Slowly back into normal life. Also,some reading.

[flexagon]

As predicted, a week of slowly starting to care again about work and my own small life, with its limited "adjacent possibles" and its fake adventures in the corporate world. On Monday I just couldn't care, and by Friday I was at least sort of into it. There was extra time for fussiness and scrubbing away of to-do lists, if only because the squirrel was out of town again: no dates. At one point I complained that I didn't feel like doing any more useful stuff that night, and the bug said "Don't worry, you will anyway", which was weirdly comforting. (And then I did some more useful stuff). Last week's retail therapy is this week's slogging to the post office to return crap that doesn't fit.

Regarding corporate adventures, it looks like my director is going to give my second team more people and have me keep my first team, all of which is going to be enough to force me to appoint someone as a sub-manager. And this might be announced as early as Tuesday. So here I am, nearly risen again to skip-level manager a mere four years after the last director knocked me down out of that position. I told myself I didn't care about that, but something in me does like it, as some sort of sign of recovery. It's going to feel better to leave on a bit of an upswing, rather than in complete defeat like I would have if I'd left in 2021.

Last week I also got to send out spot bonuses for the completion of one of my little spite projects. It was just a cleanup, but a cleanup that mattered to me and was on my bucket list. Done now.

I read (audiobook) a book called Strangers Drowning that I found pretty interesting, with the life stories of quite a few extreme do-gooder types. I had hoped to read more about people who (like me) aren't terribly tribalistic, people who think about how strangers are probably just as worthy of help as one's own family members are, and who sometimes act on those thoughts. Oddly, I found the author to be a little too down on these people, while another reviewer complains that "the author cannot contain admiration for people who almost certainly were ENORMOUS ASSHOLES". But either way I found it interesting. Not philosophically rigorous, but discussing Kant and Peter Singer and all that. At one point she discusses physical distance as an input to people's moral calculations:

To most people, the distance between themselves and another person—physical as well as emotional—is a deep moral fact: it makes a profound difference to their sense of duty. A person who is far away, whom you cannot see or hear, and with whom you have no memories or loyalties in common, cannot compel your help in the same way as a person who is right in front of you

I see that physical distance makes a difference in the ways I might be able to help, or not help (a drowning child in a nearby pond is something I physically leap toward), but I don't feel it so much morally. Guess I should probably read some Singer. In the meantime, oddly because Singer also featured in this, I picked up a used graphic novel called Just Another Meat Eating Dirtbag that turned out to be quite charming.

What else? I did handstands. Saw the advanced studies show from the local circus school on Friday, and survived the associated Lioness sighting. Forced myself to go to open studio on Sunday, and felt bendy and friendly. Tried to take the impulsive young cat out for a walk on her harness, but she fears the open door.

Comments

[randysmith]

The morality issue you raise strike me as being at least somewhat addressed in a lot of books. Jonathan Haidt's _The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Religion and Politics_ comes to mind, as does Joseph Henrich's _The WEIRDest people in the world: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous_. Also Reinhold Niebuhr's _Moral Man and Immoral Society_ (though I haven't read that one, just had it described to me). More abstract and dare I say intellectual images of morality and value conflict with pretty deep seated (and possibly evolutionarily driven) loyalty to family, kin, and friends. It's interesting stuff, though also a bit depressing when you get into it.

[flexagon]

Yeah, I don't have to dig very deep to find human nature disappointing, and its tribalism and focus on family is one reason why.

Ironically, I've been a little bit afraid to read The WEIRDest People In the World because I'm afraid it would mess up my regular habit of lending to folks in the 3rd world through kiva.org. I don't like the idea of lending to people who don't share most of my values, and I'm pretty sure that book is going to tell me that very, very few people share them. Bleh.

Seems like ideological tribalism is just waiting in the wings to take over from the blood-family stuff, doesn't it?

[randysmith]

Yeah ... I have mixed (i.e. not entirely negative) feelings about tribalism in the moral space from a distributed systems perspective. I.e. I have a background suspicion that some level of tribalism of some sort is necessary because our brains can't evaluate greatest good over the entire universe of possible goods to be done. So the more interesting question is how to build the best society out of a whole lot of different more limited urges to do good.

WRT the WEIRD book, I'd suggest taking the next level abstraction of asking "How can you act so as to most effectively promulgate your values in the world?" (separate from helping people with those values). If that's good by you, you may be in luck--my memory of the book (it's been a while since I read it and I may be confusing it with another book) is that mercantilism promoted the development of more liberal morality, i.e. being honest and dealing well with people you don't necessarily know, as that was necessary to trading centers being effective.

[flexagon]

I'd suggest taking the next level abstraction of asking "How can you act so as to most effectively promulgate your values in the world?" (separate from helping people with those values).

I... actually am not sure that resonates. But I've finished my other nonfiction book and started the WEIRD one, anyway.

[randysmith]

Huh. Interesting. Well, I'll be very curious to hear your thoughts after you read the book.

Re: physical distance

[bolson]

I have a neighbor who I have never talked politics with, but I'm sure I disagree in the strongest terms. But he's a good neighbor and there seems to be some concrete value in maintaining the relationship as a good neighbor, and the application of politics is for the moment an abstraction.

Re: physical distance

[flexagon]

Oh yeah, I think "neighbors" or "residents of this one small area" creates a whole different kind of tribalism, particularly in rural areas.