The philosopher Ernst Mach once got on a bus, and saw a scruffy unkempt bookish-looking person at the far end. He thought to himself (1) That man is a shabby pedagogue. In fact, Mach was seeing himself in a large mirror at the far end of the bus, of the sort conductors used to help keep track of things. He eventually realized this, and thought to himself: (2) I am that man. (3) I am a shabby pedagogue.
John R. PerryWhen I was a young philosopher, I asked a senior colleague, Pat Suppes (then and now a famous philosopher of science and an astute student of human nature), what the secret of happiness was. Instead of giving me advice, he made a rather droll observation about what a lot of people who were happy with themselves seem to have done, namely:
1. Take a careful inventory of their shortcomings and flaws
2. Adopt a code of values that treats these things as virtues
3. Admire themselves for living up to it
Brutal people admire themselves for being manly; compulsive pedants admire themselves for their attention to detail; naturally selfish and mean people admire themselves for their dedication to helping the market reward talent and punish failure, and so on.
Tags: happiness human-nature ego rationalization self-love the-secret-of-happiness
I really have nothing against rationality, or even doing what you think is best, or doing what is more likely to satisfy your desires. I have tried these strategies at various times, occasionally with good results. But I think the ideal of the rational agent is the source of lots of needless unhappiness. It's not the way many of us operate; it's certainly not the way I operate. And operating the way we do usually works just fine, and really isn't a reason to hang our heads in shame and despair.
John R. PerryAll procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this negative trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, such as gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him to do it. The procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely, and important tasks, however, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.
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