I don’t think I’ve engaged in persistent, goal-directed activity that I also believe is immoral (that seems almost self-contradictory! Do people do that?) What I’m talking about is lack of motivation and akrasia that includes moral failures.
Yeah, for sure! It’s called evil. Sometimes you know a course of action is wrong (intrinsically or because of its effects on others) but you like the way it will affect you, so you consciously figure out how to gain those benefits.
For what it’s worth, I also misinterpreted your original query as more specific than the topic of this post: “what prevents you from doing mean things when you don’t care” as opposed to “how do you prevent and get out of that state.” On the other hand, I wouldn’t have thought of the empathy response if I hadn’t.
This topic is similar to one of the ones I added to my everyday questions post, although that one is specifically about anger loops and focuses more on the mental, rather than tangible, effects. I’d definitely be interested if you had any ideas about that one.
Yes, I found the title misleading as well—maybe a better title would have been something like “escaping emotional nihilism” or “how not to feel awful”.
I thought when you talked about “being awful”, you meant having wrong goals, not the absence of goals.
A person experiencing absence of goals is certainly wrong, according to any reasonable notion of wrong.
oh, oops, I did mostly mean the absence of goals.
I don’t think I’ve engaged in persistent, goal-directed activity that I also believe is immoral (that seems almost self-contradictory! Do people do that?) What I’m talking about is lack of motivation and akrasia that includes moral failures.
Yeah, for sure! It’s called evil. Sometimes you know a course of action is wrong (intrinsically or because of its effects on others) but you like the way it will affect you, so you consciously figure out how to gain those benefits.
For what it’s worth, I also misinterpreted your original query as more specific than the topic of this post: “what prevents you from doing mean things when you don’t care” as opposed to “how do you prevent and get out of that state.” On the other hand, I wouldn’t have thought of the empathy response if I hadn’t.
This topic is similar to one of the ones I added to my everyday questions post, although that one is specifically about anger loops and focuses more on the mental, rather than tangible, effects. I’d definitely be interested if you had any ideas about that one.
Yes, I found the title misleading as well—maybe a better title would have been something like “escaping emotional nihilism” or “how not to feel awful”.