A talk recently reviewed in this column spoke of two selves: the experiencing self and the remembering self. Here is another talk that speaks of the self in two parts again: the present and the future self…much like the idea of shreyas and preyas…one for present enjoyment and one for future, albeit it could encompass future lives too.
Daniel Goldestein’s talk focuses on this life and talks of how the present self rides rough-shod over the future self because, “to abstain from the enjoyment which is in our power, or to seek distant rather than immediate results, are among the most painful exertions of the human will.” If you set goals for yourself and you’re like a lot of other people, you probably realize it’s not that your goals are physically impossible that’s keeping you from achieving them, it’s that you lack the self-discipline to stick to them. It’s physically possible to lose weight. It’s physically possible to exercise more. But resisting temptation is hard. The other reason that it’s difficult to resist temptation is because it’s an unequal battle between the present self and the future self… It’s in control. It’s in power right now. It has these strong, heroic arms that can lift doughnuts into your mouth. And the future self is not even around. It’s off in the future. It’s weak. It doesn’t even have a lawyer present. There’s nobody to stick up for the future self. And so the present self can trounce all over its dreams. So there’s this battle between the two selves that’s being fought, and we need commitment devices to level the playing field between the two.”
What Goldstein describes as “commitment device” is a kind of punishment that we inflict on ourselves…like if he did not write five pages, he promised himself he would leave five dollars in an envelope in the railway station, “… when I was a starving post-doc at Columbia University, I was deep in a publish-or-perish phase of my career. I had to write five pages a day towards papers or I would have to give up five dollars. And when you try to execute these commitment devices, you realize the devil is really in the details. Because it’s not that easy to get rid of five dollars…it was just a completely pointless exchange of money that I would regret.”
He tells you an interesting story of Odysseus and the Sirens who sing such a beautiful song that sailors who hear it crash into the rocks and die. (Where Odysseus, in order to hear the song of the beautiful maidens called Sirens, gets himself tied to a post so that he can hear the song. He would pour wax into the ears of his mates and so they would not be able to hear and can steer him back to safety).
“Tying yourself to a mast is perhaps the oldest written example of what psychologists call a commitment device. A commitment device is a decision that you make with a cool head to bind yourself so that you don’t do something regrettable when you have a hot head…because there’s two heads inside one person when you think about it… I’ve been working for about a decade now on finding other ways to change people’s relationship to the future self without using commitment devices. In particular, I’m interested in the relationship to the future financial self. And this is a timely issue. I’m talking about the topic of saving. Now saving is a classic two selves problem.
The present self does not want to save at all. It wants to consume. Whereas the future self wants the present self to save…,”says Goldstein. The crux of the problem is that even though we know we will get old, we do not believe we will. So Goldstein, through an animated tool shows that it is imperative to take care of the future self. And self-discipline is the key.
(sudhamahi@gmail.com)
Web link:>https://www.ted.com/talksdaniel_goldstein_the_battle_between_your_present_and_future_self
