Even if they had almost destroyed the world, the story would still not properly be about their guilt or their regret, it would be about almost destroying the world
It is possible to not be the story’s subject and still be the protagonist of one strand for it. After all, that’s the only truth most people know for ~certain. It’s also possible to not dramatize yourself as the Epicentre of the Immanent World-Tragedy (Woe is me! Woe is me!) and still feel like crap in a way that needs some form of processing/growth to learn to live with. Similarly, you can be well-balanced and feel some form of hope without then making yourself the Epicentre of the Redemption of the World.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that you can feel things very strongly even without distorting your world-model to make it all about your feelings (most of the time, at least).
I would of course have a different response to someone who asked the incredibly different question, “Any learnable tricks for not feeling like crap while the world ends?”
(This could be seen as the theme of a couple of other brief talks at the Solstice. I don’t have a 30-second answer that doesn’t rely on context, and don’t consider myself much of an expert on that question versus the part of the problem constraint that is maintaining epistemic health while you do whatever. That said, being less completely unwilling to spend small or even medium amounts of money made a difference to my life, and so did beginning a romantic relationship in the frame of mind that we might all be dead soon and therefore I ought to do more fun things and worry less about preserving the relationship, which led to a much stronger relationship relative to the wrong things I otherwise do by default.)
It is possible to not be the story’s subject and still be the protagonist of one strand for it. After all, that’s the only truth most people know for ~certain. It’s also possible to not dramatize yourself as the Epicentre of the Immanent World-Tragedy (Woe is me! Woe is me!) and still feel like crap in a way that needs some form of processing/growth to learn to live with. Similarly, you can be well-balanced and feel some form of hope without then making yourself the Epicentre of the Redemption of the World.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that you can feel things very strongly even without distorting your world-model to make it all about your feelings (most of the time, at least).
I would of course have a different response to someone who asked the incredibly different question, “Any learnable tricks for not feeling like crap while the world ends?”
(This could be seen as the theme of a couple of other brief talks at the Solstice. I don’t have a 30-second answer that doesn’t rely on context, and don’t consider myself much of an expert on that question versus the part of the problem constraint that is maintaining epistemic health while you do whatever. That said, being less completely unwilling to spend small or even medium amounts of money made a difference to my life, and so did beginning a romantic relationship in the frame of mind that we might all be dead soon and therefore I ought to do more fun things and worry less about preserving the relationship, which led to a much stronger relationship relative to the wrong things I otherwise do by default.)
(Can you give one or more examples of what doing more fun things in your relationship looks like as opposed to worrying about preserving it?)