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Memento Causarum Quae Te Agere Impulerunt
A modern counterpart to the ancient practice of “Memento Mori.”:
- Memento Mori (“Remember that you will die”) appears throughout history
- We also need Memento Causarum (“Remember the causes”) :
- A reminder of our original motives and purposes
- Protection against getting lost in side problems and details
- We easily stray from our initial intentions due to, for example:
- Emotional entanglements – alliances, enmities, ego-stakes
- Attachment to specific means rather than desired ends
- Sunk-cost fallacy – reluctance to abandon invested effort
Just as Memento Mori reminds us of our mortality to keep us humble, Memento Causarum reminds us of our original motives to keep us focused on what truly matters. This practice can help us cut through unnecessary sophistications and righteousness to maintain more productive conversations and endeavors.
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On taming the shadow part of the self
I explore the Jungian concept of shadow integration.
- The shadow self is defined as:
- An unconscious part of ourselves our ideal self-identity does not approve of
- Natural but threatening to our cultivated self-narrative and public persona
- Connected to something deep and essential in our individuality
- Impossible to eliminate through suppression
- Suppressing the shadow creates significant problems, such as projection of disowned traits onto others, or random triggering of shame and self-scolding
- Integration requires proactive exploration without judgment, such as understanding that our "nature" may differ from our projected ideal, yet not indulging shadow elements but acknowledging their presence
- The benefits of shadow integration include recognition that shadows are universal in everyone
- The shadow self is defined as:
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Why are we drawn to fiction? And 4 ideas on why we are passers-by for meaningful stories
I explore our fascination with fictional narratives and why we struggle to live equally meaningful lives.
- Fiction provides a broader emotional palette than everyday life:
- Real-life emotions are like "periods” in paragraphs - significant but infrequent
- Fiction-induced emotions are like "commas" - more frequent and varied
- Why we don't live lives as meaningful as fiction (being “passers-by”):
- Structural limitations make it too risky, such as:
- Fiction lets us "snorkel" in intense experiences without diving fully in
- Real adventures carry higher stakes and consequences
- We never learned to recognise and follow adventures
- We lack skills to identify moments of opportunity (what the Greeks called "physis")
- We must learn to "follow these threads with an open heart"
- We prefer vicarious experience to actual risk
- Stories might be a device that gives us "all the best bits" without downsides
- Stories serve as templates we can adapt to our lives
- Understanding where we are in our story's structure helps us maintain motivation
- Stories teach us that adventures need conclusions, while many life situations remain unresolved
- Structural limitations make it too risky, such as:
- Fiction provides a broader emotional palette than everyday life:
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Transmission, information-action ratio and choosing your battles
A reflection on the relationship between knowledge acquisition and meaningful action:
- The ideal of information transmission is knowledge that leads to beneficial action
- The "information-action ratio" varies by personal circumstances:
- Some remain stuck in "I need to know more"
- Others feel paralysed by "I don't know enough"
- The ideal state is "This would be beautiful if it was possible. Let's try"
- A critique to our current approach to self-development:
- We pursue credentials without purpose
- We accumulate skills hoping to stumble upon meaning
- This approach is "tedious and just wasteful"
- I suggest alternative approaches that look at it inversely: we stumble upon meaning and then establish that as an anchor from which to develop our pursuits.
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Not ‘just’ a tool without accountability
- Many digital platforms have evolved beyond "tools" to become infrastructures:
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- Social media, search engines, e-commerce platforms, blockchains, LLMs
- Their pervasive reach gives creators enormous influence
- Yet their "all-encompassing reach" often reduces accountability
- I describe the "blame the wielder, not the hammer" argument as "simplistic, and dangerous"
- The current paradigm celebrates ambiguous technology:
- The "great revolutionary tech tool" is valued for being a universal "enabler for the people"
- It touts abstract purposes like "connecting people" or becoming "the town-square of the planet"
- Scale and generality are prized for economic and competitive reasons
- I propose a contrasting view:
- "Smaller, more specific technologies" with transparent purposes
- Solutions that leverage "the long-tail effect of the internet" for specific audiences
- Empowering those users "who are specific about their intentions"
- Moving away from generality pursued for "economies of scale, market captures, network effects"