Time sensitive righteousness
02/03/21
Advice about what one “should” do, think, behave, moralize, fight for, and what their mind gravitates towards/away from, changes over time. Such that it’s a good symptom to be driven by something at one point, then having a quite different reaction towards it later (but this isn’t seen as “normal”)
Related to the diff things that drive us: the common human experience of “chip on shoulder” or peer pressure in younger years. My personal experience re: school cabinet roles, startups/VC on certain topics. Some of my povs, some flipped back, some flipped into a higher dimension, some flipped opposite on one axes but not others, etc.
Particularly important regarding your personal spirit of “Flow state” or “reason you wake up every morning” or “higher meaning/calling/beauty in life”
How doees this factor into an “overall goal” one holds? What you want to want, vs what you want?
Holding a desired end goal constant (though this doesnt have any real world application, since you can only look back in time, not forward): people might need to hear differnt things at different time. So, when a certain sect–the people outside the ring, or the old and jaded, or the beginners, or the pushers of a certain cause, or the insiders–dominate a convo about should, should, should–we should examine what’s the meta effect on a field of practice?
example: going on r/{hobby} results in the most intense crazy people. good for exploring, but is it local optimum? how to structure systems to encourage breaking out of that? back in the day, “i like gardening” meant you planted some stuff and watched it grow. Now you need X product, you’re a Bad Human Being if you don’t do Y, Z is the accepted understanding, blah
example 2: preachers online looking back, talking about “I wish I had done __ instead ,” or giving random advice “you should do this”… theres so much variability, who even knows, maybe person X deemed bad after the fact was actually in service of doing what person X did. No way of turning back time and doing an experiment for a counterfactual
proposal: maybe a meta framework around everything–always going to be “Uncertainty.” So just live it. When in it, handle it. Each step requires a new strategy, don’t be afraid to brreak free you’re held to or who you were before. reinvent, think critically about where you are, try to zoom out, notice patterns, and hopefully those patterns dont change when you notice them lol (they do). overall, overthinking is a killer/freezer
Given modern Internet usage, you also have to deftly switch your information diet at the same time. So hopefully your “want to wants” are the teachers of your wants
Depending on your personality… maybe you need to include self reassuring elements without being too comfortable. Maybe being a level of discomfort, for you, is a point of your current stage. Where will it take you?
Some axes of consideration
Smallest “units” of consideration are: what causes do you care about, etc political positions, work life balance, what do you want to physically be doing, mentally be doing,
Personality level: How does effort pay off to you, do you like to batch things or gradual, do you like
More upstream influences: maybe it’s important to take note of, in long run, what your social patterns/loneliness is like. Does it have a drop off, when you certain limit, for a phenomenon to occur? Or is it exponential growth with no limits?
Another example. how about your interaction with prestige/status… what if you graphed a chart of how distant your are from establishment, vs. when you feel something? Start off with your relative, immediate surroundings, and not a global view of the graph. So what is truly “unexpected” and bad for our calculations? Maybe when the graph has a major change somewhere in store for you, and your meta level of mind management didn’t foresee it properly, and can’t properly adapt your “wants” properly to your overall desired “want to want” goal
Follow up questions: is there some pattern to the “types” of switches over time and what causes?