| | New Year's Resolution: To learn how to love freely and wastefully.
All too often I get absorbed by the "scarcity mentality," where I measure the justification of an action by the dollar, with self-interested, cost-benefit analysis. There's never enough to go around, so I gotta take initiative and grab it before others do. And then I end up tightening up and saving what I have, leaving very little to give to others. I think it comes from being an econ major, where all we learn is how to maximize profits. We learn about competitive behavior, and how to gain an edge over other people. Also, I play board games where I treat people as mere instruments or obstacles to my goal of developing my resources and winning. Should I trade with this person? Yes, it will help me. In fact, now I can cut him off and effectively knock him out of the game. If he's out, I'm probably gonna win. Okay.
Now of course this is what board games are about, and the competition is what makes them fun. However, this behavior (or at least thought process) seems to bleed into my real-world life. Instead of applying this skill only to games and wise spending habits for a small, fixed amount of money, it sometimes affects how I spend everything, including my time. And then I miss the reality that the things I'm interacting with are actually people with lives, feelings, and needs of their own.
It's a good thing I study ethics, too. Because it lets me take a step back and consider the moral and situational scopes of the philosophy of economics.
But at the same time, philosophy makes me somewhat inert. It's the old paralysis of analysis. Before changing anything, or doing something that might be good, I often have to stop and state reasons for doing so. And then I consider different possible outcomes and their likelihoods. And then by the time I finally arrive at a justification for the action, the opportunity passes.
I want to learn how to switch on and off my knack for making cold calculations. So that in the appropriate situations, I can be wise with my money, time, and relationships.
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| | Posted 1/8/2007 1:51 AM - 28 Views - 4 eProps - 2 comments
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