New year’s resolutions, or not
Virginia Postrel in the NY Times this week reports on the dynamics of personal resolutions by this year’s economic science Nobel prize co-winner, Thomas Schelling.
Aside from the algorithmic models of personal decision sciences, he raises the question about the relationship between the “self” who makes a resolution and the “self” who is supposed to deliver faithful compliance to the first self’s mandate.
Whether we’re talking about resolutions of initiating new behaviors like working out or extinguishing old behaviors like food indulgences, there is a curious “third self” whose job is to think of clever ways to resolve conflicts between the first and second selves.
The third self employs all kinds of logic, rewards, and punishments to get compliance of the second self to the first self’s supposed “good” intentions.
I would think that the whole matter requires a fourth (higher) self who looks at the whole drama and says, my only intention is to be unapologetically who I am. It is the resolution to favor authenticity over manipulation.
December 30th, 2005 16:31
I appreciate this timely reflection. It was helpful in resolving (no pun intended) an internal conflict. I wrote about it at http://www.kathrynpetro.com/mindfullife/archives/001318.html . May 2006 be full of authenticity for you.
December 30th, 2005 18:25
Thanks Kathryn. You did a great job of narrative on wrestling with the artist’s way. The irony is that there would ever be only “one right (artist’s) way”! : )
January 1st, 2006 19:06
Jack,
Drama might be one of the most enticing element of our lives, there is a tendency to take everything so seriously when resolution is just one thought away. I fell asleep today, taking a Sunday nap with a vision in my head that everything in my life was created by my thoughts, a reality living in the mind. It gave me a lot of comfort as I fell into dreams.
January 1st, 2006 19:55
What a delicious dream …