a hot day and she was wearing shorts and an old-fashioned halter top – Craig didn’t think he had seen one of those in a decade. She wore it well.
Her dogs were friendly and as he bent of to pet them he decided to say something.
“What are your dog’s names?”
“Neetzy and Young,” she said.
“Do you mean Nietzsche and Jung?”
“Yeah, that’s sounds right. My ex-boyfriend named them.”
“Are they his dogs?”
“They were ours. Now their mine.”
“So the two of you picked out two dogs?”
“Yeah, he had a cat when we met.”
“A male cat?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me guess, it was named Murr. Tomcat Murr.”
“How did you know? That’s what he called it too, Tomcat Mur. What a weird-shit name.”
“A lucky guess. I was going to say Shrodinger for a second.”
“Shrow-dinger… he would talk about a cat named that. But I never saw it.”
“Did he have a box?”
“Yeah, he said Shrow-dinger was in the box but he was afraid to look in it.”
“He didn’t know if it was alive or dead?”
“That’s right, how did you know?”
“Technically, it was both alive or dead, at the same time, until you open the box.”
“You are as crazy as he was… as he is…. I don’t think there was a cat in there at all. I threw the box out, but I never looked inside. It felt light.”
“You said ex-boyfriend. What happened?” The woman was so beautiful… but he found himself wishing he could meet her ex-boyfriend.
“Oh, I said he was crazy. And it wasn’t just the cat thing. They took him away. He’s in this big hospital… out in the country.”
“Is it on the top of a mountain?”
“Yeah… have you been there?”
“No, never heard of it until now.”
“Well, you sound a lot like him. The doctors told me he would probably never come home from there. You remind me of him a lot.”
With this approach, perhaps you can sidestep the inevitable challenges that come with traditional New Year’s resolutions and achieve lasting, positive changes.
The last two years have seen an unprecedented escalation in a decades-long war on the American past. But there are lots of logical flaws in attacking prior generations in U.S. history.
Venus Victrix (The Judgement of Paris), Pierre Auguste Renoir & Hercules the Archer, Antoine Bourdelle, Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
Victimhood is defined in negative terms: “the condition of having been hurt, damaged, or made to suffer.” Yet humans have evolved to empathize with the suffering of others, and to provide assistance so as to eliminate or compensate for that suffering. Consequently, signaling suffering to others can be an effective strategy for attaining resources. Victims may receive attention, sympathy, and social status, as well as financial support and other benefits
hiva Nataraja, South India, Tamil Nadu, Chola dynasty, 11th century, bronze, Dallas Museum of Art
Bill Chance 